>Note that prescribed fires aren't the only way of removing excess vegetation, there's mechanized mowing and goat herds for example. Which works fine for the a

>Note that prescribed fires aren't the only way of removing excess vegetation, there's mechanized mowing and goat herds for example. Which works fine for the areas east of the Flatirons (that is, the plains), but that's only half the county. A real problem for wildfire management is that they often happen in areas that we consider undevelopable, which is to say, difficult to get into and out of. I recall going climbing in Boulder Canyon some decades ago, looking up at some burn scars and thinking "it would be several hundred feet of technical climbing to even reach where that fire occurred". Fighting it would be simply out of the question, and prevention without controlled burns would be just as difficult.