Know the facts as nothing's nearly as simple as it first appears.

I fire mitigate a small section of my 10 acre forested propery yearly based on the Park County Colorado fire department recommendations. If I don't, any ensuing forest fires will destroy everything I own. If more folks did this there would be fewer homes destroyed and less severe fires. What little wood I burn each winter is miniscule compared to the hundreds of thousands of acres destroyed by forest fire each year in Colorado. Most of these fires are caused by lightning and the carelessness of a few individuals. .......

You make some good points.

I'm pretty sure that you have been in areas 'destroyed' by forest fire, as I have been. The great majority of the trees are charred (some quite lightly) but still standing. In fact, some tree species (jack Pine) have evolved to produce seeds that only germinate after a fire (and the parent trees also survive the fire). It is a rare 'forest fire' that actually burns every part of the tree trunk. So 'natural' forest fires should more properly be compared with what you call 'mitigation'- burning of brush and needles-, I think.

And, the point would be to compare the amount of wood biomass burned each winter by all the residents of Colorado (or North America) with the amount destroyed in forest fires.

In my part of the world (BC, Canada) wood-burning has somehow been rehabilitated as a 'green' and 'carbon-neutral' activity from what it really is. It's no more 'carbon neutral' to take carbon that's been stored in a tree for a hundred years and release it to the environment in a day, than to burn oil that's been in the ground for a few million years, IMO.
At least newer oil- and gas-burning furnaces are very efficient and clean-burning these days. In the 'suburbs/ex-urbs' around Victoria, there is a pall of smoke hanging over the land on many (damp & calm) winter days. I've had to grab my asthma inhaler at times while just driving down a sideroad.