"A state investigation shines light on the unpermitted fire, which cost nearly $950,000 to contain."
"One afternoon in late September 2024, the Owyhee County Sheriff’s office began fielding reports of multiple smoke columns billowing from near Josephine Creek Ranch, in Idaho’s remote southwest corner.
Michael Boren, a tech megamillionaire and Trump appointee who now oversees the U.S. Forest Service, has an ownership stake in the Josephine Creek Ranch, valued between $500,001 and $1 million, according to his 2026 financial disclosure, which Public Domain and High Country News obtained this week. The ranch is managed by Boren’s brother, Steve Boren, who called the Boise Interagency Dispatch Center earlier that day to report that he would be conducting prescribed burns on “private land” a couple of miles south of the ranch. According to an investigation, after phone calls started coming into 911, Steve Boren assured fire dispatchers that “All is good. The fires stayed on private land.”
But as officials with the Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) would discover and document in a lengthy investigative report, Steve Boren started the fires — at least 20 separate ignitions — on land owned by the state of Idaho and leased to Josephine Creek Ranch Inc. for cattle grazing. (A recent federal ethics disclosure confirms that Michael Boren has an ownership stake in that company.) When he ignited the fires, Steve Boren did not have a required burn permit, which he told investigators was “a mistake,” and lit the fires during what the state investigator called “a hold on any burning due to the excessively dry fuels,” according to the department investigation."
