All controlled burns have to happen with government regulation for obvious reasons. Fire ecology and the legislation that regulates it in practice (read: research and it's influence on controlled burn methods) revolves mainly around constant disputes between agriculture and conservation efforts. This even winds all the way down to the age-old dispute about grazing cattle on public lands out west. Grazing on public lands leads to a reduction of fuel for natural wildfires in heavily grazed areas, leading to an imbalance in the natural fire cycle, causing the need to do controlled burns in the interest of human habitat and the economy rather than ecology. This ultimately causes a disruption is various parts of the ecosystem. In the high desert of Nevada, California, and other fire prone states that also are the home of agriculture that depends on grazing livestock, this issue is hot, no pun intended, and there is a constant dialogue going on between regulators and scientists researching land management methods in habitat where wildfire is not only necessary, but essential.