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Even though the 2021 Marshall Fire made it clear that the fire threat posed by Colorado’s grasslands endangers large urban areas, federal, state and local rules continue to make it difficult to address the risk.

Federal agencies spend a lot of time and money fighting increasingly extreme wildfires, but have limited resources for prescribed burns. Public-private partnerships can help. This year, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy partnered with the Forest Service and others to help burn and thin more than 150 acres of public lands in Idaho. Other, similar programs are cropping up all around the West.

Wildfire season is winding down across much of the Mountain West as cold weather moves in. But it’s the perfect time to set controlled, or prescribed, fires to burn unwanted dead trees and underbrush that fuel larger wildfires.

A combination of weather conditions, inexperienced crew members and lack of government oversight likely caused a prescribed burn in rural Larimer County…

A pile of melted metal is all that's left of Eva Bednar's toolshed. The ponderosa pine trees, shrubs and ground on her mountaintop property in Livermore…