We Deserve Better: A Firsthand Case Against Federal Wildfire Mismanagement
A Northern California forestry veteran shares what Congress hasn't seen — communities destroyed by backfires, million-acre burns with no rehab plan, and a Forest Service that no longer serves the people.
I’ve never testified before Congress, nor have I sat on Congressional committees, but I have walked in the ashes of hundreds of Northern California homes burned in widlfire and gazed over tens of thousands of acres of timber willfully and wantonly burned by overzealous Federal Incident Management Teams.
I’ve seen our high country turned into snag patch forest, I’ve seen entire communities burned in backfires that had no chance of holding or stopping a wildfire. I’ve talked to landowners who’ve lost everything… homes, timber stands and livelihood in ill advised backfires.
The USFS was instrumental in shutting down logging, which in turn gave them and excuse to block roads and public access. They then created the Roadless Act which created de facto Wilderness areas. It appears the USFS is no longer a multiple use Agency, but an Agency dedicated to serving its own desires.
In the name of restoring fire to the ecosystem the Federal Incident Teams recklessly and willfully burned more than a million acres of both public and private Northern California Forest Land. Under the guise of burning for Resource Benefit they burned in wildfire, in prescribed fire and in backfire. They burned regardless of drought, regardless of fuel conditions, regardless of ownership.
They burned with no plan to rehabilitate the burned forest, no plan to protect the watershed and no plan to protect endangered species.
In their zeal to create more black acres Incident Management Teams relit fires that that had been rained out… not once by a rogue team but several times on different fires by different teams.
These Federal Land Management Agencies need a good cleansing. The USFS no longer lives up to its motto of Caring for the Land, Serving the people. In Northern California and Southern Oregon our air quality is often worse than in the LA Basin. NPS let burn policy killed 14 people in Gatlinberg, Tennessee and more recently destroyed the historic lodge on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in an attempt to restore fire into the ecosystem.
When Federal Fire policy does more harm than it does good it must be changed. We deserve better than this.
Royal Burnett
California
Royal is a 31-year California Department of Forestry veteran who retired as a Type 1 Incident Commander and Battalion Chief, then came out of retirement after the 2018 Carr Fire to lead boots-on-the-ground investigations of seven Northern California conflagrations — analyzing thousands of burned homes to understand how fires spread through communities.
