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Good article from @amonthei about the obstacles to scaling-up prescribed fire in the West. We do get a lot of good burning done during wildfires, but this is made very difficult by mixed forestland ownership, WUI, smoke, and adverse weather. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/10/prescribed-burns-are-failing/616889/
When wildfires burn in forestland with mixed ownership, tension between State vs Federal fire managers can be extreme. The Feds often choose a 'big-box' strategy with major burning operations while the State is more likely to 'go direct'.
One of Cal Fire's original charters was to protect industrial timberlands from wildfire losses. Fire behavior is often more extreme in recently-logged areas, and a fire burning across mixed ownership often has lower fire severities on the unlogged or logged-long-ago public lands.
When a Federal fire team picks a 'big box' strategy for their fire, it may result in beneficial outcomes for the public lands, but private timberlands inside the box often get nuked. Clearcut forestry has decreased fire resiliency across vast stretches of private lands in NorCal.
Private timberland owners pay nothing for the fire suppression provided by Cal Fire and the Feds. A single tanker drop from a 747 costs over $100k. Would they be more incentivized to create fire-resilient forests if they had to pay for every airdrop, every dozer, every crew?
