An 11,000-mile network of wildfire fuel breaks across six Western states will receive Bureau of Land Management approval on Thursday, according to a Federal Register notice.
The fuel breaks will be designed to help firefighters control wildfires in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, California, Washington, and Oregon. Local governments largely champion the fuel breaks, but environmental groups criticize them as ineffective.
The breaks will involve removing sagebrush and trees along existing primitive roadways using chemicals, earth-moving machines, grazing, controlled burns or clear cuts in swaths up to 500 feet wide in a network spanning 38 million acres in the six states, ...