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California already has a pretty good prescribed burn program, but it needs to be expanded, in part because the climate is significantly different today than it was a hundred years ago. There are some obstacles to prescribed burns: smoke inhalation is a public health hazard, firefighters need to be paid, private landowners are worried about liability, etc. Perhaps the biggest issue is that most of California is federal land, and the U.S. Forest Service does not have funding to perform prescribed burns. The private sector hasn't solved the problem either, in part because a lot of the fuel isn't desirable timber. Californians who are serious about this issue should lobby…
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their federal and state representatives. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-023-05997-w > Our results show that California and Oregon are the only severe-risk US states to conduct prescribed fire programs that are impactful at reducing wildfire risks, while other southeastern states such as Florida maintain fire-healthy ecosystems with very extensive prescribed fire programs. Our study suggests that states that have impactful prescribed fire programs (like California) should increase their scale of operation, while states that burn prescribed fires with no impact (like Nevada) should change the way prescribed burning is planned and conducted. > California has historically resisted prescribed burning to control their already big smoke problem > There are various reasons preventing California from conducting more Rx [prescribed burns], including lack of enough firefighters and 57% of land being owned by the Federal Government which lacks the funds to conduct Rx, especially after recent budget cuts to the U.S. Forest Service https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0451-7 > Academics warned that the financial incentives offered by mechanical thinning may be elusive, given the high ratio of thinning to merchantable timber in many locations. Legislative staff and analysts criticized the traditional forestry model of removing large-diameter, valuable trees and leaving smaller, less valuable and more flammable biomass.