This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 22. I'm Caleb Brown.

After many decades of an effective federal policy of put out all the fires, we're paying the price with more

catastrophic wildfires. Anna Downey's policy director at the Property and Environment

Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, we discuss the hurdles to forest management and the dangers of blanket fire suppression.

This is a bigger problem in the mountain west than it is in Georgia, where we are recording in other areas where the it's not as

arid it's the forests are in a sense easier to maintain but it's prescribed burns and it is the

attempt to sort of in the mountain west. You're absolutely right, Caleb.

This is a huge issue in the mountain west of figuring out how can we manage our forests to reduce

wildfire risk.

And one of the biggest things that we can do to reduce the risk of wildfires is to actively treat our forests.

And that means reducing the fuels and the overgrown forests that are contributing to these huge catastrophic wildfires that are

becoming more and more prevalent. And that includes using tools such as

prescribed burns, which you mentioned, which is applying low intensity fire in a controlled manner on a landscape to reduce

some of that fuel buildup. It also can include mechanical treatments logging, thinning,

removing some of those smaller diameter pieces that contribute to these catastrophic

fires.

So we know what we need to do.

The challenge is actually getting to a point where those tools can be applied on the ground

before any chainsaw can touch a tree

before a drip torch can start to apply that prescribed burn,

we have to go through a really burdensome

environmental review process and then face a lot of litigation.

...