Prescribed burning is extremely beneficial and there is no perfect replacement. The ecosystems we burn with prescribed fire evolved with fire and require frequent fire to maintain healthy conditions. Additionally, the prescribed fires can actually help protect people! First, the prescribed fires reduce fuels (living and dead plants) and decrease the likelihood of a much more dangerous, unplanned wildfire. Second, less smoke is produced by a prescribed fire than a wildfire and this smoke can be managed through strategic burning to minimize smoke to sensitive areas like surrounding communities. Alternatives to burning (like mowing down vegetation or using herbivores) can be beneficial in certain areas where prescribed fires aren’t feasible, but they do not perform the exact same roles as fire performs on the landscape.

There’s nothing that works on an ecosystem scale like wildfire. And that’s a very anthropocentric question… people move into a landscape that has depended on periodic burning for millennia, and then people ask why there has to be periodic smoke in the local community