Homeowner questions firefighter tactics used to fight Seeley Fire

 A property owner in Sanpete County is upset with the Forest Service’s response to the Seeley Fire. David Cunningham accuses the agency of churning up some private property with bulldozers and backfires to avoid damaging roadless areas in the national forest. A couple of weeks ago, when the fire was about two miles away, he said the U.S. Forest Service told him it might have to bulldoze part of his land because it was the best place to fight the wildfire. He claimed an official told him it couldn't do the work in a roadless area of the national forest, closer to the fire, because there's a policy against bulldozers. "The issue to me is: Why can't they do everything possible to fight the fire on national forest lands before it affects private lands?" Cunningham asked. "They would set backfires on natural firebreaks, but they wouldn't create a firebreak with a bulldozer in a roadless area." Allen Rowley, forest supervisor for the Manti-La Sal National Forest, said there is no such policy. He said firefighters made their stand on private ground because there was just too much beetle-killed timber on federal land. "Where you have the most fuel is where you have the most resistance to control," Rowley said. "The fire's hardest to put out." He said the private land had different fuels: aspen, sagebrush, meadows and grasses. "Where we could make a stand and be successful in managing the fire … it just so happened that most of that was off the national forest where we had that type of fuel change,” Rowley said. Some property owners believe that situation reflects bad long-term forest management: Private land was thinned and logged, making it safer. They wonder why the Forest Service didn’t treat the public lands...more

So which is it?  Did the "official" lie to the landowner about roadless area policy? Why would the official make that statement if he or she didn't believe that was Forest Service policy?


The second explanation is even worse.  The FS lands are so poorly managed they have to go to private land to manage the fire.  What a stark contrast between federal and private management.