Forest Service halts prescribed burns in California. Is it worth the risk?

“They’re backed into a corner, but they’ve backed themselves into a corner,” Quinn-Davidson said. “They’re not leading, and it seems like they’re not capable of leading on prescribed fire, given the nature of politics and how they do business — always choosing short-term risk over long-term vision and strategy.”

She calls for a rethinking of how prescribed burns can be applied on federal lands.

“If the Forest Service is consistently not able to do the work, how can we lean on local resources — tribes and prescribed burn associations, for example — to get that work done?”