B,

If you are looking for concrete answers to your questions then you won't find them on QuietJourney or any other forum.  The best anyone here can do is guess at what the forest service and law enforcement was thinking in how they responded to your complaint.  The only people who can give you answers are the forest service and law enforcement and they have done so.  You clearly don't like their answers but no amount of complaining here on QJ is going to resolve the problem to your satisfaction.  As you see, members of this forum have a wide spectrum of views on the subject as you might expect.  We don't run a private club where membership is only allowed to those who think a certain way or have certain beliefs.

If you want guesses about why the authorities acted as they did, here are some guesses:

Maybe they did try to get a flight to the area in question, maybe they did not.  They say they did and it's up to you to either believe them or not.

Why did they not send in authorities by canoe?  My guess is they made a judgement call that they could not spare the manpower for the length of time such a trip would take without what they regarded as an unacceptable reduction of their ability to respond to other more potentially serious threats  during the duration of the trip.

How could they be sure that even if they showed up at that campsite that those same people would be there and what is the likelihood that they'd be able to do anything more than give a speech about wilderness ethics and safety?  To "catch them in the act" would require a stealth approach of camping nearby and observing for a minimum of one evening.

Also, this really comes down to your word vs. the party in question.  From your photo, it's impossible to judge if the fire was a hazard.  Clearly it's a possibility, but it's not a certainty.

It would be nice if the authorities up there had the resources to chase down incidents like this every time they received such a report.  The simple fact is, they don't.  You probably complain about your taxes the same as I do.  We all think we pay too much but then we scream bloody murder when our government is financially constrained from performing duties we feel need to be performed.  Can't have it both ways.  These guys are competing for the same dollars that also go towards education, national security, welfare, GM, bailouts for overleveraged risk-takers who endangered the very fabric of our economy, crumbling infrastructure, and on and on and on.  Every time choices are made about funding, there will be those who disagree with the choices made.