A fantastic example of my point is in the animal deaths that occured on account of the fires in Australia. It received a stunning amount of media coverage. Yet the total number of animals killed by the fires was much lower than in previous years. To the casual uninformed reader (99% of them) this would seem like some extraordinary and unprecedented event.
The total burn area is affected by how effective we have gotten at fighting and managing the fire risks. The number of actual fires that start is the relevant metric here.