Unprecedented arrest comes after fire burned 20 acres of private land. Now, experts fear backlash against the wildfire control tool
A US Forest Service employee in Oregon was arrested this week after a prescribed burn in a national forest spread onto private land. It is an unprecedented move that signals an alarming backlash to prescribed burning, a critical tool in wildfire management.
Rick Snodgrass, a “burn boss” with the forest service, was overseeing a 300-acre burn in Oregon’s Malheur national forest that had been approved by the agency. A spot fire escaped control, according to officials in Grant county and charred roughly 20 acres of private land belonging to Holiday Ranches.
Shortly after, Snodgrass was arrested for “reckless burning” and transported to Grant county jail. It’s not clear yet whether Snodgrass will be officially charged but the county district attorney Jim Carpenter said there was enough probable cause to make the arrest.
It is the latest episode to underscore tensions simmering in rural, conservative eastern Oregon over management of federal lands.
Prescribed burns are set intentionally and under carefully controlled conditions to clear underbrush, pine needle beds and other surface fuels that make forests more prone to wildfires. The strategy is considered essential by scientists and ecologists to prevent more catastrophic fires from erupting across the drought-stricken American west. Such burns are a cultural practice long used by Indigenous...
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