Just got off the phone with the Oregon Department of Forestry. Record season; 35 large uncontained fires. Vegetation/conditions are such that staring at a piece of grass the wrong way can start a behemoth fire. ODF responsible for 16 million acres, mostly private landowners' and some state land. Given the conditions, you might expect there to be some ambitious forest-management program, bodying the landowners into aggressive maintenance. But nope. What they do is largely just... up to their discretion. And even those who actually try to do prescribed burns face up to years of paperwork + waiting for the perfect weather conditions set by the Department of Environmental Quality to protect people with asthma in nearby towns from "smoke impact." You know what has pretty impressive smoke impact? 35 large uncontained fires :D