The criminal case against Ricky Snodgrass resulting from a prescribed fire on the Malheur National Forest has ended, according to. a report by OPB, after the court dismissed the charge brought by the Grant County, Oregon District Attorney Jim Carpenter.
County Sheriff Todd McKinley arrested Snodgrass, the burn boss on the Starr 6 fire, in the midst of a dispute with adjacent landowners.
A Grant County grand jury back in February indicted Snodgrass, 41, on a misdemeanor charge of reckless burning. In part because Snodgrass and many of the firefighters he was supervising, on a federal agency operation on federal land, were federal employees, the case was moved from the rural Oregon town of John Day to federal court in Pendleton. Defense lawyers asked a judge to dismiss it and Carpenter did not oppose the motion. The judge in the case dismissed it this week.
“Mr. Snodgrass was charged because the State — or more precisely, the local sheriff — took issue with the Forest Service’s decision to conduct the prescribed fire,” defense attorneys wrote last month in court documents. “But the State cannot charge Mr. Snodgrass with a crime simply because it disagrees with the Forest Service’s decision.”
The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution means that Snodgrass was immune from prosecution.
OPB reported that in February of 2024 front of the grand jury, McKinley testified that the arrest got “huge national exposure.”
“I don’t know if you guys want to know how many hundreds of phone calls I got over this,” McKinley testified. “Either I was a pariah, the enemy, or they’re trying to make me a hero out of it.”
👮🏼♂️ Seriously, McKinley, no one thinks you are a hero.
Statement issued by Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley)Regarding the recent dismissal in Federal Court of the arrest of the Burn Boss at the Starr 6 uncontrolled burn in Grant County Oregon on October 19th 2022, I have the following to say: The United States Federal Government chose to use the “Supremacy Clause” as their basis for the request of dismissal. My interpretation of the use of this clause is such, that the State Law was sufficient for the charges, and the only way to circumvent this was to appeal to the Federal Court. I am saddened that our own Government, which was established, “of the People, by the People, for the People”, would to not “do the right thing” and make the damaged party whole, for fear of assuming responsibility for their actions. The hope out of all of this, is in the future, that more care will be taken, guidelines followed, and the United States Forest Service will heed their own motto: “Caring for the Land and Serving People”. Todd McKinley
Sheriff
Oregon, Washington, and California legislators have reintroduced a bill poised to create a national prescribed burn collaborative program and increase the practice nationwide.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden reintroduced the National Prescribed Fire Act of 2024 [PDF] on Tuesday, three years after the act’s first attempt died in committee. Representative Kim Schrier of Washington, Representative David Valadao of California, and Senator Alex Padilla of California joined the act’s push.
The act would invest $300 million in hazardous fuels management and increase prescribed burn plans, preparations, and practices through both the USFS and DOI. The funds are required to be used to develop a prescribed burn strategy for each USFS or BLM region, implement prescribed fires on federal land, and fund an increase in prescribed burn crew staffing.
2013 RxFire at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore near Ogden Dunes, northwest Indiana — NPS photo
It would also put $10 million toward the collaborative prescribed burn program based on the previous USFS Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). The previous program, one of the first national efforts that encouraged collaborative landscape restoration, ran from 2009 to 2019 and focused on reducing wildfire risk, enhancing watershed health, and benefiting local rural economies. The program reported its results to Congress, saying it successfully restored 5.7 million acres of forest while creating nearly $2 billion in local labor income.
The 2024 act has the support of numerous conservation agencies and fire officials, including The Nature Conservancy, which has been conducting Rx burns in Oregon since 1983.
“Prescribed fire is an essential tool to restore and steward fire-dependent ecosystems, reduce the risk of extreme wildfire to communities, and help many of Oregon’s most iconic natural landscapes adapt in the face of climate change,” said Katie Sauerbrey, Oregon fire program director at The Nature Conservancy. “We are grateful for Senator Wyden’s leadership on the National Prescribed Fire Act — providing a pathway to accelerate the pace and scale of prescribed fire necessary to combat the wildfire crisis in the western United States.”
Oregon, Washington, and California legislators have reintroduced a bill poised to create a national prescribed burn collaborative program and increase the practice nationwide.
French Jesuit priest Louis Vivier in 1750 described what 70 years later became the state of Missouri, and in his writings he told of Native Americans there setting fires to the prairies. “The trees are almost as thinly scattered as in our public promenades,” he wrote, and “the Savages set fire to the prairies toward the end of the autumn, when the grass is dry; the fire spreads everywhere and destroys most of the young trees.”
Vivier was right about fire being a frequent occurrence in Missouri, as reported in a feature story on KSDK.com. Midwest tribes had been purposely setting fire to the grasslands and prairies for centuries. They recognized the essential role fire played in the prairie ecosystem, and that knowledge, and the practice of managed burns, is being rekindled by the Missouri Prescribed Fire Council, a coalition of landowners and experts attempting to bring the state’s grasslands back to their once-thriving status.
PHOTO: Missouri Prescribed Fire Council
These practices have been recorded nationwide as the philosophy of fire as medicine, according to the National Park Service.
European colonists’ response to the tradition of cultural burning was the implementation of a century-long fire suppression regime. Missouri’s disappearing prairies in part have the resultant lack of fire to blame. Unregulated tree growth, known as woody plant encroachment into tallgrass prairie environments, has progressed throughout the Midwest as areas of saplings develop without needed periodic fire.
Missouri’s Ozark region, for instance, has existed in the “not enough fire” category for much of recent history, causing a drop in biodiversity and the domination of the landscape by oak, hickory, and cedar trees, according to the University of Washington and others.
The Missouri Prescribed Fire Council, though, is trying to reverse that suppression regime and reintroduce managed burns back into the state for the health of its natural environment.
“Almost all of Missouri’s natural plant communities have adapted with fire,” said Wes Buchheit, councilmember and prescribed fire coordinator biologist with Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever. “Fire is a natural tool and prescribed fire is mimicking that natural process in a more controlled setting … you can benefit a lot of different species, plant and animal, with prescribed fire.”
About 93 percent of Missouri’s 44.6 million acres is privately owned, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation. The lack of public land means any substantive prescribed burning must come through community collaboration. In response to multiple recent historic wildfire seasons, a movement of Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) has grown nationwide. Many RxFire efforts are led by federal agencies, but these PBAs are instead a collaboration among landowners. The Missouri Prescribed Fire Council is part of that growing movement, and because wildfires haven’t been a prevalent issue for Missourians, private landowners in the state haven’t been as hesitant to participate in prescribed burning as other wildfire-prone states.
Prescribed fires have burned tens of thousands of acres in 95 of Missouri’s 114 counties between 2020 and 2022, council data showed. Of those, just over 1 percent have escaped control, and most burned just 0.1 acres or less, which is on par with national averages. “The only time that folks ever heard about prescribed fire is when there’s an ‘oops,'” says Council Chair Mark Howell. “They don’t hear about the other almost 99 percent of the time that things go perfectly well.”
The Spruce Creek Fire took off on May 14 and is burning on the San Juan National Forest northeast of Dolores, Colorado. The fire’s inside a network of FS roads within an established RxFire burn unit.
Two hotshot crews, two wildland fire modules, and an engine and crew are staffing the fire, along with a Type 3 incident management team.
Lightning ignited the fire Tuesday, and it had burned about 10 acres northeast of Dolores on the Haycamp Mesa by yesterday evening, according to The Journal.
Last month the Dolores Ranger District announced plans to burn 4,577 acres across Haycamp Mesa, and the lightning strike gave them a good start on the fuels reduction project.
Pat Seekins, prescribed fire and fuels program manager for the San Juan, said it’s thus far a low-intensity surface fire, and it’s doing exactly what they need it to do for fuels management in the area. Crews have prepped about 5600 acres. [As of 05/21 the fire’s estimated at 1640 acres; yesterday firefighters used a couple of drones in aerial ignition.]
The Spruce Creek Fire is burning northeast of Dolores on the San Juan National Forest. Crews are using existing roads as containment lines, and hope to continue the 10-acre fire next week into the planned 4500-acre prescribed burn. San Juan National Forest photo
The Durango Herald reported that firing operations should begin Tuesday under the management of a Type 3 IMT and should wrap up by Friday. “This is a great opportunity to further reduce the long-term fire risk in this area,” added Seekins. “It’s early in the fire year and we have the resources available, in terms of engines, hand crews, and helicopters, that will help us keep the fire within pre-identified boundaries.”
San Juan National Forest map
The ponderosa and aspen forest with gambel oak understory has a natural cycle of burning every 10 to 15 years. The Haycamp Mesa, though, has not seen fire in at least 40 years, according to Seekins; he said it’s had very little fire history and really needs fire in there.
July 6, 1994 – Gambel oak on the South Canyon Fire – Storm King Mountain, Colorado
Vegetation on the 1994 South Canyon Fire consisted primarily of Gambel oak, which was more than 50 years old and did not contain much dead material.
It formed a dense, green, continuous closed canopy, 6 to 12 feet tall and appeared to be unaffected by spring frosts.
Visibility within the stand was limited. The surface fuels beneath the canopy consisted of a 3 to 6 inch layer of leaf litter.
The Spruce Creek Fire started in an area that local fire and resource managers have studied for years, according to Dolores District Ranger Nick Mustoe. He says fire managers are securing indirect boundaries along natural features and existing roads to take advantage of favorable weather conditions for managing the fire.
Burning along the northern perimeter 05/20/24 — IMT photo
The strategy of using naturally occurring wildfires for hazardous fuels reduction – a policy that officials refer to as “indirect containment,” as opposed to the more derogatory and incendiary “let it burn” label that detractors have coined – is relatively new in practice on the San Juan, which would need at least 30,000 acres burned annually to catch up with the historic natural fire cycle.
Smoke will be visible to travelers along Colorado Hwy. 184 between Mancos and Dolores, and to residents of Montezuma County throughout next week. Updates will be posted on Inciweb.
A fire-focused NPR article had a concise central theme: Trees are not always good, fire is not always bad, and prescribed burning can bring a community together.
The article, written and beautifully photographed in 2022 by journalist Andria Hautamaki, told the story of the Loess Canyon Rangeland Alliance to paint a larger picture of the quick growth prescribed burn associations (PBAs) have had across the country, particularly in states without huge extents of government-owned land.
The Great Plains Fire Science Exchange estimated in 2022 that there were 113 PBAs throughout the United States. That exchange now estimates 135 PBAs, an 83 percent increase in under two years.
Plants flourish after a prescribed fire. Image courtesy Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge.
PBAs got their start in California and are now found throughout the state. Despite this, California is an outlier in the average states with PBAs: nearly half of California’s land is federally owned. Other states with numerous PBAs (including Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas) have less than 2 percent of their land owned by the federal government.
Instead of the USFS burning on federal land, stakeholders in non-West states must convince and collaborate with landowners to spread the gospel of prescribed fire.
“The only way you’re ever going to get fire on the ground is through the landowners, especially in states with a lot of private land,” John Weir, an Oklahoma State University extension specialist for prescribed fire, told Hautamaki during the story. “This is landowner helping landowner. Agencies are important; they help provide technical assistance. But it’s all about grassroots. Landowners can burn safely and effectively because they’re out there managing their own land.”
An abundance of privately owned land isn’t the only thing driving PBA popularity in non-West states. The negative perception fire has gained from numerous disastrous wildfires in recent years has hampered Rx burn efforts in the West. Midwest and Southern states, which don’t have that same negative association with burning, have seen a rise in a grassroots-led fire efforts rather than an agency push.
Previous data have also shown the community-prescribed fire drive to be safe and effective in overcoming common burn limitations related to expertise, equipment, and personnel. A 2012 survey of PBAs found the majority were effective at developing burn plans, working within burn windows, and limiting liability.
“The safety record of PBAs indicates they provide a safe and viable option for landowners and managers who use or would like to use prescribed fire on their lands,” the survey said.
Lawyers representing Ricky Snodgrass, the burn boss who was arrested by the sheriff in Grant County, Oregon, are working to move the arresting-a-federal-employee case to U.S. District Court in Pendleton.
Snodgrass had a scheduled appearance on the first of April on the reckless burning charge that followed the local district attorney’s indictment of the burn boss during a prescribed fire on the Malheur National Forest in the fall of 2022.
The D.A. was served with a notice about moving the case to federal court, where charges will likely be immediately dropped.
Kirk Siegler, in his Morning Edition report on NPR, explained that Snodgrass’s arrest and the (much) later indictment were based on a “reckless” burning charge when a spot fire somehow ignited in dry grass across the road from a planned and approved and publicized prescribed fire — grass on the property of the Holliday Ranch, an adjacent landowner. Some of the landowner’s family members and/or friends had been driving up and down the road between the ranch and USFS property, harassing the firefighters, before Snodgrass finally called police to report the problems.
[note: Though Siegler calls this a “reckless burn” charge, Ricky Snodgrass was charged with “reckless burning” by the sheriff.]
After Snodgrass phoned in the harassment and reckless driving by locals, the sheriff in John Day responded to the incident, found Snodgrass supervising the burn under way by federal and state and contract crews, and instead of citing the locals, arrested the burn boss.
Sheriff McKinley handcuffed him, arrested him for “reckless burning,” and drove him into town to the jail in John Day — where he was quickly released.
The burn boss arrest very quickly hit the news and ignited controversy — far beyond Oregon and the wildland fire community. The story was picked up by news organizations including the Washington Post, The Guardian, NBC News, ABC News, Reuters, and others. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore quickly vowed he and the agency would “not stand idly by” after this first-ever arrest, and that he and others would defend USFS employees.
Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter
The county D.A. Jim Carpenter in October of 2022 indicted the burn boss on a charge of so-called reckless burning.
Sheriff McKinley eventually completed his investigation and presented the case to Carpenter for review, and on February 2, 2024, the case was finally presented to a grand jury, which returned an indictment against Ricky Snodgrass for Reckless Burning, ORS 164.335, a Class A misdemeanor that carries a penalty of up to a year in jail and a $6,250 fine.
In the State of Oregon, a person commits the crime of reckless burning if the person recklessly damages property of another by fire or explosion. Not long after Snodgrass’ arrest, Carpenter laid out what he said was the legal standard for determining whether a burn is reckless. “The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation,” he said.
The head of the NFFE union said the sheriff had interfered with a federal employee in the course of his duties, and one or more of the firefighters under direction of the burn boss pointed this out to Sheriff McKinley on that day. Snodgrass was directing a federal project and supervising crews — not just USFS but also ODF and contract fire crews — on a large prescribed burn, one of a series of planned and approved and publicized burns on the Malheur National Forest.
To no one’s surprise, Sheriff Todd McKinley has declined interview requests.
Grant County officials told NPR the arrest is being overblown. “One man doing his job kind of caused the other one to have to do his,” said Scott Myers, the judge and CEO for Grant County in John Day. He claims the weather conditions that day probably weren’t favorable for a burn — despite the alignment with the specs in the burn plan — and he says the fire somehow “damaged” private property — though neigher Myers nor anyone else has actually claimed this publicly or explained what they’re talking about.
Despite the adjacent landowners’ talk, the slopover across the road blackened not quite 20 acres and was contained inside of an hour — even though the project supervisor had been removed — not by the ranchers but by the federal and/or state and/or contract crews assigned by the USFS to the RxFire.
The eastern Oregon region has a long history of mistrust of and antagonism toward the federal government. Local residents for years before that ranted about how the UN and NATO had a plot under way to take over all federal lands in eastern Oregon — somehow in cahoots, they said, with the Chinese Communist Party.
Grant County has a long history of tension with federal agencies and employees, despite the large number of locals employed by federal agencies in and around John Day. It’s the same kind of tension that stormed the National Capitol on January 06, 2021 — and back in 2016 took over and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge about 100 miles south in neighboring Harney County.
Not quite 30 years ago, county voters approved a symbolic measure “prohibiting the federal Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service from owning and managing federal lands within Grant County.”
Grant County later asked Congress to grant the county title to all federal lands — about 60 percent of the acreage in the county.
During the 41-day armed occupation in 2016 of the Malheur NWR, several militia members led by Ammon Bundy (who has since disappeared after being successfully sued for defamation by a hospital in Boise) were driving to John Day to meet with supporters. They ran into a police roadblock, and LaVoy Finicum was fatally shot by law enforcement.
Scott Myers, CEO and Judge, Grant County
Grant County chief executive Scott Myers claims that relations between the county and federal employees have since improved.
“We get labeled a lot to be a whole bunch of gun-totin’ pickup-drivin’ crazy maniacs out here, and I don’t really think we are,” he told NPR.
Trump “cartoon” in the Blue Mountain Eagle. Definitely NOT gun-totin’pickup-drivin’ crazy maniacs., nope.
Thanks and a tip of the hardhat to CARL for this story, but don’t bother looking for news updates from the paper in John Day, because their editor’s now “monetizing their content” behind a paywall.
Grant County has a long history of tension with federal agencies and employees, despite the large number of locals employed by federal agencies in and around John Day. It’s the same kind of tension that stormed the National Capitol on January 06, 2021 — and back in 2016 took over and 
