Staying Realistic About Prescribed Burns

"In my 30 years with the U.S. Forest Service, I've worked on a number of prescribed burns.  In recent years they have become a popular thing to do.  In the flurry of burning stuff, the question we need to ask is not, "how many acres should be burned? But rather, "did the burn have the desired effect?" If the fire was to remove fuels and burn dead logs, did it replace that heavy fuel with waist-high weeds, brush and grasses -- more dangerous flash fuels?

Fire can be an excellent tool, but I think there are other tools that better manage certain public lands.  There are some places that are too valuable to risk a blackened landscape."
-Bob Damson response in The Nature Conservancy's September/October 2013 magazine.