Regulations

One of the things that the Government is pretty bad at is issuing and enforcing regulations.

It would seem pretty easy to simply issue a regulation that says don't start a forest fire.

That would however be open to so much interpretation that it would become either unenforceable or so prohibitive that it would penalize innocent campers.

You can't wait for the fire to happen so to enforce such a regulation you would have to define what constitutes a "forest fire" and what activities likely to create one should be prohibited.

In ancient history I was once tasked when I was a boy scout to go around and enforce regulations about fire safety.  Enforce is probably too strong a word, I visited the other camp sites and checked to see if the fire met the guidelines, which as I remember was mostly about clearance.

You couldn't have overhang and you had to have a clear diameter of ten feet.

Overhang was the bigger issue because, well there's wind.

It wasn't a particularly windy evening but at one site I had a fairly long discussion with a troop leader about whether the tree branches were overhanging his fire.  The did when the breeze was blowing but otherwise not so much.  I didn't consider his setup dangerous but I had to complete my checklist so was there overhang or not.  If I checked yes he would have to move his perfectly safe fire, somewhere, although as he pointed out it was already in the best possible place.

So maybe because I wasn't all that strict and maybe because he was like 100% more knowledgeable than me I checked his site off as safe.  There was no forest fire.

However, in my later life I've worked with Government people who would definitely have checked the "no" box partly because they sometimes feel they have to.

Government workers are very dedicated and diligent but in general many of them are simply inexperienced.  They tend to treat the regulations as the most important thing, not what the regulations are supposed to ensure or prevent.  So even when there is effectively zero chance of a forest fire they make you move your fire.

So maybe its not the regulations as much as the lack of experience and judgement that's the problem.

However, if you use judgement you are likely to be second guessed by someone who likely knows even less than you do.  Suspicions about why you were lenient have to be addressed.

So they get enforced and often the result is both troublesome and ineffective.