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California's Government is Now Looking to Indigenous Tribes for Help Preventing Wildfires

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California's Government is Now Looking to Indigenous Tribes for Help Preventing Wildfires

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Governor Newsom’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force announced they would be working with some tribes in the state to reintroduce cultural practices of purposefully setting low-intensity fires. This plan emerged through the “Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire” legislation that is incorporating Native Americans into policy and climate preservation action.

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California is calling upon Native American tribes to bring back the once-prohibited practice of lighting controlled burns to help prevent devastating wildfires that have wreaked havoc on the state.

Gov. Gavin Newsom's Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force has launched a new plan - "Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire" - that relies on the help of Native Americans to revive their cultural burning practices, the governor's office announced in a news release on Wednesday.

State, federal, and local agencies will partner with tribes to reintroduce the Native American tradition of prescribed, cultural burns, which are purposefully set, low-intensity fires. The technique is based in part on fire prevention: ridding the land of wildfire fuel like debris, scrub, undergrowth and certain grasses. Such fuel ignites easily, allowing for more intense flames that are harder to fight.

These burning practices will help make "forests more resilient" and decrease the likelihood of future wildfires, the release said.

Indigenous communities across the world have used fires for thousands of years to clear land of extra debris. These burns - less intense than wildfires - lessen the impact on the insects and animals occupying the land. They also protect trees and the canopy.

Without controlled fires, California's landscape has become crowded with "forest floor litter," according to Don Hankins, a cultural fire practitioner who helped shape the language of California's new plan. The litter includes dry vegetation that doesn't allow space for grasses, wildflowers and other beneficial plants.

"It comes down to conservation," Hankins told CNN. "Conservation of our environment when we think about declining biodiversity, the resilience of our ecosystem when it comes to climate change and cultural practice and knowledge. They're all intertwined."

By reviving the Indigenous practice of cultural fire burning, Hankins said the Earth can finally "get things back to the order it once was for thousands of years."

Newsom's plan intends to expand "beneficial fire" practices to 400,000 acres annually by 2025 - part of the state's overall goal to treat 1 million acres annually by the same year.

"As climate change continues to exacerbate wildfire conditions, we're bringing federal, state, tribal, and local partners together to more effectively address the scale of this crisis," Newsom said in a statement. "California is putting in the work to help protect our communities from the devastating impacts of wildfires, build for the long-term, and safeguard our treasured state for generations to come."

From prohibition to appreciation

Native American tribes in California have long seen fire as a means of stewarding the land, practitioners told CNN.

"Fire is an important part of our community," said Redbird Willie, a land steward and cultural fire practitioner in Sonoma County. "We don't just include people, we include plants, animals, fire, water. They are members of our community and we have to treat them with respect and honor."

Cultural burns sometimes include ceremonies before and after, especially if it's the first time practitioners are introducing fire to an area. The fires are treated "like they're a living thing," Willie said.

"We say prayers and good words to it, and we have good intentions as we light them, and we do the same when we're putting out the fires as well," he said.

Since the late 1700s, California and other states discouraged or outright prohibited Native Americans from participating in many of their cultural practices, including fire burning, according to Hankins.

"American and European people came into Yosemite valley talking about the beauty of the valley," Hankins said. "When they saw the active fires Native people were burning, they complained about having to put the fires out not realizing this place was created because of those fires. The beauty we see until today is the product of the burning."

In 1911, the US government outlawed burnings in Native communities through the Weeks Act. During that time, the US Forest Service pursued a policy of fire suppression, focusing on putting out fires rather than managing them.

Such policies further stripped Indigenous communities - who had also been displaced from their lands - of their traditions.

To have their practices now respected, encouraged and appreciated "means everything" to the community, Willie said.

It isn't the first time California has asked Native tribes to help with wildfire mitigation efforts. Prescribed burn trainings and workshops have been held since 2002, and Karuk and Yurok tribes resumed burning in 2013.

In recent years, a number of states have similarly asked Native American fire practitioners to use their cultural burning practices to minimize the impact of wildfires. In Arizona, the Fort Apache Agency and the White Mountain Apache Tribe have treated thousands of acres of land.

Native Americans in Oregon and New Mexico have also carried out prescribed burns, according to the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network.

Florida has been one of the leaders in the practice of prescribed burnings, with the state's Forest Service authorizing on average the burning of over 2.1 million acres every year, according to the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

"We've been talking about these fires for a long time and trying to get people to listen to us, and for decades no one really did," Willie said. "Now all of a sudden everybody is listening, so for us to be getting this much attention about such a critical thing, it's something we couldn't have dreamed of."

Sharing knowledge and building capacity

Native American fire practitioners are an integral part of California's new task force thanks to their wealth of knowledge on successful burns. They know when to start a fire, and under what conditions. They know what time of year, and what time of day is best. They also know what types of fires to burn for different types of land - how long to burn and how frequently.

"It's not a wildfire where there's white ash and red Earth," Hankins said. "Unlike more severe fires that put carbon back out into the atmosphere as a gas, when we create a low intensity burn it creates charcoal. That charcoal is that carbon locked into the soil, not out in the atmosphere."

"It's a very gentle fire that will ultimately improve soil health, moisture and infiltration," he added.

The change won't be immediate, Hankins cautions. It will take at least a decade before the normalization of cultural burns leads to visible change - like the growth of flowers and bulb plants, along with a decrease in wildfires, he says.

Education among the Indigenous community will also take time.

"In many tribal communities, there's big need to reconnect to the knowledge systems around fires because we haven't been able to practice it for such a long time," he said.

"We've got to build the capacity around it again. It's not like flipping a switch and everybody's back out lighting those fires," Hankins said. "There's a lot of learning that needs to take place in our communities, and figuring out how we can work together with our neighbors, agencies and the public to make it widespread again."

As part of this knowledge building, tribes throughout the state are partnering with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to host cultural burning training days for firefighters.

Firefighters will learn directly from tribal leaders about "the tradition of fire and its importance to Tribal culture," Len Nielson, Cal Fire's staff chief for prescribed fire and tribal liaison, told CNN in a statement.

"California Tribes advise Cal Fire on traditional ecological knowledge for increasing the use of cultural burning and we are working to incorporate that knowledge into our own practices, including when, where and how prescribed burns are conducted," Nielson said. "Our relationship to California's Tribal community continues to evolve and we look forward to working collaboratively with Tribes to increase and expand the use of cultural burning."

For Hankins, encouraging cultural fires is a major part of rectifying some of the wrongs committed against California's Native communities.

"If you want to rebuild culture and support the Indigenous community, you have to support our fires and what they do for our land," he said.

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California once prohibited Native American fire practices. Now, it's asking tribes to use them to help prevent wildfires | CNN

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California is calling upon Native American tribes to bring back the once-prohibited practice of lighting controlled burns to help prevent devastating wildfires that have wreaked havoc on the state. Gov.

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The Fort Belknap Indian Community is Especially Prone to Wildfires and is Working Towards Minimizing Future Tragedies 

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The Fort Belknap Indian Community is Especially Prone to Wildfires and is Working Towards Minimizing Future Tragedies 

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The Aaniiih and Nakoda peoples within the Little Rockies area are becoming more concerned about the increase in wildfires due to climate change as their area have specific plants and wildlife species that aren't found in other places. So to protect these organisms, the Fort Belknap Indian Community is already developing a comprehensive climate adaptation plan to prevent wildfires from dooming their home.

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The Little Rocky Mountains in Montana form an island range in a sea of prairie. As a result of their isolation, they are home to plant and wildlife species that are not found anywhere nearby, leaving them especially vulnerable to climate change impacts. In the shadow of the Little Rockies, the Aaniiih and Nakoda peoples of the Fort Belknap Indian Community are taking a bold stand to protect this mountain ecosystem to help preserve their traditional ways of life. The Center is supporting this effort by assisting them in restoring forest health and planning for a rapidly changing climate.

Led by Fort Belknap Indian Community's (FBIC) Climate Change Coordinator Dennis Longknife Jr., FBIC is moving to complete a comprehensive climate adaptation plan to protect the Tribe's natural resources in the Little Rocky Mountains of north-central Montana. The Center is working with Longknife to provide technical expertise to the community to help them both develop this plan and also identify key implementation actions such as the forest health project. This builds on the Center's earlier, similar work with the Blackfeet Nation to support the development of their Climate Change Adaptation Plan.

Longknife has an extensive background in forestry and natural resources and as a forward-thinking leader he has served as climate change coordinator for the Tribes since 2015. As a result of their climate adaptation planning process, Longknife, the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, and Longknife's colleagues in the FBIC Fire Management Office and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Forestry Program identified a crucial need for climate adaptive forest management in the Little Rocky Mountains.

Dennis Longknife, Jr.

"The Aaniiih and Nakoda people have a long history of using fire to manage forests for game, production of food and medicinal plants, and open residence sites," explains Longknife. "But the suppression of natural fires following colonization of the western US interrupted these patterns and led to a buildup of flammable growth, leaving the Little Rocky Mountains at risk of devastating wildfire."

Longknife adds that such fires threaten not only wildlife and hunting but also cultural and recreational opportunities. The forest is home to the Tribes' powwow grounds and a large, out-of-control fire would be disastrous for the community.

In addition to increased fire risk, cooler habitat at the top of these mountains will heat up in the coming decades and some native plant and wildlife species will no longer have suitable habitat in the Little Rockies. Without careful planning and intervention, climate change will reduce species viability and harvest opportunities for the Aaniiih and Nakoda communities. Preserving suitable habitat in the only mountains on their reservation lands by preventing widespread wildfires is crucial for maintaining species important to these communities.

Protecting Forests and Biodiversity for a Healthy Future

The Little Rockies Forest Resilience (LRFR) project seeks to increase forest resilience and keep carbon that has been captured from the atmosphere stored in the trees of the Little Rocky Mountains. The Fort Belknap Indian Community will do this by applying adaptive management techniques, such as thinning, and restoring ponderosa pine forests. Thinning overgrown stands will reduce the risk of catastrophic fire.

The forest thinning project operates through a partnership of the FBIC Environmental Department, FBIC Fire Management Department, BIA Forestry, and the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, who are collaborating to restore up to 300 acres of forest in the Little Rocky Mountains.

Serviceberry (Juneberry). Photo: Dennis Longknife

In addition to forest thinning, another action identified during climate adaptation planning was to address the climate impacts on a traditional food source-wild berries.

"The Aaniiih and Nakoda Tribes heavily rely on our serviceberry for our diets and cultural ceremonies. Our Tribes call them Juneberry, and we make Juneberry soup, which is offered at ceremonies and community gatherings," explains Longknife. "With climate change, our gathering times have changed over the years, including having our berries affected by fungus, blight, frost, hail, and late-season snowstorms."

Longknife says that future plans include developing a nursery for the Tribes to grow their own serviceberries and other berries, so they can continue being resilient in the face of climate change.

The efforts of the Fort Belknap Indian Community highlight how imperative it is for communities across the globe to take the lead in climate adaptation planning and climate mitigation strategies in order to remain healthy and resilient in our changing world.

Learn more
The Fort Belknap Indian Community, home of the Nakoda and Aaniiih Nations The Center's Community Resilience Program

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Tribes Take the Lead in Climate Change Planning - Center for Large Landscape Conservation

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The Little Rocky Mountains in Montana form an island range in a sea of prairie. As a result of their isolation, they are home to plant and wildlife species that are not found anywhere nearby, leaving them especially vulnerable to climate change impacts.

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Tribes Are Actively Working with California's State Government to Remove Dry Vegetation

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Tribes Are Actively Working with California's State Government to Remove Dry Vegetation

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"This is the kind of land management O’Rourke grew up with on the Yurok reservation in the Klamath mountains of northern California. Now, lighting the forest on fire to save it – and his tribe’s culture along with it – has become his life’s work, as fire and fuels manager of the Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council. On this day, he’s working the drip torch alongside a few dozen cultural practitioners from tribes across the US, and firefighters from around the world."

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When Rick O'Rourke walks with fire, the drip torch is an extension of his body. The mix of diesel and gasoline arcs up and out from the little wick at the end of the red metal can, landing on the ground as he takes bite after bite out of the dry vegetation in the shadow of the firs and oaks.

"Some people are like gunslingers and some people are like artists who paint with fire," he says. "I'm a little bit of both."

This is the kind of land management O'Rourke grew up with on the Yurok reservation in the Klamath mountains of northern California. Now, lighting the forest on fire to save it - and his tribe's culture along with it - has become his life's work, as fire and fuels manager of the Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council. On this day, he's working the drip torch alongside a few dozen cultural practitioners from tribes across the US, and firefighters from around the world.

He draws the can back and forth across the green, turning it red and then black. The lines of little flames creep along the forest floor, ebbing and growing with the contours of the land.

This fire will chew out the underbrush and lick the moss off the trees. It will blister the hazel stalks and coax strong new shoots that will be gathered and woven into baskets for babies and caps for traditional dancers, and it will tease the tan oak acorns to drop. It will burn the invasive plants that suck up the rain, letting more clean, cool water flow through the black, into the watershed and down the Klamath river for the salmon.

Soon all that black will be dotted with bear grass and huckleberries pushing up for the sunlight and down for the water they couldn't reach when they were crowded out by tall scotch broom and dense twists of blackberries and the ever-encroaching fir trees. Even sooner, animals will flock here to roll in the ash, a California dust bath.

For more than 13,000 years, the Yurok, Karuk, Hupa, Miwok, Chumashand hundreds of other tribes across California and the worldused small intentional burns to renew local food, medicinal and cultural resources, create habitat for animals, and reduce the risk of larger, more dangerous wild fires.

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A view of the Klamath River from the town of Weitchpec, California.

This is "good fire", traditional practitioners and firefighters would say.

For most of the last 100 years in California, however, government agencies have considered fire the enemy - adangerous, destructive element to suppress and exclude from the land. Traditional ecological knowledge and landscape stewardship were sidelined in favor of wholesale firefighting, and a kind of land management that looked like natural conservation but left the ground choked with vegetation ready to burn. As the climate crisis creates hotter, drier, more volatile weather, that fuel has helped drive larger wildfires faster and further across the west.

Our first agreement with our creator was to tend the land. It was taken away from us, and now we're trying to reclaim it

Rick O'Rourke, Yurok fire manager

After decades suppressing small and gigantic fires alike, California is slowly embarking on a course correction. Alongside huge expenditures on firefighting staff and gear, the state is making new investments in prescribed burning. But who gets to decide where that fire goes, what it burns, why it burns - who is the steward of a natural element - remains contentious. These native people are trying to revitalize their right to indigenous cultural burning, a practice that was criminalized long before California became a state, before their culture dies out.

"Our first agreement with our creator was to tend the land," says O'Rourke, 52, resting for a moment on a log in the green, lit drip torch still in hand. "It was taken away from us, and now we're trying to reclaim it."

How the US waged war on fire

The Spanish were the first California colonizers to prevent indigenous people from burning the land. In 1850, the US government passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which outlawed intentional burning in California even before it was a state.

Early National Forest Service officials considered "the Indian way" of "light-burning" to be a primitive, "essentially destructive theory". Championed by the Forest Service, ecologists and conservationists, new colonial notions of what is "natural" won the day. The valuable timber trees would be protected and burns would be extinguished at all costs. Fire was a killer, and America would make war on this new enemy for most of the next 100 years.

"They said if we suppress all these fires, we end light burning, we will have great new forests," said the fire historian Stephen Pyne. "And we did - we had so much great new forest that we created a problem."

In 1968, after realizing that no new giant sequoias had grown in California's unburned forests, the National Park Service changed its prescribed fire policy. In 1978, so did the Forest Service.

Since then, some state agencies have made prescribed burning a central part of their land and wildfire management strategies. The south-east leads the way: in Florida, landowners and government agents burn more than 2m acres a year.

But many in California, where millions of homes have sprawled into the mountainous and flammable wildlands, still fear fire in all forms. They fear it will destroy lush, natural forests and turn them into barren shrubland; that it is a tool of timber companies and a friend of clearcutting old growth; that it will produce oppressive, toxic smoke and emissions year-round. More than anything, they fear the flames will jump holding lines and run across the land and into communities, as they sometimes do - an escaped fire killed three people in 2012 in Colorado.

They fear fire cannot be controlled. On this, at least, firefighters and firelighters would agree - which is why most no longer use the term "controlled burn" to refer to something as powerful as fire, usually opting for "prescribed", "cool" or "light" burning to distinguish between good fire and the wild kind.

After a string of disastrous fire seasons, though, California is growing bolder. In 2018, the state made plans to triple the amount of prescribed burning, "creating a culture where fire is a tool, not a threat". Now, according to the state air resources board, 125,000 acres of wildlands are intentionally burned each year in California - which still comprises a tiny fraction of all the prescribed fire in the US.

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Fire from Rick O'Rourke's drip torch during the prescribed burn in Weitchpec on 4 October.

The burn, part I: 'Putting fire on the ground'

Catching the good-fire windows in climate-changing California weather is an intricate proposition. For the best burn, the prescription has to be just right: a little humidity in the air, low winds, the leaf litter dry and crunchy underfoot.

For native people, the land is a renewing resource, and they feel a responsibility to keep it healthy. Light, frequent burning of the forest understory maintains oak tree health, and the acorns and huckleberries for food, hazel and bear grass for weaving, and pepperwood and wormwood for medicine. Fire clears and maintains prairie landscapes as habitat for elk and deer, and visibility through the dense woods for hunting them. It promotes better spring flow and drought tolerance. The smoke from the burns in turn reflects sunlight and helps cool the river water, benefiting the salmon.

Indigenous people here essentially co-evolved with the landscape they tended.

"It's selective manipulation through millennia to foster a more resilient, diverse and productive landscape," said Frank Lake, a US Forest Service research ecologist with Karuk heritage and Yurok family.

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Harold Myers and Christopher Villarruel begin the prescribed burn with the traditional practice of using wormwood to ignite the forest floor.

The burn units are identified ahead of time for their resources and carved out to manageable size. Clear 3ft holding lines on each side serve as paths for firelighters on the move, bumping up and down the steep terrain, and controlling boundaries for the fire itself. This unit is about 90 acres, but they'll only burn half today, a little more than 30 football fields worth - the rest is still too damp from an unexpected rain shower earlier in the week. Engines full of water are staged in the slim shoulder of Highway 169 at the bottom edge of the unit.

The cultural burn begins in a small clearing, under a golden sliver of early afternoon sunlight from a break in the pine canopy. Harold Myers of the Yurok tribe and Chris Villarruel of the Pit River tribe hold wormwood branches, dried and bound into torches. The Yurok tribe member and secretary of the Cultural Fire Management Council, Elizabeth Azzuz, lights them.

"Creator, we're here today to do work for the land, for the people," Myers begins, crouching low to the earth with his torch. "Give us guidance, clarity of mind, purity, and we may carry this out with the best intentions. We apologize for our brothers and sisters who are living here, but we are here to help you and help us."

He gently repeats the Yurok word for thanks, " wokhlew, wokhlew, wokhlew ", just above a whisper, and gratefully touches his torch to the leaf litter.

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'Fire is medicine': the tribes burning California forests to save them

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When Rick O'Rourke walks with fire, the drip torch is an extension of his body. The mix of diesel and gasoline arcs up and out from the little wick at the end of the red metal can, landing on the ground as he takes bite after bite out of the dry vegetation in the shadow of the firs and oaks.

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The North Fork Mono has been Banned from their Cultural Practices of Burning Dry Vegetation but are now Guiding Wildfire Prevention

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The North Fork Mono has been Banned from their Cultural Practices of Burning Dry Vegetation but are now Guiding Wildfire Prevention

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Ron Goode from the North Fork Mono speaks about how his tribe has always known what the purpose of their burning has been for, yet once recently has the government recognized the benefits of doing so. Tribes have been burning thousands of acres for years as they understand how they are used to revive the land they deeply respect.

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On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned.

Men and women from Native American tribes in Northern California stood in a circle, alongside university students and locals from around the town of Mariposa. Several wore bright yellow shirts made of flame-resistant fabric. For the next two days, the group would be carefully lighting fires in the surrounding hills.

Also sprinkled throughout the crowd were officials from the state government, which a century ago had largely prohibited California's tribes from continuing their ancient practice of controlled burns.

Fire has always been part of California's landscape. But long before the vast blazes of recent years, Native American tribes held annual controlled burns that cleared out underbrush and encouraged new plant growth.

Now, with wildfires raging across Northern California, joining other record-breaking fires from recent years, government officials say tackling the fire problem will mean bringing back "good fire," much like California's tribes once did.

"We don't put fire on the ground and not know how it's going to turn out," Ron Goode, tribal chairman of the North Fork Mono, tells the group. "That's what makes it cultural burning, because we cultivate."

When Western settlers forcibly removed tribes from their land and banned religious ceremonies, cultural burning largely disappeared. Instead, state and federal authorities focused on swiftly extinguishing wildfires.

But fire suppression has only made California's wildfire risk worse. Without regular burns, the landscape grew thick with vegetation that dries out every summer, creating kindling for the fires that have recently destroyed California communities. Climate change and warming temperatures make those landscapes even more fire-prone.

So, tribal leaders and government officials are forging new partnerships. State and federal land managers have hundreds of thousands of acres that need careful burning to reduce the risk of extreme wildfires. Tribes are eager to gain access to those ancestral lands to restore traditional burning.

"This is old land," Goode tells the circle. "It's been in use for thousands and thousands of years. And so what we're doing out here is restoring life."
Cultural burning
After a blessing, the group grabs shovels and chainsaws before heading out into the brush. It's late winter, and Mariposa's oak woodlands are dry and largely dormant, which is when controlled burning is safest.

"Sourberries," Goode says, spotting a bare-limbed, tangled bush. "Three-leaf sumac. There's a good one right there."

The group begins harvesting the long branches, which are used in traditional basket-weaving. It can take hundreds of branches to create just one piece.

Ray Gutteriez then takes a lighter to burn the plant, which encourages new growth that produces the flexible, straight branches prized by weavers. The plant is adapted to fire. Its root stock remains intact after burning and will quickly resprout after spring rains.

"All of our basket material needs to be tended to in some way," says Gutteriez, an ecologist and member of the Wuksachi Band of Mono Indians. "So they need to be burned, and they're used to being burned. And then next year, we'll probably have sticks that are 6, 7 feet tall in one year."

The group also burns a large field, several acres across, which is choked with dead grass.

"When I was a kid, I learned from my mother," Goode says of when he first started doing cultural burning. "But my mother got in trouble when she burned because the fire department didn't want her doing what we're doing today."
History of suppression
Before 1800, several million acres burned every year in California due to both Indigenous burning and lightning-caused fires, far more than even the worst wildfire years today. Tribes used low-grade fires to shape the landscape, encouraging certain plants to grow both for tribal use and to attract game.

The arrival of Western settlers dramatically changed the fire regime.

"They came with their concepts of being afraid of fire," Goode says. "They didn't understand fire in the sense of the tool that it could be to create and what it did to help generate and rejuvenate the land. So they brought in suppression."

The U.S. Forest Service infamously had the " 10 a.m. policy": to put out all forest fires by 10 a.m. the next day. Without regular fires to clear out underbrush, forests quickly became overgrown, creating the conditions for more extreme fires.

"A cultural burn is very spiritual," Keith Turner of the North Fork Mono says. "I used to fight fire for the Forest Service. And it was all about fighting fire."

Native American tribes were forcibly displaced, and their religious ceremonies were banned throughout the state by the early 1900s.

"There was actually a bounty on California Indian people," says Beth Rose Middleton Manning, professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis. "The governor had announced a war of extermination. So you have all that history, and it really fostered removal - settler ownership of Indigenous lands."

Now, Goode and other tribal leaders have been reaching out to ecologists, researchers and fire agencies about the importance of Indigenous knowledge.

"I think it's really important that we don't think about traditional burning as: what information can we learn from native people and then exclude people and move on with non-natives managing the land," Middleton Manning says. "But that native people are at the forefront and leading."
Forming partnerships
With wildfires causing record-breaking destruction in the last few years, California has committed to reducing the vegetation on a half-million acres. The federal government has set a similar goal. But there's a long way to go to reach those numbers, and controlled burning can be challenging in landscapes with too much fuel.

"Fire is a very wicked problem when you have years of suppression, because the longer you don't have fire in the system, the harder it is to put it back in," says Jonathan Long, ecologist with the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station. "So what we're trying to do is get these footholds."

In Northern California, the Karuk and Yurok tribes have partnered with the Forest Service to manage land for traditional values and wildfire management. Studies have shown that the two goals work hand in hand.

"By having these partnerships with the tribes, I think we can get that very frequent use of fire back in the system," Long says.

Jennifer Montgomery uses a drip torch, essentially a beefed-up lighter, to spread a line of fire at the corner of a field. As director of California's Forest Management Task Force, she knows the state is working against the clock to address its growing wildfire risk.

"It's an opportunity for me to see how effective cultural fire can be in addressing the issues we have around uncontrolled wildfire," Montgomery says. "The work that we did today, if a fire comes through there, it will drop down to the ground and frankly it may, given the right circumstances, just stop the fire entirely on its own."

Still, it's early days in developing these partnerships for many tribes, particularly after a long history of inequality created and reinforced by the government. Many California regional air regulators require burn permits over concerns about smoke and air pollution. Some counties offer special permits for tribes to facilitate their burns, but others don't.

Goode says he is hoping that bringing together a wide network of researchers, officials, students and tribes will help those conversations happen faster.

"I'm excited," he says, looking across the blackened field in the early evening light. "I'm elated. Because I'm looking around at what we've done. How beautiful the land is looking. And it is. It is."

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To Manage Wildfire, California Looks To What Tribes Have Known All Along

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On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned. Men and women from Native American tribes in Northern California stood in a circle, alongside university students and locals from around the town of Mariposa.

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Throughout History, many Tribes have Burned Underbrush to Mitigate Forest Fires

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Throughout History, many Tribes have Burned Underbrush to Mitigate Forest Fires

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Native Americans have been cultivating the lands that settlers believed were untouched for centuries. Yosemite National Park was "routinely burned to clear underbrush, open pasture lands, provide nutrient-rich forage for deer, and to support the growth of woodland food crops to feed and sustain what was once a large and thriving Indigenous population."

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When naturalists like John Muir first entered the Yosemite Valley of California in the 19th century, they marveled at the beauty of what they believed to be a pristine wilderness untouched by human hands. The truth is that the rich diversity and stunning landscapes of places like Yosemite and other natural environments in the United States were intentionally cultivated by Native Americans for thousands of years. And their greatest tool was fire.

"Fire was a constant companion, a kind of universal catalyst and technology," says Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University, author and fire historian.

Yosemite itself was routinely burned to clear underbrush, open pasture lands, provide nutrient-rich forage for deer, and to support the growth of woodland food crops to feed and sustain what was once a large and thriving indigenous population.

"If you look at the early photographs of Yosemite and you see the great big majestic stands of oaks, you would be led to believe that those are natural," says Frank Kanawha Lake, a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, wildland firefighter and Karuk descendent.

"But those trees are a legacy of indigenous acorn management. Those are tribal orchards that were managed for thousands of years for acorn production and for the geophytes or 'Indian potatoes' that grow beneath them."
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Seasonal Wildfires vs. Cultural Burning

Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The hugely destructive seasonal wildfires that consume millions of acres of forest across the Western United States every year are mostly triggered when lightning strikes a stand of trees that's dangerously dry from late-summer heat or drought.

While those types of natural fires have always existed, indigenous people have also practiced what's known as "cultural burning," the intentional lighting of smaller, controlled fires to provide a desired cultural service, such as promoting the health of vegetation and animals that provide food, clothing, ceremonial items and more.

"[Cultural burning] links back to the tribal philosophy of fire as medicine," says Lake. "When you prescribe it, you're getting the right dose to maintain the abundance of productivity of all ecosystem services to support the ecology in your culture."

Examples of Native American cultural burning can be found across the American landscape. In the Appalachian forests of the Eastern United States, the dominance of oak and chestnut trees was the product of targeted burning that resulted in vigorous resprouting of the desired nut crops. The iconic tall grass prairies of the Midwest were also likely cleared and maintained by indigenous burning as pastureland for herd animals.
READ MORE: Why America's Deadliest Wildfire Is Largely Forgotten
Multiple Different Uses of Indigenous Fire

Anthropologists have identified at least 70 different uses of fire among indigenous and aboriginal peoples, including clearing travel routes, long-distance signaling, reducing pest populations like rodents and insects, and hunting.

It's well-established that native peoples used fire to both drive and attract game herds. For example, some tribes would open up patches of grassland inside forested landscapes that drew herds of deer and elk to the protein-rich new growth every spring. In the fall, they'd burn the grass to drive animals back into the woods where the tribe overwintered. And in the spring, they'd light fires in the woods to push the animals back into the prairie.

The tribes of the northern Great Plains were some of the few to light very large fires rather than smaller, contained burns. These prairie fires-miles-long conflagrations that raged across dry grasslands-were an effective way to drive large herds of buffalo in a desired direction. Other tribes used fire to herd grasshoppers, a tasty delicacy.

Food was not the only incentive to employ fire. For some Western tribes, a consistent crop of plant materials was essential for making woven baskets. By burning patches of land, they could ensure the regrowth of the type of straight, slender shoots that made the strongest and most artistic baskets. Others used fire to cultivate specific tree species that provided roosts for woodpeckers, whose feathers were prized for ceremonial regalia.

European Arrival Brings Disease and Outlawing of Fire

Liu Guanguan/China News Service via Getty Images

One of the reasons why John Muir and other naturalists would have believed that the grandeur of the Western United States was shaped entirely by natural forces is that they had no idea how many Native Americans had once lived there. When the Spanish established missions and settlements in "Alta California" in the 18th century, they brought smallpox with them, which decimated an estimated 70 to 90 percent of the indigenous population.

"A lot of what we think of as wilderness was a temporary artifact of the depopulation of the native people-It was a major crash," says Pyne. "Explorers and early travelers didn't believe that such small groups of Native Americans could make significant changes in the landscape. Well, there were a lot more of them in earlier times."
READ MORE: Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans?
European colonists brought with them an attitude that fire was a destructive force with no beneficial applications. Lake points out that one of the first official proclamations by a Spanish bureaucrat in California in 1793 was to outlaw "Indian burning," which was viewed as a threat to the Spanish cattle herds and pastures.

"With attention to the widespread damage which results to the public from burning of the fields, customary up to now among both the Christian and Gentile Indians in this country, whose childishness has been unduly tolerated," wrote Don José Joaquín de Arrillaga, "I see myself required to have the foresight to prohibit for the future..., if it be necessary, of the rigors of the law all kinds of burnings, not only in the vicinity of the towns, but even at the most remote distances ... [t]o uproot this very harmful practice of setting fire to pastureland."

Successive waves of colonists brought the same dismissive attitude toward the benefits of controlled burns, even though European farmers and herdsmen had practiced it for centuries.

"Europe's elites treated their own farmers and pastoralists and their knowledge of fire with the same disdain," says Pyne. "Europe had thousands of years of agriculture and they used fire very widely, but it was a mark of 'primitivism.' To be modern and rational, you had to find an alternative to fire."

The 'Paiute Forestry' Debate

Not everyone agreed that outlawing cultural and other controlled burns was best for America's forests. Throughout the late-19th and early 20th century, millions of acres were destroyed by a series of deadly wildfires, many caused by sparks thrown from the new transcontinental railroad.

The trouble with fire suppression laws is that they create a buildup of "fuel" in the forests, fallen trees and drought-ridden undergrowth that feed and spread a wildfire. In the early 20th century, some forestry scientists were calling for a return to the indigenous practices of "light-burning" to keep fuel supplies low.

Opponents of light-burning dubbed it "Paiute forestry," meant as an insulting reference to the Paiute Indians of Nevada and California.

"The question was, 'Do we burn like the heathen Indians or do we protect our forests and timber interests?'" says Lake.

The answer came in 1910 with one of the largest wildfires in American history. Known as the "Big Blowup" or simply the "Great Fires of 1910," this multi-state conflagration consumed more than 3 million acres and leveled entire towns. Lake says that on one tragic day, 78 firefighters were killed by the blaze.

Rather than renewing calls for a traditional approach to forest management that incorporated cultural burning, a traumatized U.S. Forest Service doubled down on fire suppression. In response, Congress passed the Weeks Act of 1911 authorizing the government's purchase of millions of acres of land in which all fires would be outlawed.

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How Native Americans Used Fire to Protect and Cultivate Land

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When naturalists like John Muir first entered the Yosemite Valley of California in the 19th century, they marveled at the beauty of what they believed to be a pristine wilderness untouched by human hands. The truth is that the rich diversity and stunning landscapes of places like Yosemite and other natural environments in the United States were intentionally cultivated by Native Americans for thousands of years.

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Native American Tribes Commonly Combat Forest Fires with Smaller, Contained Fires

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Native American Tribes Commonly Combat Forest Fires with Smaller, Contained Fires

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For centuries, Native Americans have been starting smaller fires that can be controlled to open up land for agriculture, promote growth of certain plants, and prevent large scale wildfires. Not only do some tribes achieve spiritual fulfillment through these practices, but they also gaining agricultural and safety benefits from doing so.

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Native Americans Reveal Their Secrets To Preventing Forest Fires And More

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Beyond the classic Thanksgiving story, Native American peoples have shared many lessons still vital to us today, such as our form of government, conservationism, or even forest fire prevention.

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A Clear Increase in Californian Forest Fires in the Past Decabe

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A Clear Increase in Californian Forest Fires in the Past Decabe

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"Of the 32.1 million acres of forestland in California, approximately 2.1 million acres (6.6%) burned in wildfires in the 2002-2011 time period. In the following decade (2012-2021), that figure more than tripled to 7.9 million acres (24.7%)." There has been a nearly 20% increase in the acreage of land burn due to forest fires within the past 10 years, and this dramatic increase has been attributed to climate change.

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About 25 percent of the states' forestland burned in the last 10 years - more than triple the previous decade

By Jim Schmidt
Of the 32.1 million acres of forestland in California, approximately 2.1 million acres (6.6%) burned in wildfires in the 2002-2011 time period. In the following decade (2012-2021), that figure more than tripled to 7.9 million acres (24.7%).

National Forests in California were particularly hard hit. 10.1% of 12.7 million acres of forestland managed by the USDA Forest Service in California burned in 2002 - 2011 time period. In the 2012 - 2021 decade that figure increased to 38.8%. Excluding areas that re-burned in the last 10 years, 44.5% of the forestland in California National Forests has burned in the last 20 years. In contrast, only 22.6% of National Park forestland in the state has burned in the same time period. About 14 million acres of forestland in California are in private hands. 17.0 % of private forestland has burned since 2001.

The following maps display the forestland areas and the areas that have burned in California in the last two decades. Fires were concentrated in Southern California in the 2002-2011 time period and in Northern California in the last 10 years.
The article was edited September 7 with revised figures to account for areas that reburned, which account for about 5% of the forestland burned on National Forests in the last 20 years. Jim Schmidt retired from the Stanislaus National Forest where he worked as a GIS specialist.

It seemed to me that over the last few weeks the wildfire activity has been slower than typical for this time of the year, so I did a little digging. Using historical data from the National Interagency Fire Center and acres burned to date from the August 13 national Situation Report, it turns out that Alaska has burned nearly three times their 10-year to-date average while the other 49 states combined are running 12 percent below the to-date average.

Over the last 10 years Alaska's average acres burned in a full year is 1.1 million. This year they are at 3.1 million, more than the other 49 states combined. There has been a major increase in Alaska acres burned after mid-August in only 2 of the last 18 years. And it has been fairly quiet there, fire wise, for the last four weeks.

So far this year, fires in the other 49 states have blackened about 2.8 million acres, 12 percent below the to-date 10-year average of 3.2 million. The 49 states typically burn 6.2 million in a full year, so if this year turns out like the average of the last 10, we're about half done.

The Situation Report does not break out data for Alaska and the other 49 states, so just looking at their 50-state numbers a person would see that the 5.9 million acres burned to date is 27 percent higher than the average of 4.3 million, when actually the +27 percent figure is very wrong for both Alaska and the lower 49 states.

We usually separate Alaska stats because fires in that huge state are managed far differently from the other 49. Most of them are not fully suppressed since they are less likely to endanger people or private property than in the lower 49 states. The second reason is that the fire occurrence is extremely variable, with the acres burned since 1990 ranging, for example, from 43,965 acres in 1995 to 6,645,978 in 2004. Including the Alaska numbers in the total would skew the data for the other 49 states making it more difficult to spot trends.

We often publish statistics about wildfires, such as acres burned, average size, number of fires, and average size by decade. Here are some examples. Others are at an article updated February 2, 2022.

Bankrate has assembled more data about wildfires in an article titled U.S. Wildfire statistics.

Such as:

A study of the 2018 Camp Fire reveals staggering facts and estimations:

Total 2019 claims from the Camp Fire: more than $12 billion

Total damage and economic losses: more than $400 billion

Total insured losses: estimated between $8.5 to $10.5 billion

Toxic debris removal: nearly $2 billion

Victim aid: $200 million

Bankrate also has wildfire data broken down for each state. It's an interesting way to spend few minutes, perusing the numbers.
More information about the Camp Fire.

Eight percent higher than the average of the previous 10 years

Updated Feb. 2, 2022
The number of acres that burned in the United States in 2021 according to the annual report from the National Interagency Fire Center, was more than the average of the previous 10 years. The 6,872,286 acres in the lower 49 states is 8 percent higher than the average of the previous 10 years, and 33 percent above the average in the decade before that, 2001 - 2010.

This is contrary to statements from some fire officials in December who said fewer than average acres had burned. That is only correct if Alaska is counted. When it is, the numbers can be misleading. Alaska is a huge state with a very low population for its size. Many fires there burn far from any structures or private property and are not suppressed. On some fires the only action taken is "point protection," just keeping a small village or single cabin from burning. A fire can burn hundreds of thousands of acres over a period of months with few if any firefighters assigned.

The burned area in Alaska varies wildly from year to year, for example, about 62,000 acres in 2008 and more than 5,000,000 in 2015. In 2015 more acres burned there than in the other 9 geographic areas combined. (Alaska is it's own geographic area. Map.) However, so far this year, Alaska has ranked only third in number of acres burned in geographic areas, outranking only the Rocky Mountain and Eastern Areas. Including the Alaska numbers in a calculation of fire activity in the 50 states is misleading and can radically skew statistics.
Fires continue to grow larger
The average size of fires 2021 was the fifth largest in the last 36 years. Since 1984 the six years with the highest average size have all occurred in the last 11 years, according to the available reliable data from the National Interagency Fire Center after 1984.
The total number of fires is on a downward trend
The number of fires in 2021 was the sixth lowest in the last 36 years.

All of the statistics for 2021 are from the annual report for 2021 published by the National Interagency Fire Center. Data from previous years also came from NIFC.

As @NOAANCElclimate pointed out, the Drought Monitor shows that the severity of the drought is far worse than it was at about the same date in 2020. Most of the areas in the 11 western states are in Severe, Extreme, or Exceptional Drought.

So far this year the 49 states outside Alaska have burned almost 2.2 million acres, about the same that burned in all of 2019. The 10-year all-year average for those 49 states is 6.4 million acres. In 2020 9.9 million acres burned in the lower 49 states.

A year-to-date average would be helpful. The National Situation Report gives a number, but unfortunately it includes Alaska which is extremely variable. Fires there can be very large, burning for weeks or months usually with little to no suppression. In the last 10 years the acres burned in Alaska ranged from 181,169 in 2020 to 5,111,404 acres in 2015, with the higher number being 28 times the lower. In 2015 more acres burned there than in the other 49 states combined. Therefore, a year to date average that includes Alaska is virtually meaningless if you want to draw conclusions about the status of the wildfire season in the lower 49 states.

The number of acres burned in US wildfires in 2020 (not counting Alaska) was the highest ever recorded since reliable statistics have been available beginning in 1960

New climate data analyzed by NOAA shows that during July when the fire season in the West is typically nearing its maximum, the temperatures in the 11 Western states have been rising in recent years. The data from the last 10 years also indicates the amount of precipitation in the Northwest has decreased significantly.

Every 10 years NOAA recalculates the U.S. Climate Normals for the previous 30-year period. Normals act both as a ruler to compare today's weather and tomorrow's forecast, and as a predictor of conditions in the near future. They consist of annual/seasonal, monthly, daily, and hourly averages and statistics of temperature, precipitation, and other climatological variables from almost 15,000 U.S. weather stations.

The new annual mean data for 1991 through 2020 shows that most of the U.S. was warmer, and the eastern two-thirds of the contiguous U.S. was wetter, from 1991-2020 than the previous normals period, 1981-2010. The Southwest was considerably drier on an annual basis, while the central northern U.S. has cooled somewhat.

The weather in July has a direct effect on the number of acres burned in Western wildfires. The new data shows the Northwest is considerably drier as a percentage of the previous normal during what is already a dry season.

The rest of the West is pockmarked with wetter and drier zones. The eastern two-thirds of the U.S. has an indistinct pattern of changes in the precipitation normals. Most of the East also remained near the same temperature levels, except for persistent cooling in the north central U.S. and warming in the Northeast. However, the entire West and lee of the Rocky Mountains and Texas are all considerably (up to 2°) warmer.

This warming and drying trend in the West shows up in wildfire activity. The number of acres burned in the U.S. in 2020 - 9,941,167 (not counting Alaska) - was the highest ever recorded since reliable statistics have been available beginning in 1960.

The average fire size by decade is striking, increasing by about 400 percent from the 1980s to the 2010s. Some of that increase could be from the tendency of the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies to allow some fires to spread without an aggressive full suppression strategy, allowing an unplanned wildfire to accomplish fuel reduction targets and other objectives. They can do this by using virtually unlimited fire suppression funds and without having to bother with pesky steps like conventional project funding, planning documents, approvals, public input, and environmental compliance required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

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About 25 percent of the states' forestland burned in the last 10 years - more than triple the previous decade By Jim Schmidt Of the 32.1 million acres of forestland in California, approximately 2.1 million acres (6.6%) burned in wildfires in the 2002-2011 time period.

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Not Only Did the Ban of Native AmericanFire Practices Lead to an Increase in Wildfires, but also the Removal of Native Americans did as well

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Not Only Did the Ban of Native AmericanFire Practices Lead to an Increase in Wildfires, but also the Removal of Native Americans did as well

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Bill Tripp was taught to burn land for specific purposes at the mere age of 4-years-old, and this knowledge had become tradition and common within his tribe. Yet when Native Americans were forced to leave California due to racist principles, they also took their understanding of the land and fires. Without these practices, no one took care of the land and this causes overgrown forests that are burning in mass amounts.

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Down a long, single-lane road in the most northern part of California is territory - one of the largest Indigenous tribes in the state. It's here that 's great-grandmother, who was born in the 1800s, taught him starting as a 4-year-old how to burn land on purpose.

"She took me outside - she was over 100 years old - and walked up the hill with her walker," Tripp recalled, "and handed me a box of stick matches and told me to burn a line from this point to that point."

Those cultural burns - or prescribed burns, as they're often called now by fire agencies - are a form of keeping wildfire in check, a practice the state and federal agencies do use, but experts say isn't leaned on enough as a fire prevention tactic.

Climate change is a driving factor of California wildfires, but so is a build-up of excess fuels . That's often attributed to a century of fire suppression dating back to the era of the Great Fire of 1910.

But what experts say is often missing from this conversation is the racist removal of Native American people from California. Along with their physical beings, the knowledge of taking care of the land was also removed resulting in overgrown forests, experts say.

Tripp grew up in a traditional village where his family has lived for millenia. He spent his adolescent years "keeping the area around our house burned off - a lot of times just by myself."

In a perfect world, if the landscape of California was still stewarded continuously with Indigenous fire, we would definitely not see the same level of fires that we're seeing.

- Plains Miwok fire expert Don Hankins

But Tripp, now deputy director of eco-cultural revitalization for the tribe's Department of Natural Resources, realizes his cultural fire education was a skill many other Indigenous people didn't have the opportunity to practice.

"Once I started connecting with more people from outside of our village it started to become kind of apparent that the world that I grew up in was kind of unique and different in the world today," he said.

Tripp's experience dates back to way before his time when Native American people were largely removed from the California landscape in the mid-19th century - more than were killed, others were forced onto reservations and many were enslaved.

Char Miller , director of environmental analysis at Pomona College, said that altered the state in ways its residents are feeling in the 21st century.

"Once the state of California enacted what we can call a genocidal attack upon native people ... what started to happen was the lands that they stewarded started to do what nature does, which is to grow," Miller said.

While climate change and a history of fire suppression are among the top reasons why experts say wildfires have grown so big so fast, Miller and others say removing Indigenous people from the landscape is an overlooked reason behind today's explosion of fires.

"There's this whole other story that's ... meteorological that has nothing to do with race, and yet it collides with this kind of professional racism that led to the suppression of fire," Miller said.

Removing millenia of knowledge from the land has resulted in the wildfires we see today, Miller said. And with the west engulfed in flames, Miller says it's forcing the agencies that govern land to rethink suppressing wildfires.

"If the reckoning is about fire, and how we might manage it ... this can serve two purposes, which is to acknowledge historic and contemporary wrongs as a fire tool, and as a social policy that amplifies Indigenous knowledge in a way that we have never done," he explained.

Are Cultural Burns Scalable?

Courtesy of Jared Dahl Aldern

One of the ways Native Americans helped keep land healthy is through prescribed or managed fire. That's where fires are lit on purpose to keep extra fuel from building up. Reengaging with tribes to expand prescribed burns, Miller says, could be a way to "burn the traces of racism even as it makes those forests healthier."

Ecological Historian Jared Dahl Aldern says the removal of people who had a seasonal relationship with fire completely broke the cycle of good fire on the land.

"They were lighting fires in certain places at appropriate times for cultivating food," he explained. "So you've removed the native influence and now you've prohibited essentially all fires. The problem with that is it's a losing gamble, because you're creating the conditions for an eventual large fire to catch all that fuel."

He says the idea of returning to prescribed burns on the landscape isn't always an exact match with the world we live in today - nearly 40 million people live in California, so many entities manage land, and there are three million homes in mountain areas.

He advocates for cultural practices to be used in a chain-like fashion in areas where it's possible.

If our Indigenous rights to burn would be recognized, and we could get some consistent and reliable funding mechanisms in place, then we could do it ourselves.
- Karuk tribe member Bill Tripp

"Let's follow Indigenous peoples' lead with their desire to cultivate certain resources with fire," he said.

Don Hankins , a Plains Miwok fire expert at Chico State University, agrees.

"In a perfect world, if the landscape of California was still stewarded continuously with Indigenous fire, we would definitely not see the same level of fires that we're seeing," he said.

Hankins says taking care of the land with an Indigenous perspective could still be a reality, although not quite scalable across all landscapes because the California of today is very different than a century ago.

Neither agency-prescribed burns or Indigenous burns are at the scale needed to make a real impact, he said.

"If we added up all the different places in California where Indigenous people are actually practicing within the landscape, we're only adding maybe a few thousand acres of land," he said, "which is pretty small beans when we think about the scale of these fires currently over 3 million acres in the state."

Hankins has taken his Indigenous perspective to his neighborhood and also applied it to maps of large-scale forests. He hopes the current tension around wildfires results in picking up Native American practices on private, state and federal land.

"I think it's possible. It is challenging, because ... we've got smoke-sensitive groups," he said. "We just have to get to a point where people are willing to accept a little bit of smoke for the greater benefits."

"I Too Have Struggled"

, tribal chairman of the North Fork Mono, has been working for decades trying to convince people to apply Native American knowledge to the land.

"I too have struggled, but I've basically been patient enough to wait for the forest region to come around to how I think," he said.

Goode is a proponent of prescribed fires and rehabilitating mountain meadows , which when restored act like a wet sponge holding snowmelt. He says he's entered an agreement with state and federal agencies in his region near Fresno to do more prescribed burns and restore meadows.

"We are in the midst of a planning grant to do nine more meadows than the six that I've done - so, that's a start," he said.

The land was constantly on fire. Removal of Native Americans from the land is the result of what we have today.
- North Fork Mono tribal chairman Ron Goode

But with as many as 10,000 mountain meadows in the Sierra Nevada, he says the scale is not where it needs to be due in large part to the loss of Native American knowledge. He says there were around 350,000 Native Americans historically who lived across California, and they burned 2% of the state annually as a form of protection, food supply and for the health of the ecosystem.

"The land was constantly on fire," Goode said. "Removal of Native Americans from the land is the result of what we have today."

Goode says what was removed is the spiritual connection Indigenous people have with the land, which, in part, resulted in the fire suppression we are experiencing more than a century later.

"If you're with an agency, where's the spirituality," Goode questioned. "You don't hear them singing songs, you don't hear them giving prayers, you don't hear them making offerings. When you're out with the Indians, that's exactly what they do first. They want to make a relationship to the land."

He says what was revealed by the historic actions of agencies like the Forest Service, is they were "not thinking in terms of how to take care of the land and how to make the land sustainable."

Starting With The Legislature

To take these ideas to the next level, Miller at Pomona College says a restructuring of how the state and federal government spends money on fire fighting and suppression is needed. It could also fundamentally address anti-Indigenous sentiment in California's history.

Miller says it could start with the California legislature reevaluating funding for entities like Cal Fire.

"What if the state legislature begins to rearrange the budget?" he questioned. "That's an incentive signal. So you get legislators who are savvy about some of these issues, and you begin to make a kind of political shift, because it was a political shift that brought about the kind of fire and fire suppression that we're talking about."

Miller says the current wildfires are bringing up the idea of moving agencies like Cal Fire and the Forest Service into becoming more proactive than they are today.

I too have struggled, but I've basically been patient enough to wait for the forest region to come around to how I think.

- Ron Goode

"So let's start to look at that structure," Miller said. "And I argue that, as important as Cal Fire is as a protective agency, it's not been [very] proactive, so let's move on."

Still, Bill Tripp, with the Karuk Tribe at the northern edge of California, says there are signs of hope. He says some of the Forest Service agencies in his area have "completely embraced" a collaborative stewardship process and have hired Indigenous people to lead their ecological and fire divisions.

But he says hurdles remain because of the bureaucracy that comes with permitting prescribed burns and the fact that state and federal agencies are primarily focused on fighting fires.

"There are still institutional barriers that even the most progressive line officer can't overcome," he said. "If our Indigenous rights to burn would be recognized, and we could get some consistent and reliable funding mechanisms in place, then we could do it ourselves."

In the meantime, wildfires still rage. The Slater Fire has had a direct impact on Tripp's tribe. As of Wednesday it was 10% contained at just over 148,000 acres.

"It's very sad to see," he said. "We just lost about 40% of our homes just to the north of where I live here. A good portion of local communities are now homeless."

Courtesy of Bill Tripp

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the racist removal of native americans in california is often missing from wildfire discussions

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The Racist Removal Of Native Americans In California Is Often Missing From Wildfire Discussions, Experts Say

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While climate change and a history of fire suppression are among the top reasons why experts say wildfires have grown so big so fast, experts say removing Indigenous people from the landscape is a huge reason behind today's explosion of fires.

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Cultural Burning Practices have Multiple Purposes

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Cultural Burning Practices have Multiple Purposes

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Not only do Native Americans gain a greater connection to their religion through their burning practices, but they are also protecting the lands that they are so deeply connected to. Burning isn't a dangerous practice; instead, it is a helpful processes. "There’s a difference between cultural burning and just setting fire on the land. We use fire as a tool."

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When fire ravages forests, homes and lives, it can be hard to think of it as anything other than terrifying and something to be avoided at all costs. For thousands of years, Native Americans in what is now California and across the West treated and nurtured fire like the natural resource it is through the practice of cultural burning.

For non-Native people, cultural burns require a mental adjustment - one that views fire as restorative, not destructive. This is fire lighting, not firefighting.

As wildfires burn bigger, hotter and more frequently each year, state and local agencies, groups and landowners are increasingly looking to Native people - the original land managers - for guidance on living with fire.

In early 2020, students and faculty from the University of California, Davis, partnered with regional tribes to take part in cultural burns in Northern California as part of a UC Davis Native American studies course called "Keepers of the Flame." The course is funded through the Southwest Climate Adaptation Center, Yocha Dehe Endowed Chair in California Indian Studies, and the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences.

On a February day in Mariposa, just south of Yosemite National Park, they were joined by representatives from state agencies and nongovernmental organizations who came to observe, listen, learn and light.

First growth

Julie Dick Tex is standing in a patch of sourberry bushes holding pruning shears. She leans over, nose to branch, to inspect their tips and stems, looking for the strongest, straightest shoots.

"My mother always taught me that first growth is best," said Tex, of the Western Mono tribe. Come late spring, small, red berries will emerge beneath velvety leaves. For now, the stems are leafless and gray.

A cousin to sumac, the sticks of the sourberry bush play a leading role in the basketry of several Native American tribes in California.

"We can't carry on our culture if we can't use our baskets," she said, adding that traditional baskets require sourberry.

But sourberry sticks can't be useful for basketry without fire. Plants that are merely pruned rather than burned grow back bushy, crooked and weak. A gentle fire clears the brush, regenerates the plant and coaxes new shoots straight toward the sun.

"The burned ones grow straight," Dick Tex said. "If you have a crooked stick, it won't ever get straight. But here, I could pick my whole year's source of material and be done."

"Here" refers to about 400 acres of oak woodland and meadows in Mariposa. The site encompasses an ancestral village at least 8,000 years old that was once home to more than 600 Miwok people.

North Fork Mono Tribal Chairman Ron Goode invited Dick Tex here, along with about 50 additional tribal members, UC Davis students and faculty, state agency representatives and NGOs to conduct a cultural burn on a few acres of the property, which is owned by the family of his wife, Myra Kirk-Goode.

Cultivating fire

There's a difference between cultural burning and just setting fire on the land. We use fire as a tool.
- Ron Goode

Historically, wildfires in California tended to burn frequently but at lower temperatures that maintained healthy soil, water and forests. Prescribed fires and cultural burns both serve to mimic those conditions, but they are not the same.

Similar to how the shift of one consonant transforms what was "scared" into "sacred," so resembles the distinction between prescribed and cultural burns.

"Culture means 'to cultivate,'" Goode told the group following a morning blessing and before the day's work begins. "There's a difference between cultural burning and just setting fire on the land. We use fire as a tool."
Tribal elders, including North Fork Mono Tribal Chairman Ron Goode, lead cultural burning ceremonies at the Jack Kirk Estate in Mariposa to demonstrate and educate others about the practice. (Sinead Santich)
He explained that Native people burn to enhance vegetation, not just remove it. Reducing fuel loads is just one of many benefits fire holds for ecosystems. For millennia, Indigenous people worldwide have applied small fires to the land to renew plants and watersheds for food, wildlife habitat, medicine, basketry and other cultural uses.

When John Muir first walked to the Yosemite Valley not far from this property, he walked through wide meadows scattered with flowers and trees tens of feet apart - not a closed canopy forest. When a fire burned in Yosemite, it ate through grass and young trees, rarely gaining enough traction to burn with high severity.

Kat Anderson, an ethnobotanist with the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences and USDA, wrote in her book Tending the Wild that what Muir was really seeing "were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning and burning."

New life

We're talking about new life. When fire agencies start fires, they don't expect a return. My goal is restoration. Whatever I do, I want it to return.
- Ron Goode

Growing on a hillside behind Goode is a patch of sourberry and also redbud, which is prized by basket weavers for its tender, pink shoots and bark.

Reaching the point of restoration evident in this hillside took multiple years - not just a budget cycle - of prep work, burning, regrowth and reburning. That time commitment is an inherent challenge for management agencies.

This area was burned during smaller gatherings with the UC Davis students in 2018 and 2019. The results from those burns - strong, healthy, beautiful regrowth - bring tears to the eyes of some of the basket weavers present this year.

When Native Americans were removed and displaced, they not only lost access to their ancestral lands, they also were banned from the practice of cultural burning itself. With these losses came, too, the decline of practices, like basket weaving, that access to land and traditional plant materials afforded.

"We've been kicked off the land, but we're now back and here to restore," Goode said. "We're talking about new life. When fire agencies start fires, they don't expect a return. My goal is restoration. Whatever I do, I want it to return."

Reciprocity

Before the Gold Rush, an estimated 4.5 million acres burned annually in California. In the early 1900s, the U.S. Forest Service adopted a policy of fire suppression that stayed in place for nearly 70 years. Native Americans, ranchers and private landowners could be fined for conducting burns on their properties. Since the 1970s, fire has gradually been reintroduced to the landscape but only at a fraction of what once occurred.

As wildfires and smoke events upend life in California year after year, some of the same entities that once banned Native Americans from cultural burns are now looking to them for advice. The proposition is sensitive and one that demands reciprocity, not just another opportunity to take from Native people, note the course's instructors.

"I think it's really important that we don't think about traditional burning in a context where Native people are again being extracted from, such as sharing their knowledge about how to care for a place when they're still federally unrecognized and don't have land within their homeland," said course instructor Beth Rose Middleton Manning, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Native American Studies. "So we're teaching and learning from each other, but we're also investing in justice so people can protect their homelands and cultural places."

Earlier in the year, students and several tribal nations joined together for a workshop and cultural burn at the Tending and Gathering Garden in the homeland of the Wintun people in Yolo County. A collaborative effort between the Native American community and Cache Creek Conservancy, the garden grew from the graduate work of UC Davis alumna Shannon Brawley '00. It's also one of the few public gardens in the nation set aside for Indigenous people to practice traditional management methods and gather plants.

"Helping to facilitate these workshops is part of our goal to not just consume Indigenous knowledge but to give back in some way," said Christopher Adlam, a Graduate Group in Ecology student who led the "Keepers of the Flame" class with Middleton Manning.

Also at the workshop were members of prescribed burn associations and collaboratives. Increasingly, grassroots groups like these - from Humboldt and Sonoma to Mendocino and Plumas counties - are working together to secure the needed permits, train volunteers and help provide the person power to conduct burns on private lands. Private landowners own about 40 percent of the 33 million acres of forest in the state.

"People give me hope," Adlam said. "It's people who are going to pick up the torch, help one another and do it safely. Ranchers used to burn 200,000 acres a year. I think the ranchers are going to be essential in bringing back fire to private lands. There are prescribed burn associations. It's coming back."

Renewed efforts have also begun at the agency scale. In late August, state and federal agencies signed an agreement to thin or intentionally burn 1 million acres per year by 2025, which is just one-fifth of the acreage burned in the first half alone of 2020's record-breaking fire season but still twice as much as past years' efforts.

What level of involvement tribes will have in those decisions remains to be seen, but there are positive signs of collaboration.

"I'm glad we have public land managers here like Cal Fire because they're really seeing traditional knowledge in action and the commitment people have to these places," said Middleton Manning. "Many state entities tend to leave tribes out. The California Environmental Quality Act did not require tribal consultation until recently. Things are steadily changing."

Good fire

This is an opportunity to learn from the originators of land management and ecological restoration.
- Jennifer Montgomery

In the Mariposa meadow, students and volunteers cut back brush and create burn piles. Tribal and state fire crews rev chainsaws and trim dead tree limbs. Great droplets of fire fall from a drip torch, and the outer edge of the field sizzles with the first crackling sounds of burning grass.

Danny Manning, assistant fire chief of the Greenville Rancheria, puts the group at ease as smoke rises: "If you see me worry, then you worry. If it's your first burn, it's OK to feel a little uneasy."

This is the first cultural burn for Jennifer Montgomery, director of the governor's Forest Management Task Force.

"One of my goals for coming here is to do a better job of connecting with Indigenous people here in California who can say, 'Here's what's appropriate for our area,'" Montgomery said while walking through shrubs toward the meadow. "This is an opportunity to learn from the originators of land management and ecological restoration."

Class member Diamond Lomeli is a junior at UC Davis majoring in Native American studies. She is also a member at large of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation Tribal Council. She said she thinks that even during catastrophes - and sometimes because of them - the door opens for tribes and state agencies to come together.

"Tribes do understand their lands and what needs to be burned and when, but we also need the help from those agencies," Lomeli said. "I think with more collaboration and more open communication, these bonds can be restored and made whole."

Restore, reconnect

When you learn about cultural burning and that fire can be positive and not just a tool to avoid worse fires, it's transformative.
- Christopher Adlam

Some of the students participating in the class's cultural burns have experienced catastrophic fire firsthand, with past seasons threatening their homes and families. But the fire they meet on this day in Mariposa is a completely different, gentle animal - one they can walk with.

"Seeing fire used for good can be healing," Adlam said. "When you learn about cultural burning and that fire can be positive and not just a tool to avoid worse fires, it's transformative."

Reintroducing fire to the land through cultural burns can also help reconnect Native people with their homelands.

"It's healing not just for the land, but for the people, too," said Irene Vasquez, secretary for the American Indian Council, during the Mariposa burn.

Back in the sourberry patch, Dick Tex is sharing stories with a group of young students as she continues her search for the perfect, straight stick to add to the bundle in her hand.

"To come here ... " she said, pausing to breathe in, lift her chest and close her eyes, " ... it makes me feel good. For those of us who love sourberries, just the smell makes you salivate. It's home."
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For thousands of years, Native Americans in what is now California and across the West treated and nurtured fire like the natural resource it is through the practice of cultural burning. For non-Native people, cultural burns require a mental adjustment - one that views fire as restorative, not destructive.

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Bureau of Indian Affairs Dedicates Video towards Native American Burning Practices

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Bureau of Indian Affairs Dedicates Video towards Native American Burning Practices

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The Bureau of Indian Affairs released a video that works toward defending and explaining the importance of Native American cultural burnings. "The 13-minute video also explains why fire is an essential and timeless tool that is necessary for maintaining and restoring ecosystems that evolved with fire. When safely applied by professionals at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons, these prescribed fires reduce vegetation buildup, help protect our communities and restores our fire-dependent ecosystems."

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Date Published: Jun 2019
Author: Robyn Broyles
Office Contact - Phone Number: 208-387-5473

The Bureau of Indian Affairs wildland fire management programs work to protect lives, property and resources while restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystems. Produced in partnership with Injunuity the BIA is proud to release "Native Fire," a short educational video about native use of prescribed fire.

"Native Fire" discusses Native American's historic use of fire and addresses how traditional practices in the southern plains states have influenced its modern-day application. In it, fire research specialists speak to this history and address some of the complex challenges facing landscapes today.

The 13-minute video also explains why fire is an essential and timeless tool that is necessary for maintaining and restoring ecosystems that evolved with fire. When safely applied by professionals at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons, these prescribed fires reduce vegetation buildup, help protect our communities and restores our fire-dependent ecosystems.

Southern Plains Region also thanks Dr. Christopher Roos, Environmental Archaeologist, Southern Methodist University, John Weir, Associate Extension Specialist, Natural Resource Ecology Department, Oklahoma State University, Nathan Hart, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes Youth Council, Comanche Nation; and Native Drug Free Nations and Youth programs (IMMNDM).

Program Area: Communications

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Bureau of Indian Affairs releases Native Fire - An Educational Video about the Safe Use and Application of Prescribed Fire

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Date Published: Jun 2019 Author: Robyn Broyles Office Contact - Phone Number: 208-387-5473 The Bureau of Indian Affairs wildland fire management programs work to protect lives, property and resources while restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystems. Produced in partnership with Injunuity the BIA is proud to release "Native Fire," a short educational video about native use of prescribed fire.

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Burning Practices Have Been a Vital Part of Native American Culture for Centuries 

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Burning Practices Have Been a Vital Part of Native American Culture for Centuries 

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"One of the first things that the English discovered about American Indians in Virginia was that they burned their wildlands." This quote was extremely insightful into looking back on the history of Native American burning practices. Cultural burning practices is not a Native American attempt to destroy the land, but instead it's always been part of their cultural to protect the land.

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Use of Fire by Tribes Throughout the Country 

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Use of Fire by Tribes Throughout the Country 

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This article details how various tribes throughout the country have used fire not only for substance and cultural practices, but also to prevent wildfires and replenish the grounds. From the Salish, to the Pend d’Oreille, to the Kootenai, to the Miwok, to the Lakota, burning practices have been such a vital part of tribes' methods of protecting their land. Therefore banning the ability to have controlled fires was a direct attack against Native Americans.

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In the Northern Rockies, tribes such as the Salish, Pend d'Oreille, and others periodically set fire to the land for thousands of years, which had a profound impact on plant and animal communities. Fires were traditionally used to reduce the risk of more serious fires, to nurture the land to support specific vegetation used for food and medicine, to provide better quality grazing land for horses, and more. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes website contains a wealth of information, including information on landscapes shaped by fire and how fire suppression has changed them, elder interviews about fire, a Coyote fire story about the gift of fire, and information about the traditional use of fire by the tribes and how tribes are using fire on the landscape today (CKST, 2021).

Throughout California, Indigenous nations have used fire for thousands of years as a tool to steward the land, and still do today. When Europeans colonized California, they found a garden of redwoods and other lands. Evidence of this stewardship can still be seen on the trees at Muir Woods. Fire scars tell the story of Indigenous cultural burns set by the first stewards of Muir Woods, the Coast Miwok. Cultural burns passed down through generations have benefited both land and people, by improving soil quality, and spurring growth of certain plant species, creating a healthy and resilient landscape.

For more than 4,000 years, American Indians have relied on Yosemite Valley's meadows and oak woodlands to provide food, medicine, and materials for baskets, string, and shelter. Yosemite's early inhabitants periodically set fires to promote the growth milkweed, dogbane, sedge root, and bunch grass. Research on mud cored from Yosemite Valley showed a marked increase in ash deposits after people began living in Yosemite Valley.

Some tribes in the western states also used fire to ensure growth of straight and slender types of specific plants used for making woven baskets, or to provide habitat for certain bird species whose feathers were used for ceremonial dress (Roos, 2021).

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Indigenous Fire Practices Shape our Land - Fire (U.S. National Park Service)

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For many millenia, fire was integral to many Indigenous peoples' way of life. This page describes ways Indigenous people used fire in the past, as well as current partnerships working to preserve cultural burns.

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Some Tribes Are Becoming Disconnected with their Culture due to Restrictions on Fire Burnings

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Some Tribes Are Becoming Disconnected with their Culture due to Restrictions on Fire Burnings

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Within the article, Margo Robbins describes the Yurok, Karus, and Hoopa Tribes in California have been burning human-managed fires for centuries, yet they can no longer contain their traditional lands and practices due to state laws. Without hazel and other cultural items, many in her tribe have slipped away from the tribe as they "have become disconnected with the land and fire." Robbins believes that "Fire has the ability to reestablish that connection."

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Americans Fear Fire, yet it is a Source of Rebirth and Growth

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Americans Fear Fire, yet it is a Source of Rebirth and Growth

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During the 1850s, the US government started its war against fire as it banned Native Americans from intentional burning as they believed to stop all fires, the contained one must end too. However, the forests became so uncontained that all the dead brush that Native Americans used to take care of has been the fuel to the fires. "They fear fire cannot be controlled."

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When Rick O'Rourke walks with fire, the drip torch is an extension of his body. The mix of diesel and gasoline arcs up and out from the little wick at the end of the red metal can, landing on the ground as he takes bite after bite out of the dry vegetation in the shadow of the firs and oaks.

"Some people are like gunslingers and some people are like artists who paint with fire," he says. "I'm a little bit of both."

This is the kind of land management O'Rourke grew up with on the Yurok reservation in the Klamath mountains of northern California. Now, lighting the forest on fire to save it - and his tribe's culture along with it - has become his life's work, as fire and fuels manager of the Yurok Cultural Fire Management Council. On this day, he's working the drip torch alongside a few dozen cultural practitioners from tribes across the US, and firefighters from around the world.

He draws the can back and forth across the green, turning it red and then black. The lines of little flames creep along the forest floor, ebbing and growing with the contours of the land.

This fire will chew out the underbrush and lick the moss off the trees. It will blister the hazel stalks and coax strong new shoots that will be gathered and woven into baskets for babies and caps for traditional dancers, and it will tease the tan oak acorns to drop. It will burn the invasive plants that suck up the rain, letting more clean, cool water flow through the black, into the watershed and down the Klamath river for the salmon.

Soon all that black will be dotted with bear grass and huckleberries pushing up for the sunlight and down for the water they couldn't reach when they were crowded out by tall scotch broom and dense twists of blackberries and the ever-encroaching fir trees. Even sooner, animals will flock here to roll in the ash, a California dust bath.

For more than 13,000 years, the Yurok, Karuk, Hupa, Miwok, Chumashand hundreds of other tribes across California and the worldused small intentional burns to renew local food, medicinal and cultural resources, create habitat for animals, and reduce the risk of larger, more dangerous wild fires.

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A view of the Klamath River from the town of Weitchpec, California.

This is "good fire", traditional practitioners and firefighters would say.

For most of the last 100 years in California, however, government agencies have considered fire the enemy - adangerous, destructive element to suppress and exclude from the land. Traditional ecological knowledge and landscape stewardship were sidelined in favor of wholesale firefighting, and a kind of land management that looked like natural conservation but left the ground choked with vegetation ready to burn. As the climate crisis creates hotter, drier, more volatile weather, that fuel has helped drive larger wildfires faster and further across the west.

Our first agreement with our creator was to tend the land. It was taken away from us, and now we're trying to reclaim it

Rick O'Rourke, Yurok fire manager

After decades suppressing small and gigantic fires alike, California is slowly embarking on a course correction. Alongside huge expenditures on firefighting staff and gear, the state is making new investments in prescribed burning. But who gets to decide where that fire goes, what it burns, why it burns - who is the steward of a natural element - remains contentious. These native people are trying to revitalize their right to indigenous cultural burning, a practice that was criminalized long before California became a state, before their culture dies out.

"Our first agreement with our creator was to tend the land," says O'Rourke, 52, resting for a moment on a log in the green, lit drip torch still in hand. "It was taken away from us, and now we're trying to reclaim it."

How the US waged war on fire

The Spanish were the first California colonizers to prevent indigenous people from burning the land. In 1850, the US government passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which outlawed intentional burning in California even before it was a state.

Early National Forest Service officials considered "the Indian way" of "light-burning" to be a primitive, "essentially destructive theory". Championed by the Forest Service, ecologists and conservationists, new colonial notions of what is "natural" won the day. The valuable timber trees would be protected and burns would be extinguished at all costs. Fire was a killer, and America would make war on this new enemy for most of the next 100 years.

"They said if we suppress all these fires, we end light burning, we will have great new forests," said the fire historian Stephen Pyne. "And we did - we had so much great new forest that we created a problem."

In 1968, after realizing that no new giant sequoias had grown in California's unburned forests, the National Park Service changed its prescribed fire policy. In 1978, so did the Forest Service.

Since then, some state agencies have made prescribed burning a central part of their land and wildfire management strategies. The south-east leads the way: in Florida, landowners and government agents burn more than 2m acres a year.

But many in California, where millions of homes have sprawled into the mountainous and flammable wildlands, still fear fire in all forms. They fear it will destroy lush, natural forests and turn them into barren shrubland; that it is a tool of timber companies and a friend of clearcutting old growth; that it will produce oppressive, toxic smoke and emissions year-round. More than anything, they fear the flames will jump holding lines and run across the land and into communities, as they sometimes do - an escaped fire killed three people in 2012 in Colorado.

They fear fire cannot be controlled. On this, at least, firefighters and firelighters would agree - which is why most no longer use the term "controlled burn" to refer to something as powerful as fire, usually opting for "prescribed", "cool" or "light" burning to distinguish between good fire and the wild kind.

After a string of disastrous fire seasons, though, California is growing bolder. In 2018, the state made plans to triple the amount of prescribed burning, "creating a culture where fire is a tool, not a threat". Now, according to the state air resources board, 125,000 acres of wildlands are intentionally burned each year in California - which still comprises a tiny fraction of all the prescribed fire in the US.

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Fire from Rick O'Rourke's drip torch during the prescribed burn in Weitchpec on 4 October.

The burn, part I: 'Putting fire on the ground'

Catching the good-fire windows in climate-changing California weather is an intricate proposition. For the best burn, the prescription has to be just right: a little humidity in the air, low winds, the leaf litter dry and crunchy underfoot.

For native people, the land is a renewing resource, and they feel a responsibility to keep it healthy. Light, frequent burning of the forest understory maintains oak tree health, and the acorns and huckleberries for food, hazel and bear grass for weaving, and pepperwood and wormwood for medicine. Fire clears and maintains prairie landscapes as habitat for elk and deer, and visibility through the dense woods for hunting them. It promotes better spring flow and drought tolerance. The smoke from the burns in turn reflects sunlight and helps cool the river water, benefiting the salmon.

Indigenous people here essentially co-evolved with the landscape they tended.

"It's selective manipulation through millennia to foster a more resilient, diverse and productive landscape," said Frank Lake, a US Forest Service research ecologist with Karuk heritage and Yurok family.

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Harold Myers and Christopher Villarruel begin the prescribed burn with the traditional practice of using wormwood to ignite the forest floor.

The burn units are identified ahead of time for their resources and carved out to manageable size. Clear 3ft holding lines on each side serve as paths for firelighters on the move, bumping up and down the steep terrain, and controlling boundaries for the fire itself. This unit is about 90 acres, but they'll only burn half today, a little more than 30 football fields worth - the rest is still too damp from an unexpected rain shower earlier in the week. Engines full of water are staged in the slim shoulder of Highway 169 at the bottom edge of the unit.

The cultural burn begins in a small clearing, under a golden sliver of early afternoon sunlight from a break in the pine canopy. Harold Myers of the Yurok tribe and Chris Villarruel of the Pit River tribe hold wormwood branches, dried and bound into torches. The Yurok tribe member and secretary of the Cultural Fire Management Council, Elizabeth Azzuz, lights them.

"Creator, we're here today to do work for the land, for the people," Myers begins, crouching low to the earth with his torch. "Give us guidance, clarity of mind, purity, and we may carry this out with the best intentions. We apologize for our brothers and sisters who are living here, but we are here to help you and help us."

He gently repeats the Yurok word for thanks, " wokhlew, wokhlew, wokhlew ", just above a whisper, and gratefully touches his torch to the leaf litter.

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'Fire is medicine': the tribes burning California forests to save them

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When Rick O'Rourke walks with fire, the drip torch is an extension of his body. The mix of diesel and gasoline arcs up and out from the little wick at the end of the red metal can, landing on the ground as he takes bite after bite out of the dry vegetation in the shadow of the firs and oaks.

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Summary of the Legislation Stripping Native Americans of the Right of Contained-Fires

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Summary of the Legislation Stripping Native Americans of the Right of Contained-Fires

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Section 10: "Any person was subject to fine or punishment if they set the
prairie on fire, or refused “'o use proper exertions to extinguish the fire.'" Detailing how the U.S. government slowly stripped Native Americans of their rights, this collection of policies demonstrate how even in the very beginning, the federal government believed that Native Americans weren't intelligent enough to maintain themselves and their lands. Time and time again, Native Americans are belittled and targeted by whites to the extent in which their cultural practices and beliefs are outlaws.

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The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians

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The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians

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During its first year as a state, California's legislature passed an Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that blatantly discriminated against Native Americans pushed them into servitude, labor, orphanages, and other cultures. With this, Native Americans had more laws and punishments put in place against them, in which intentional burning was outlaws. Officials believed that the "light-burning" was "essentially destructive theory."

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In 1850 the California legislature passed an Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that essentially forced many Native Americans into servitude. The law provided for the forced labor of loitering or orphaned Native Americans, regulated their employment, and defined a special class of Indian crimes with punishments.

James Rawls, historian
The name of the law sounds benign, but the effect was malign in the extreme degree. Any white person under this law could declare Indians who were simply strolling about, who were not gainfully employed, to be vagrants, and take that charge before a justice of the peace, and a justice of the peace would then have those Indians seized and sold at public auction. And the person who bought them would have their labor for four months without compensation.

In the early days of the Gold Rush, from the very beginning, frustrated Anglo American miners banded together to form groups of essentially vigilante or volunteer militia groups. They were ad hoc organizations, and their stated objective was to exterminate the "red devils," to eliminate the obstacles that the native Californians had become in their minds. And their modus operandi was to attack native villages wherever they might find them in the vicinity of their mining activities, to eliminate their presence utterly, killing the men, the women, and the children. And this was considered to be a necessity.

The only way we will be able to mine in security, if all of these people are exterminated." And the language that they used at the time, "extermination," was precisely describing what they were attempting to do.

The Native Americans in California of course attempted to resist the onslaughts onto their villages. They would fight back with whatever weapons they had at hand. But they were vastly outgunned and vastly outnumbered, and were very infrequently able to mount an effective defense. Usually it was more a matter of fleeing, trying to get away. We have accounts of the white vigilantes or rangers simply firing into the creek or going into the woods and using hatchets or other weapons, guns, to kill those. We have many descriptions of those when they're attacking on a stream or a river, and the natives are being shot as they're floating down, trying to escape from this terrible onslaught.

But we should also remember that those bands of Indian hunters could receive local compensation for their actions. Many communities through Gold Rush California offered bounties for Indian heads, Indian scalps, or Indian ears. And so the Indian raiders could bring the evidence of their kill in, and receive direct local compensation. Furthermore, the state of California passed legislation authorizing more than a million dollars for the reimbursement of additional expenses that the Indian hunters may have incurred. And then that was passed on eventually to the federal Congress, where Congress passed legislation also authorizing additional federal funds for this purpose. So what we have here in California during the Gold Rush, quite clearly, was a case of genocide, mass murder that was legalized and publicly subsidized.

Frank LaPena, professor, Native American Studies
There was a person, up in Humboldt County, who was found with a small child, a young Indian child. And they ask him, "What are you doing with this child?" He said, "I am protecting him. He's an orphan." And they say, "Well, how do you know he's orphan?" He said, "I killed his parents."

April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educator
By the time that the Gold Rush and events afterwards had occurred, so much had happened, not just Sutter enslaving and terrorizing the native peoples, but an epidemic had erupted previous to this: smallpox, chicken pox, unusual diseases that they had no defenses. So their population had been decimated.

Then it became decimated again after the Gold Rush: because of their aboriginal rights as landowners they needed to be eradicated and removed. So a process went into motion to make it legal to kill Indian people.

And at one point it was something in the neighborhood of $25 for a male body part, whether it was a scalp, a hand, or the whole body; and then $5 for a child or a woman. In many cases, they only had to bring in the scalp. And in other cases, the whole body was brought in to prove that they had this individual, they'd killed this person, and receive their reward.

And it was well after 1900 when the law was repealed, that bounty hunting, or whatever you may want to call it, on the California Indians was repealed. It was shortly after the discovery of Ishi that the nation, or I should say the state, became aware of the fact that it was still legal to kill Indians. So that the law had to be changed.
Violence and Sanctuary
The U.S. policies of removal of native people as Europeans pioneered further west was bound to the tragic cry of extermination as the settlements reached the west coast. Sanctuary of a sort was provided through reservations, which gave the natives refuge from the threats of the new invaders.

However, the conditions at reservations were less than satisfactory.

April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educator
There was what we called a roundup. It's a very sad story. They went along the foothill areas, especially above Sacramento and all along this ridge, gathering up all these native peoples, mostly Maidu people, and forcing them to march down through the valley, over by the Sutter Butte, but first they had to cross the Sacramento River.

And very few Indian people knew how to swim, because they had no need to swim. They didn't take those chances by crossing rivers. If they knew how, they would do it in reed boats. But they were forced to cross the river, so there was a large percentage of these Maidu people who actually drowned, including the children and the infants.

And then whoever survived the crossing of the Sacramento River were taken over to the Round Valley Reservation and forced to live there. Those that escaped, hid. And they stayed hidden for quite some time. They took on Hispanic or Mexican surnames and melted into the community not as natives, but as Mexican Americans. They could pass. They'd just say they were, and most people didn't pay attention and believed them.

James Rawls, historian
I had the occasion of visiting with an elderly Pomo woman several years ago, who shared with me a story from her family history. She said her village was attacked somewhere along the Navarro River, by a group of white raiders. She thought perhaps they were trying to seize children for the Indian slave trade at the time. She wasn't sure. But she knew that they were under attack.

And so a native woman fled with her family, trying to get her children away. She left her smallest child, which was still in a cradleboard, under some brush, and got away across the river. After the whites had left, she returned, trying to find her family. And she could see that her smallest child was still apparently safely there, under this brush. But when she lifted it up, she found that the child had been pinned to the earth with a knife, that the raiders apparently had regarded that child as too small to worry with, but they managed to kill the child instead.

And as this woman told me that story, the tears came down her cheeks as if this had just happened. And that made me realize that even though these events we're talking about occurred 150 years or more ago, they still are living memories of native people in California. There are wounds that are still unhealed and are very tender and very deep

Frank LaPena, professor, Native American Studies
The Gold Rush forced people out of their traditional regions, and it made some of the rules and laws of the new state, the white state, and these rules and laws made the Indians change. People would say "Well, you know, what we're going to do is, we're going to give you these sanctuary areas, and we're going to give you food and that, and we're going to provide things for you that you didn't have before."

And all of that sounds good, but in fact what happened is, when people were on reservations, for instance, the food that was supposed to go to them, and the cattle that was supposed to be herded to them, and things that were supposed to be provided to them were never done.

What you can sense is that there is a sanctuary that is provided for them. Even though they might be eating out of troughs, even though they might be overworked, they have some sense of security there. And we see this taking place as we look at some of the things that happened with statehood. And we also see that in many cases where the people were given this sanctuary, they are protected from some of the kinds of killings and hunting down and herding off people to imprison them in the reservation areas. We see that they do have a protection there.

April Moore, Nisenan Maidu, educator
One of [my grandmother's] stories that really stuck with me, it was so emotional, the way she portrayed it. It was an event that happened to her aunt and her two great-aunts. It was some time during the early part of the morning. These aunts, two aunts and this baby and other family members were living out in this small village site, and they'd heard this noise, and it had woken them up. They weren't quite sure what it was.

And suddenly all this noise started up -- the gunfire, the screaming, the shouting -- and then they heard all these different people screaming and shouting. So they ran out to look, to see what was going on, and had seen these soldiers on horses who were taking people and killing them, slamming children against rocks and trees, and just running down men and shooting them. And they were violating the bodies by cutting them up. So these two aunts grabbed the baby because they couldn't find their sister, the mother of the baby, because she'd fled in fear, apparently.

So they grabbed this infant and ran as far as they could go, and hid.

And in order to keep the baby from crying and drawing attention to them, they would put their hand over her nose and her mouth, like that, to stop the baby from crying but not cut off her air, just long enough to keep her quiet.

And eventually the sun rose. And they stayed hidden until it was mid-morning and they couldn't hear anything. And they went back and found just all this carnage. So they gathered what they could find, which wasn't much because they basically burned this whole village site down, and walked to the nearest village that they knew of, and informed this group of people, who were actually their relatives also, that this had happened, to beware.

And from that point on, they had runners in this community. And these runners would go from village to village, and inform all these other villages that people were coming and they were going to get killed. So they more or less kind of had a little telegraph system, but it was a physical one, by running. And they spread the word so a lot of the Maidu people had to get up and move and get out of the way. And they had sentries posted all along the main routes. And whenever they saw dust coming up the path or a trail, they knew that it wasn't other Indian people; it had to be these people on horses. So they'd send someone down to the village site and warn everybody, and they'd just take off and hide.

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Act for the Government and Protection of Indians | American Experience | PBS

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In 1850 the California legislature passed an Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that essentially forced many Native Americans into servitude. The law provided for the forced labor of loitering or orphaned Native Americans, regulated their employment, and defined a special class of Indian crimes with punishments.

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During 2022, 21,349 acres burned due to dry fields that haven't been contained well. These lands are located on Flathead Reservation where the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation live. Despite having claim to the lands, these tribes aren't allowed to burn the dead grass due to state and federal fire regulations.

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Incident Overview

The Elmo Fire was detected along Highway 28 on July 29, 2022, at approximately 4:30 PM. Although local Volunteer Fire Departments and Missoula Smokejumpers responded quickly, the fire grew significantly in the first few hours, prompting the initial evacuation of residences. The Northern Rockies Team 7 Type 2 Incident Management Team took over management of the Elmo Fire at 6 AM on Sunday, July 31, 2022.

Persistent fire weather (high temperatures and strong winds) pushed the fire north and east, requiring the need for further evacuations. Eight total structures were lost, including four primary residences. Over the last week, cooler temperatures and reduction in winds enabled firefighters to make consistent gains in containment. Northern Rockies Team 7 will transfer command of the fires to a Type 3 Incident Management Team lead by Incident Commander Ian Morgan at 6 AM on Sunday, August 14, 2022.

Incident Information

Percent of Perimeter Contained

78%

Estimated Containment Date

2022-08-20 12:00:00

Fuels Involved

Short Grass
Tall Grass
Timber (Grass and Understory)

Fuel moisture, both live and dead, is very low. Forbes and ground cover at mid-slope and below is nearly cured.

Planned Actions

Crews continue patrolling and mopping up along containment lines. The public will continue to see some interior smoke, fire crews are patrolling those areas.

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Incident Overview The Elmo Fire was detected along Highway 28 on July 29, 2022, at approximately 4:30 PM. Although local Volunteer Fire Departments and Missoula Smokejumpers responded quickly, the fire grew significantly in the first few hours, prompting the initial evacuation of residences.

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There has been much data suggesting that there has been a large increase wildfires throughout the past century as more carbon fuels have been released into the atmosphere. "A 2016 study found enhanced the drying of organic matter and doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. A 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire weather in the western United States."

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Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades. Wildfires require the alignment of a number of factors, including temperature, humidity, and the lack of moisture in fuels, such as trees, shrubs, grasses, and forest debris. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change. A 2016 study found enhanced the drying of organic matter and doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. A 2021 study supported by NOAA concluded that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire weather in the western United States.

Drought and persistent heat set the stage for extraordinary wildfire seasons from 2020 to 2022 across many western states, with all three years far surpassing the average of 1.2 million acres burned since 2016. Extreme fire behavior during this period shocked many wildfire managers, as several huge blazes burned for months, others incinerated entire communities, and still others erupted during nighttime wind events, when firefighters could normally count on working the fire line. In the Sierras of California and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, flame fronts threw embers over the crests of mountain divides, across miles of rocky and inflammable terrain, one more behavior never before observed by wildfire managers.

Research shows that changes in climate create warmer, drier conditions, leading to longer and more active fire seasons. Increases in temperatures and the thirst of the atmosphere due to human--caused climate change have increased aridity of forest fuels during the fire season. These drivers were found to be responsible for over half the observed decrease in the moisture content of fuels in western U.S. forests from 1979 to 2015, and the doubling of forest fire burned area over the period 1984-2015. For much of the U.S. West, projections show that an average annual 1 degree C temperature increase would increase the median burned area per year by as much as 600 % in some types of forests. In the Southeastern United States modeling suggests increased fire risk and a longer fire season, with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.

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Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States during the last two decades.

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Data Demonstrating a Dramatic Increase in Wildfires

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Data Demonstrating a Dramatic Increase in Wildfires

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Since the 1980s, the area burned in million of acres has increased by a factor of ten compared to 2020.  This demonstrates how the increase in climate change over the same period has influenced the increase in wildfires throughout the country. Over the periods that Native Americans have been banned from cultural fire practices there had been no decrease in the amount of acres burned by wildfires.

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Figure 1. Wildfire Frequency in the United States, 1983-2021

Figure 2. Wildfire Extent in the United States, 1983-2021

Figure 3. Damage Caused by Wildfires in the United States, 1984-2020

Figure 6. Comparison of Monthly Burned Area Due to Wildfires in the United States Between 1984-2001 and 2002-2020

Figure 7. Comparison of Monthly Burned Area Due to Wildfires in the Eastern and Western United States Between 1984-2001 and 2002-2020

Key Points

Since 1983, the National Interagency Fire Center has documented an average of approximately 70,000 wildfires per year (see Figure 1). Compiled data from the Forest Service suggest that the actual total may be even higher for the first few years of nationwide data collection that can be compared. The data do not show an obvious trend during this time.

The extent of area burned by wildfires each year appears to have increased since the 1980s. According to National Interagency Fire Center data, of the 10 years with the largest acreage burned, all have occurred since 2004, including the peak year in 2015 (see Figure 2). This period coincides with many of the warmest years on record nationwide (see the U.S. and Global Temperature indicator). The largest increases have occurred during the spring and summer months (see Figure 6).

The late 1990s were a period of transition in certain climate cycles that tend to shift every few decades.¹⁸ This shift-combined with other ongoing changes in temperature, drought, and snowmelt-may have contributed to warmer, drier conditions that have fueled wildfires in parts of the western United States.19,20

Of the total area burned each year from 1984 to 2020, the proportion of burned land suffering severe damage has ranged from 5 to 23 percent (see "high" category in Figure 3).

Land area burned by wildfires varies by state. Fires burn more land in the western United States than in the East, and parts of the West and Southwest show the largest increase in burned acreage between the first half of the period of record in Figures 4 and 5 (1984-2001) and the second half (2002-2020). Burned acreage in the West has increased noticeably in nearly every month of the year (see Figure 7).

The peak of the U.S. wildfire season is occurring earlier (see Figure 6). In 1984-2001, burned area peaked in August. More recently, it has peaked in July. An average of 1.7 million acres burned in July of each year from 2002 to 2020.

Background

Together, forests, shrubland, and grassland cover more than half of the land area in the United States.¹ These ecosystems are important resources, both environmentally and economically. Although wildfires occur naturally and play a long-term role in the health of these ecosystems, changing wildfire patterns threaten to upset the status quo. Multiple studies have found that climate change has already led to an increase in wildfire season length, wildfire frequency, and burned area.2, ³ The wildfire season has lengthened in many areas due to factors including warmer springs, longer summer dry seasons, and drier soils and vegetation.⁴ Similarly, climate change threatens to increase the frequency, extent, and severity of fires through increased temperatures and drought (see the U.S. and Global Temperature and Drought indicators).⁵ Earlier spring melting and reduced snowpack (see the Snowpack indicator) result in decreased water availability during hot summer conditions, which in turn contributes to an increased wildfire risk, allowing fires to start more easily and burn hotter. These trends of longer wildfire seasons and larger wildfire size are predicted to continue as more frequent and longer droughts occur.⁶ In addition to climate change, other factors-land use, large-scale insect infestation, fuel availability (including invasive species such as highly flammable cheatgrass), and management practices, including fire suppression-play an important role in wildfire frequency and intensity. All of these factors influencing wildfires vary greatly by region and over time, as do precipitation, wind, temperature, vegetation types, and landscape conditions. Therefore, understanding changes in fire characteristics requires long-term records, a regional perspective, and consideration of many factors.⁷

Wildfires have the potential to harm property, livelihoods, and human health. Fire-related threats are increasing, especially as more people live in and around forests, grasslands, and other natural areas.⁸ According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, between 1980 and 2021 the United States had 20 wildfire events that caused more than $1 billion in damage; 16 of those have occurred since 2000.⁹ Over the past few decades, the United States has routinely spent more than $1 billion per year to fight wildfires, including $2.3 billion in 2020.¹⁰ These efforts have resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 firefighters since 1910.¹¹ Even in communities far downwind, wildfire smoke has been directly linked to poor air quality that can lead to significant health effects and costs to society (emergency department visits, hospital admissions, and deaths, often due to respiratory ailments).12, 13, 14, 15, ¹⁶

Beyond the human and societal impacts, wildfires also affect the Earth's climate. Forests in particular store large amounts of carbon. When they burn, they immediately release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which in turn contributes to climate change. After burning, forests also release carbon dioxide more gradually through decomposition.

About the Indicator

This indicator defines a wildfire as "a wildland fire originating from an unplanned ignition, such as lightning, volcanos, unauthorized and accidental human caused fires, and prescribed fires that are declared wildfires."¹⁷ This indicator tracks four aspects of wildfires over time: the total number of fires (frequency), the total land area burned (extent), the degree of damage that fires cause to the landscape (severity), and the acreage burned by fires starting in each month of the year (seasonal patterns).

The total area and total number of fires are tracked by the National Interagency Fire Center, which compiles reports from local, state, and federal agencies that are involved in fighting wildfires. The U.S. Forest Service tracked similar data using a different reporting system until 1997. Those data have been added to this indicator for comparison. Burn severity, state-level acreage, and monthly totals are based on data from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) project, which provides the location, ignition date, size, and other statistics for every individual wildfire that meets certain size criteria (≥ 1,000 acres in the western United States or ≥ 500 acres in the eastern United States). MTBS compares the "greenness" of satellite images taken before and after a fire to classify how severely the land has been burned. Burn severity provides an indication of the ecological damage and how long the effects of wildfires are likely to last.

Although some nationwide fire data have been collected since the early 1900s, this indicator starts in 1983 (Figures 1 and 2) and 1984 (Figures 3 through 7), when nationwide data collection became more complete and standardized. EPA divided the time period in Figures 5, 6, and 7 into two roughly equal halves to compare changes in wildfire characteristics over time.

About the Data

Indicator Notes

Many environmental impacts associated with climate change can affect the severity and timing of the wildfire season, including changes in temperature, precipitation, and drought. Short-term weather conditions (dryness, temperature, wind, lightning) influence the likelihood of ignition, where and how quickly a fire spreads, and how big it gets. Longer-term climate patterns also play a role by creating conditions that may be conducive to wildfire (for example, a multi-year regional drought). Human activities and land management practices also affect wildfire activity, and preferred practices in wildfire management have evolved over time, from older policies that favored complete wildfire prevention to more recent policies of wildfire suppression and controlled burns. Resources available to fight and manage wildfires can also influence the amount of area burned over time.

While this indicator is limited to "wildland" fires, it includes fires that encroach on-or perhaps started in-developed areas. Increased development in previously wild lands could also influence trends in wildfire frequency and extent. The total number of fires may also vary due to reporting irregularities, as fires that split or merge together across jurisdictional lines may be counted differently.

Along with the influence of ongoing climate change, wildfire patterns can be influenced by natural climate cycles that tend to shift every few decades. Thus, with less than four decades of data shown here, it might be challenging to draw conclusions about long-term trends. While a longer record would be ideal, data from before 1983 are not consistent or detailed enough nationally to be included in this indicator.

Data Sources

The full set of wildfire frequency and burned acreage data in Figures 1 and 2 comes from the National Interagency Fire Center, which compiles wildfire reports sent from local, state, and federal entities that are involved in fighting fires. These data are available online at: www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics. Additional data were provided by the U.S. Forest Service based on a different set of records, referred to as Smokey Bear Reports. Burn severity data, state-by-state acreage totals, and monthly acreage data in Figures 3 through 7 come from the MTBS multi-agency project, which maintains a database of wildfire events across the United States. These data are publicly available at: www.mtbs.gov/direct-download.

Technical Documentation

References

Learn about other indicators in this section

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Climate Change Indicators: Wildfires | US EPA

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This indicator tracks the frequency, extent, and severity of wildfires in the United States.

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Direct Correlation between Large Fires and Climate Change

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Direct Correlation between Large Fires and Climate Change

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Not only has climate change been a large factor in the increase in wildfires, but also the dried brush and dead leaves that aren't being properly managed have been a large contributing factor. "Climate change enhances the drying of organic matter in forests (the material that burns and spreads wildfire), and has doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States."

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Climate change has been a key factor in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the Western United States. Wildfire risk depends on a number of factors, including temperature, soil moisture, and the presence of trees, shrubs, and other potential fuel. All these factors have strong direct or indirect ties to climate variability and climate change. Climate change enhances the drying of organic matter in forests (the material that burns and spreads wildfire), and has doubled the number of large fires between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States.

Research shows that changes in climate create warmer, drier conditions. Increased drought, and a longer fire season are boosting these increases in wildfire risk. For much of the U.S. West, projections show that an average annual 1 degree C temperature increase would increase the median burned area per year as much as 600 percent in some types of forests. In the Southeastern United States modeling suggests increased fire risk and a longer fire season, with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.

Once a fire starts-more than 80 percent of U.S. wildfires are caused by people-warmer temperatures and drier conditions can help fires spread and make them harder to put out. Warmer, drier conditions also contribute to the spread of the mountain pine beetle and other insects that can weaken or kill trees, building up the fuels in a forest.

Land use and forest management also affect wildfire risk. Changes in climate add to these factors and are expected to continue to increase the area affected by wildfires in the United States.

Trends in the annual number of large fires in the western United States

Since 2000, 15 forest fires in the United States have caused at least $1 billion in damages each, mainly from the loss of homes and infrastructure, along with firefighting costs. The 2017 wildfire season was well above average, with deadly fires in California and throughout the West, including Montana, Oregon, and Washington state. The 2018 wildfire season went on to also break records as the deadliest and most destructive season on record in California. NOAA estimates the total costs of wildfires in 2017 and 2018 to be more than $40 billion. In 2019, wildfires caused an estimated $4.5 billion in damages in California and Alaska. Alaska's record-breaking heat and dry conditions over the summer months set the conditions for the state's historic wildfire season. In 2020, five of the six largest fires on record burned in California and Oregon saw historic levels of wildfire spread and damage. Wildfires across the West led to weeks-long periods of unhealthy air quality levels for millions of people.

Wildfire can affect:

Federal and State Budgets: U.S. Forest Service fire suppression expenditures had increased from about 15 percent of the agency's appropriated budget to more than 50 percent in 2017. Nationwide suppression costs in 2017 and 2018 ballooned to $2.9 billion and $3.1 billion respectively, while state wildfire expenditures have also increased substantially.

Public Health: The growing number of people in wild lands is increasing the risk to life, property and public health. Smoke reduces air quality and can cause eye and respiratory illness, especially among children and the elderly. Wildfires that burn in residential areas can melt plastic water pipes and cause contamination of water systems with a known carcinogen.

Natural Environment: Wildfires are a natural part of many ecosystems. Although wildfires produce a number of greenhouse gases and aerosols including carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon, the plants that re-colonize burned areas remove carbon from the atmosphere, generally leading to a net neutral effect on climate. However, when fires burn more frequently and consume larger areas, as they are doing with climate change, the released greenhouse gases may not be completely removed from the atmosphere if plants can't grow to maturity before burning, or if the plants that re-colonize are less efficient at carbon uptake.

How to Build Resilience

Communities, builders, homeowners, and forest managers can reduce the likelihood and impacts of wildfires by:

Discouraging developments (especially residential) near fire-prone forests through smart zoning rules.

Increasing the space between structures and nearby trees and brush, and clearing space between neighboring houses.

Incorporating fire-resistant design features and materials in buildings.

Increasing resources allocated to firefighting and fire prevention.

Removing fuels, such as dead trees, from forests that are at risk.

Developing recovery plans before a fire hits, and implementing plans quickly after a fire to reduce erosion, limit flooding, and minimize habitat damage.

The Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation portal helps communities understand and plan for their climate risks today and in the future, including a real-time map of wildfire, drought, flooding, and extreme heat across the United States.

For more details on wildfire resilience, read our report, Resilience Strategies for Wildfire.
Learn more about resilience by visiting our Climate Resilience Portal.

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Modeling suggests increased fire risk and a longer fire season, with at least a 30 percent increase from 2011 in the area burned by lightning-ignited wildfire by 2060.

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Wildfires Are Especially Threatening to Reservations

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Wildfires Are Especially Threatening to Reservations

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The article details how many reservations are already struggling to conserve water during the droughts that are common prior to wildfires. "In north-central Washington, hundreds of people in the town of Nespelem on the Colville Indian Agency were ordered to leave because of 'imminent and life-threatening' danger as the largest of five wildfires caused by dozens of Monday night lightning strikes tore through grass, sagebrush and timber." Although wildfires are damaging to all communities, reservations are already so deprived of necessities that the impacts are more harmful.

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BLY, Ore. - Fierce wildfires in the northwest are threatening American Indian tribal lands that already are struggling to conserve water and preserve traditional hunting grounds in the face of a Western drought.

Blazes in Oregon and Washington were among some 60 large, active wildfires that have destroyed homes and burned through close to a million acres (1,562 square miles, 4,047 square kilometers) in a dozen mostly Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

In north-central Washington, hundreds of people in the town of Nespelem on the Colville Indian Agency were ordered to leave because of "imminent and life-threatening" danger as the largest of five wildfires caused by dozens of Monday night lightning strikes tore through grass, sagebrush and timber.

Seven homes burned but four were vacant and the entire town evacuated safely before the fire arrived, said Andrew Joseph Jr., chairman of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation that includes more than 9,000 descendants of a dozen tribes.

Monte Piatote and his wife grabbed their pets and managed to flee but watched the fire burn the home where he'd lived since he was a child.

"I told my wife, I told her, 'Watch.' Then boom, there it was," Piatote told KREM-TV.

The confederation declared a state of emergency Tuesday and said the reservation was closed to the public and to industrial activity. The declaration said weather forecasts called for possible triple-digit temperatures and 25-mph (40-kph) winds on Wednesday into Thursday that could drive the flames.

In Oregon, the lightning-sparked Bootleg Fire that had destroyed at least 20 homes was raging through lands near the California border on Wednesday. At least 2,000 homes were threatened by the fire.

Mark Enty, a spokesman for the Northwest Incident Management Team 10 that is working to contain the fire, said that since he arrived to the area last week the Bootleg Fire has doubled in size each day.

"That's sort of like having a new fire every day," Enty said.

The blaze had spread over 315 square miles (816 square kilometers), an area larger than New York City. Firefighters for the third day in a row had to back off occasionally for their safety and "weather isn't going to change for the foreseeable future," said Rob Allen, an incident commander.

Crews were facing above-normal temperatures and bone-dry humidity coupled with afternoon gusts that were expected to create dangerous fire conditions through Wednesday, officials said. Members of the Oregon National Guard were expected to be deployed to help with road closures and traffic control in fire-affected areas.

The fire disrupted three transmission lines that provide electricity to California and the state's power grid operator asked for voluntary power conservation Monday. The California Independent System Operator said Tuesday that the grid was stable and with the forecast for cooler temperatures another call for conservation was not expected.

The fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest was burning through a region where the Klamath Tribes - comprised of three distinct indigenous peoples - have lived for millennia.

"There is definitely extensive damage to the forest where we have our treaty rights," said Don Gentry, the chairman of the Klamath Tribal Council in Chiloquin, Oregon, which is located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the Bootleg Fire.

"I am sure we have lost a number of deer to the fire," he said. "We are definitely concerned. I know there are cultural resource areas and sensitive areas that are likely the fire is going through."

The Klamath Tribes have been impacted by wildfires before, including one that burned 23 square miles (60 square kilometers) in southern Oregon last September. That fire damaged land where many of the Klamath tribal members hunt, fish and gather. The fire also burned the tribes' cemetery and at least one tribal member's house, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported in September.

The tribes are struggling with drought-caused problems. In past decades, they have fought to preserve minimum water levels in Upper Klamath Lake to preserve two species of federally endangered sucker fish that are central to their culture and heritage. Farmers draw much of their irrigation water from the same lake that's critical to the fish. Even before the fire erupted, extreme drought in southern Oregon had reduced water flows to historic lows.

In California, progress was reported on the state's largest fire so far this year. The Beckwourth Complex, a combined pair of lighting-ignited blazes, was almost 50% contained after blackening more than 145 square miles (375 square kilometers) near the Nevada state line.

Damage was still being tallied in the small rural community of Doyle, California, where flames swept in during the weekend and destroyed several homes, including Beverly Houdyshell's.

The 79-year-old said Tuesday that she's too old and too poor to rebuild and isn't sure what her future holds.

"What chance do I have to build another house, to have another home?" Houdyshell said. "No chance at all."

"I can't just buy another house, boom like that. I had insurance. I haven't heard from them yet. I called them but I haven't heard nothing."

A fire that began Sunday in the Sierra Nevada south of Yosemite National Park grew to nearly 15 square miles (39 square kilometers) but containment increased to 15%. Four unspecified buildings were destroyed.

Scientists say climate change has made the West much warmer and drier, and they warn that weather will get wilder as the world warms. They say extreme conditions are often from a combination of unusually random, short-term and natural weather patterns heightened by long-term, human-caused climate change. However, special studies are needed to determine how much global warming is to blame, if at all, for a single extreme weather event.

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Wildfires In The West Are Putting Parched Tribal Lands In Growing Danger

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BLY, Ore. - Fierce wildfires in the northwest are threatening American Indian tribal lands that already are struggling to conserve water and preserve traditional hunting grounds in the face of a Western drought.

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Documentation and Data of the Benefits of Fort Apache Indian Reservation's Controlled Wildfires

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Documentation and Data of the Benefits of Fort Apache Indian Reservation's Controlled Wildfires

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Cataloging the acreage and history of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation's burnings, the book describes how beneficial Native American communities have been for containing forests. Also, the experts how varying climates need specialized treatments., which specific reservations have mastered after centuries of practice.

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Scientific Research Backs Native American Contained Fires

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Scientific Research Backs Native American Contained Fires

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During October of 2021, the Yurok, Karuk, and Hupa of the Yurok reservation participated in a contained fire to heal the land and forests to prevent future wildfires. Despite there being bans against their cultural practices, "Scientific research increasingly confirms what tribes argued all along: Low-intensity burns on designated parcels, under the right conditions, reduce the risk by consuming dead wood and other fire fuels on forest floors."

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For tribes, ‘good fire’ a key to restoring nature and people

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WEITCHPEC, Calif. (AP) — Elizabeth Azzuz stood in prayer on a Northern California mountainside, arms outstretched, grasping a handmade torch of dried wormwood branches, the fuel her Native American ancestors used for generations to burn underbrush in thick forest.

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Necessity of More Controlled Fires in Forests

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Necessity of More Controlled Fires in Forests

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This extensive study documents have fuel treatments have been mainly prescribed burns, mechanical thinning, and managed wildfire; however, racism within the government has had a negative tone towards controlled burns as Native Americans were the primary contributors.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Rebecca K. Miller

2. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Christopher B. Field & Katharine J. Mach

3. Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Christopher B. Field

4. Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

Katharine J. Mach

5. Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

Katharine J. Mach

Contributions

R.K.M., C.B.F. and K.J.M. conceived and designed the research. R.K.M. conducted interviews and analysed the data. R.K.M., C.B.F. and K.J.M. contributed to results and discussion. R.K.M. wrote the paper. C.B.F. and K.J.M. provided comments.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rebecca K. Miller.

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Barriers and enablers for prescribed burns for wildfire management in California - Nature Sustainability

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Prescribed burns to reduce fuel can mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires. However, multiple barriers limit their deployment, resulting in their underutilization, particularly in forests. We evaluate sociopolitical barriers and opportunities for greater deployment in California, an area recurrently affected by catastrophic fires.

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Societal Pushback against Controlled Fires

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Societal Pushback against Controlled Fires

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"However, wildfire suppression has historically diverted federal funding from wildfire prevention. Federal government employees and academics recommended strategic resource allocation between wildfire suppression and prevention. Non-profit representatives listed inconsistent funding for fuel treatments and an emphasis on private mechanical thinning as limitations on prescribed burns in national forests."

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Rebecca K. Miller

2. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Christopher B. Field & Katharine J. Mach

3. Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Christopher B. Field

4. Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA

Katharine J. Mach

5. Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

Katharine J. Mach

Contributions

R.K.M., C.B.F. and K.J.M. conceived and designed the research. R.K.M. conducted interviews and analysed the data. R.K.M., C.B.F. and K.J.M. contributed to results and discussion. R.K.M. wrote the paper. C.B.F. and K.J.M. provided comments.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rebecca K. Miller.

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Barriers and enablers for prescribed burns for wildfire management in California - Nature Sustainability

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Prescribed burns to reduce fuel can mitigate the risk of catastrophic wildfires. However, multiple barriers limit their deployment, resulting in their underutilization, particularly in forests. We evaluate sociopolitical barriers and opportunities for greater deployment in California, an area recurrently affected by catastrophic fires.

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Climate Change beyond Wildfires has had Dramatic Impacts on Tribes

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Climate Change beyond Wildfires has had Dramatic Impacts on Tribes

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Also coastal erosions and storms are destroying land, yet tribes are struggling to receive federal aid to combat the immense damages. "And now, climate change is quickly making that marginal land uninhabitable. The first Americans face the loss of home once again."

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Dispossessed, Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard (Published 2021)

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Many Native people were forced into the most undesirable areas of America, first by white settlers, then by the government. Now, parts of that marginal land are becoming uninhabitable.

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How Some Tribes are Already Reacting to Climate Change

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How Some Tribes are Already Reacting to Climate Change

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As climate change so dramatically impacts tribes, many reservations have already put forward legislation to mitigate the effects of the dramatic shifts in temperature. The Black Feet "Recognizing the threats posed by climate change, indigenous communities are adapting, and many are leading the way in adapting to climate change and building resilience."

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Imagine watching the sea rise closer to your home each year, fearing it will flood your home or erode the shore so much that your home collapses. Yet this very challenge caused the Native Alaskan village of Shishmaref to decide to relocate to a new place. Many Alaskan communities, like the Yupik, are seeing a loss of traditional foods and an erosion of their culture as ice melts and sea levels rise.

Sea level rise, Arctic ice melt, and displacement are only three of many climate change impacts facing indigenous communities in the United States. According to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, overarching impacts also include loss of traditional knowledge, increased food insecurity, changes in water availability, thawing permafrost, and relocation. These impacts require creative planning and action by communities who want to be resilient in a changing climate.
Recognizing the threats posed by climate change, indigenous communities are adapting, and many are leading the way in adapting to climate change and building resilience.
Here are four examples of tribal climate change adaptation initiatives:

Wetlands restoration helps protect water and wildlife habitat as climate change increases drought risk. The Yakama Nation's recent wetlands restoration project had the co-benefit of bringing a traditional food, called wapato, back to their lands. Their work shows how climate-adaptative efforts can combine with with other goals, like supporting access to locally-based foods, improving health care, and strengthening culture.

Several departments in the Blackfeet Nation are embarking on a joint project to increase protections of beaver and to restore riparian areas. These efforts will increase natural water storage and increase resilience against drought.

In October 2015, the Confederates Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) created the EAGLES Program to engage community youth in sustainability projects, asking youth to take leadership in environmental sustainability and climate change adaptation. EAGLES are junior high and high school students who serve as "Environmental Advocates for Global Logical Ecological Sustainability" in local schools. As of September, 2017, there were 40 EAGLES in Arlee, Montana and about 45 active members in St. Ignatius, Montana. Chapters have recently begun in other area schools. EAGLES have built a school and community garden and a greenhouse to encourage local food production, educated school staff about how to reduce energy consumption in schools, cleaned parks, improved school grounds, increased environmental awareness among students, and have initiated and overseen school recycling programs.

The Mescalero Apache Tribe has undertaken a variety of adaptation initiatives, including constructing a pond to serve as an alternative water supply to the fish hatchery, adding protection in the event of severe flooding (see more here).

Many other adaptation initiatives are underway, especially as more tribes complete their climate adaptation plans.

Next, learn about the Climate Warriors Internship Program, here in the Blackfeet Nation.

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Indigenous communities are adapting to climate change

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Imagine watching the sea rise closer to your home each year, fearing it will flood your home or erode the shore so much that your home collapses. Yet this very challenge caused the Native Alaskan village of Shishmaref to decide to relocate to a new place.

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Increase in Tribal Climate Change Action Plans

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Increase in Tribal Climate Change Action Plans

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Navajo leaders have exclaimed that “Tribes have always been adapting to climate change — now we have to adapt even faster." As they are beginning to limit the pollution caused by truckloads for materials, many tribes throughout America have adopted climate action policies. During 2019, the Karuk tribe stepped up their battle against climate change and released a climate adaption plan with recommendations for prescribed burnings.

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Photo courtesy of Swinomish Indian Tribal Community

With their deep ties to the land and reliance on fishing, hunting, and gathering, indigenous tribes are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Now, native communities across North America are stepping up to adopt climate action plans to protect their way of life.

On a hot summer's day, marine ecologist Courtney Greiner walks the shore of a rocky Washington beach at low tide with a handful of staff and interns. They stake out the ground and hunch down, digging up the top two inches of mud, silt, and gravel looking for baby clams.

For thousands of years, the indigenous peoples of the West Coast would build rock walls at the low tide line, allowing sand to pile up behind them, making the slope of the beach gentler, and expanding the area of the intertidal zone that clams like to call home. These simple clam gardens are effective at boosting shellfish numbers, and have long been used to improve food security for traditional peoples.

Now the Swinomish are reviving the old idea to build the first modern clam garden in the United States. Greiner, who works for the Swinomish tribe, is collecting the data that will help the tribe determine the garden's best location. The project aims to boost clam numbers, providing both a sense of purpose for the community and additional food as other resources, like salmon, decline.

This is just part of the Swinomish's plan to ensure the ongoing prosperity of their people in the face of a changing climate. "They were the first native community - and really one of the first communities, period - to make climate adaptation a priority," says Meade Krosby, a conservation biologist with the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group. The tribe's climate proclamation came out in 2007, and their action plan, published in 2010, was one of the first such documents in the United States. "They're early adopters and really innovative," she says.

The Swinomish have already launched projects aimed at helping the community adapt to a shifting climate in the Pacific Northwest. To protect salmon runs, the tribe is working on the Skagit River to create better spawning beds and is planting trees to provide shade and reduce river temperatures. In addition, the tribe is fighting to block mining operations in the headwaters of the Skagit in British Columbia, which could impact waters downstream.

"Tribes have always been adapting to climate change - now we have to adapt even faster," says one Navajo leader.

Another project aims to restore a healthy population of native Olympia oysters, long threatened by pollution and crowding out by competitive Pacific oysters and now impacted by ocean acidification. Workers have brought in truckloads of oyster shells and dumped them on beaches to provide new homes for imported natives; the imports grow well, says Greiner, but so far have yet to produce a next generation of shellfish. "It's a learning process," she says. A site for the first clam garden should be chosen by next year. And a wetlands project is documenting the local plants that have ecological and cultural importance to the Swinomish, as part of efforts to better manage the changing coast for salmon and farmers alike.

Across North America, other indigenous communities are stepping up to formulate and enact climate action plans to protect their way of life. In 2019, the Karuk tribe of northern California released its climate adaptation plan with a recommendation to return to prescribed burning, an old idea that might help to ease California's wildfire problems. The Tulalip tribes of Washington state are relocating nuisance beavers from urban areas back to traditional watersheds to help lower river temperatures and aid salmon populations; they are also redirecting agricultural runoff for electricity generation. The Jamestown S'Klallam tribe in Washington is removing invasive butterfly bushes from the banks of the Dungeness River to help protect its salmon. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana are gathering and planting seedlings of the whitebark pine that are more resistant to warming-related diseases such as blister rust. Alaskan tribes are using microscopy to identify harmful algae blooms spurred by warming waters. The list goes on.

"Indigenous peoples have always been on the front lines," says Nikki Cooley, who grew up without electricity or running water on the Navajo Nation reservation and now co-manages the Tribes and Climate Change Program for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP) in Flagstaff, Arizona. "Tribes have always been adapting to climate change. Now we have to adapt even faster."

As Krosby puts it, indigenous peoples "have unique connections to the land and are feeling impacts the earliest and most severely." One study found that coastal indigenous communities eat 15 times as much seafood as non-indigenous people in the same country - food that is being heavily impacted by everything from pollution to warming waters and ocean acidification. In the far north, buildings are collapsing and indigenous communities relocating as permafrost thaws, and traditional practices like reindeer herding are being threatened as winter snow changes to freezing rain, which locks up winter forage like lichens under ice.

"It's happening all over the world," says Brian Cladoosby, chairman of the Swinomish tribal community. "I have seen an elder standing on their cemetery in [the Pacific island nation of] Tuvalu and it was covered with water - they can't bury their people there anymore."

These are communities that have relied on the land for generations, building an intimate knowledge of the natural cycles of plants, animals, and weather. Unlike the traditional Western worldview that humanity can and should seek dominion over the environment, indigenous populations tend to view humanity as part of an interconnected whole. "We knew if we impacted one part of the web, the whole thing could fall apart," says Cladoosby.

Adds Cooley, "We put our non-human relatives first, meaning the trees, the sky, the water. We don't treat them as objects to be studied in a lab. We revere them."

Indigenous communities tend to think many generations ahead when planning how to utilize resources.

Native Knowledge: What ecologists are learning from indigenous people. Read more.

Indigenous communities also tend to think many generations ahead when planning how to utilize resources - a lot further than a U.S. presidential cycle allows. "America can't even think past 4 years," says Don Sampson, Umatilla Tribe member and head of the climate change project for the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI), a 57-tribe consortium. "It's a short-sighted country."

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's recent reports have acknowledged with "high confidence" that adaptation efforts benefit from the inclusion of local and indigenous knowledge. "One of the things that comes across really clearly is the fact that indigenous peoples are by far the most effective stewards of biodiversity," says Krosby. "They do the best job." One study showed, for example, that deforestation rates across the Amazon were two to three times lower in indigenous-held lands. According to the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, indigenous peoples hold or manage a disproportionate amount of formally protected areas and areas with low human impact: these groups occupy 28 percent of the planet's land, but more than 40 percent of protected areas. In Canada, the government funded an Indigenous Guardians program in 2017, recognizing that First Nations communities are well placed to serve as stewards of the land.

Cooley estimates that ITEP has worked with representatives of some 300 of the 574 tribes in the United States and that there are now more than 50 tribal climate action plans in effect. "In the past five years, tribal climate action plans have exploded," she says. Sampson's goal is to ramp that up to 100 percent within five years: "We have to accelerate the ability and capacity of the tribes; we want all tribes to identify the impacts and have a plan for that."

Sampson also notes that many tribes are making huge strides on energy independence, weaning themselves off fossil fuels to protect both the environment and their economic future: the Navajo nation, for example, long reliant on coal, has made big investments in solar power.

The Swinomish tribe makes its home in western Washington, on an island carved out by the narrow Swinomish Channel. The land is low and at risk from sea level rise: A five-foot increase this century - at the high-end of sea level rise estimates - could swamp more than 1,100 acres of the 10,000 acre reservation, including all its agricultural lands. Part of the Swinomish territory is particularly sacred as a fishing and shellfish gathering spot, says Cladoosby. "One year, just a normal tide, not a storm surge, covered up that area," he recalls. "That had never happened before. It was eye opening for us."

About half of the reservation's acreage is forested, and so is at risk from wildfire, especially in a hotter, drier climate. The tribe has just over 1,000 members, many of them relying on "first foods" - from shellfish to deer - for their welfare. The surrounding Salish Sea has seen salmon populations crash mysteriously over the past 30 years; the impacts of climate change - including reduced stream flows and warmer stream temperatures - have been cited as one culprit. Dungeness crab and shellfish larvae are in some places literally dissolving from ocean acidification.

For many indigenous groups, environmental health and human health are deeply intertwined.

In the Skagit River Basin, a shift from snowfall to rain in the surrounding mountains is projected to boost winter river flow but reduce summer flow, drying up tributaries and making waters warmer just as salmon spawn in late summer and fall. "When there's no water for the salmon to return to, that's a serious problem," says Cladoosby.

"There've been times I've been really negative looking forward," says Joseph Williams, a Swinomish tribal senator with five children. "Things are looking pretty bleak, especially for our salmon." But these projects, he says, are proving inspirational to the next generation, helping to bring people together. "As long as we keep our kids excited about taking care of our environment, things remain optimistic," he says.

For the Swinomish, as for many indigenous groups, it makes little sense to talk about environmental health and human health separately; they are deeply intertwined, with community cohesion and traditional food security being equally vital. Resilience to sea level rise doesn't just mean managing wetlands, but also combating feelings of despair. Work led by the Swinomish tribe's environmental health analyst Jamie Donatuto and tribal historic preservation officer Larry Campbell has created a set of health indicators based on these cultural values. They hope this approach will help researchers across the world think beyond simple morbidity and mortality as the only important measures of welfare.

Such work is often done in collaboration with non-indigenous scientists and governments. The University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group last year released a Tribal Climate Tool, developed in close partnership with relevant tribes, that highlights specific climate impacts expected in local regions - from the number of hot summer days to inches of rainfall expected in coming decades - so tribes can see what they are facing and make decisions about how to adapt.

A number of such organizations are pushing this work forward in collaboration with local tribes, including the U.S. Geological Survey's regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers; Krosby is deputy director for the northwest division. And there's the Pacific Northwest Tribal Climate Change Network, based at the University of Oregon, which partners with Sampson's division at the ATNI. In October, ATNI's climate summit in Seattle is expected to attract tribal leaders from across North America, as they work on a national tribal climate crisis agenda for 2020 and beyond. "It's a revolution that's happening," says Sampson. "Watch the tribes: they are going to lead us."

For Cladoosby, part of that revolution involves re-awakening traditional connections to the land, which have eroded in recent centuries. "Part of the assimilation policy was taking stewardship of the environment out of our hands," he says, leaving many communities locked in a cycle of trauma and cultural loss, along with drug and alcohol abuse. "Part of breaking that cycle is getting back that respect for the environment."

Food Insecurity: Arctic heat is threatening indigenous life. Read more.

"Right now, we are taking baby steps," says Cladoosby. The Swinomish are still collecting data, securing treaty rights, educating their own people and others, he says. Alongside efforts to adapt and ensure resilience in the face of local change, political activism is also a big part of the picture as it can prevent some development and ensure that tribes maintain control over their lands. He acknowledges it will take time to establish long-term sustainable solutions. "We live in a pollution-based economy; it is based on making money and polluting the landscape," Cladoosby says. "Trying to change that mindset is like trying to turn a tanker. It doesn't happen over night."
Correction, February 13, 2020: A caption in an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified a photo as showing Swinomish tribal members preparing a new clam garden in Washington state. They were participating in a clam garden restoration in British Columbia.

Nicola Jones is a freelance journalist based in Pemberton, British Columbia, just outside of Vancouver. With a background in chemistry and oceanography, she writes about the physical sciences, most often for the journal Nature. She has also contributed to Scientific American, Globe and Mail, and New Scientist and serves as the science journalist in residence at the University of British Columbia. More →

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How Native Tribes Are Taking the Lead on Planning for Climate Change

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With their deep ties to the land and reliance on fishing, hunting, and gathering, indigenous tribes are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Now, native communities across North America are stepping up to adopt climate action plans to protect their way of life.

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Recommendation of Return to Native Practices

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Recommendation of Return to Native Practices

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This article recommends that Americans should resort back to Native American practices that align with their cultural practices of respecting the environment. "In addition, there are places in the world like Canada, like parts of Amazon, and potentially now parts of the United States, where to preserve land as a carbon sink, one of the strategies and policies is being pursued is like Indigenous conservation of the land, protection of the lands to make sure that the carbon stays in the forest and in the soil."

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During 2020, Reservations across the West Coast Faced High Numbers of Wildfires

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During 2020, Reservations across the West Coast Faced High Numbers of Wildfires

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Not only were the fires damaging to the communities that are already struggling and the fires are ravaging through sacred land, but Native Americans were forced to break Covid restrictions and expose themselves to others to combat the growing fires. "In Washington, the five fires that started in early September heavily impacted the Colville Reservation, resulting in the loss of over 80 homes, the destruction of over 200,000 acres of land, and one death. In California, the Slater fire has burned down the homes of Karuk Tribal members and Tribal staff and the Red Salmon complex fire is burning an area that is sacred to the Karuk Peoples." Multiple reservations across multiple states are suffering from the lack of care from the U.S. government. Denied masks for air quality and the pandemic, farmers are forced into the fields with no protection and limited yields.

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This year's wildfire season, which started as early as mid-May in California, has been disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities in two very different ways. The first is the reality of fires burning through Tribal r eservations as well as on sacred lands. The second is the reality of Indigenous migrant farm workers, who are already a vulnerable population without much option but to keep working despite the pandemic, and now, are exposed to the toxic air quality caused by wildfire smoke. A high percentage of the farm workers working in Washington, Oregon, and California are undocumented migrant workers, and many come from Indigenous communities.

In Washington, the five fires that started in early September heavily impacted the Colville Reservation, resulting in the loss of over 80 homes, the destruction of over 200,000 acres of land, and one death. In California, the Slater fire has burned down the homes of Karuk Tribal members and Tribal staff and the Red Salmon complex fire is burning an area that is sacred to the Karuk Peoples. Also in California, farm workers haven't been guaranteed the most basic of protections against COVID-19 and the smoke from wildfires. Even though state and agricultural groups have reportedly distributed millions of N-95 masks to employers, farmworker rights prote ction groups have reported that hardly any workers have actually received the masks. Because of the fact that many of the workers are undocumented, they are afraid to report violations, and similarly, are unable to choose not to work despite the toxic air quality. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an air quality index (AQI) that exceeds 150 is unhealthy for the general population, and in California, the AQI has far exceeded this amount in many areas.

In Oregon, the organization Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) reported that farm workers were being asked to work despite Level 2 evacuation warnings and hazardous air quality. According to PCUN, Oregon Occupational Safety and Health (Oregon OSHA) and the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) recommended a halt to outdoor work activity when air quality exceeds 151 AQI, as well as rearranging schedules so that workers could get relief from smoke exposure, and providing N-95 masks where and when applicable. In mid-September, air quality has far exceeded this amount, though workers were still being asked to report for work.

As of September 21, 2020, over 40,000 fires have burned close to 7 million acres of land. This exceeds the 10-year average by one million acres. What we are seeing are the consequences of decades of fire suppression, the federal government's preferred tactic for dealing with wildfires, which ignores generations of traditional Indigenous knowledge regarding fire management.

At one time, before the advent of colonization and the forced displacement of Indigenous Peoples, the risk of fire was managed via what is now called cultural burning. Cultural burning practices encompass different techniques of controlled burning that have been passed down by Indigenous Peoples living in areas with high risk of wildfires. The key to cultural burning is that the practice reflects an intimate understanding of the landscape, as opposed to federal and state tactics, which seek to suppress all fire without acknowledging its potential benefits. In California and Oregon, religious ceremonies related to cultural burning were banned by the mid-1800s, with Tribal members being shot by law enforcement over fire disputes as recently as the 1930s.

In more recent times, Indigenous leaders in California and Oregon have begun to push for government-sanctioned land management practices to include aspects of cultural burning. A similar movement is happening in Australia, after the devastation of the wildfires that burned over 11 million acres of land in Western Australia over the course of August 2019 through March 2020. In the Northwest Territories, cultural burning practices have remained largely intact as part of Aboriginal fire and land management practices, resulting in a 50 percent decrease in bushfire destruction. According to Oliver Costello (Bundjalung Jagun), CEO of the Firesticks Alliance, "Greater devastating fires are the future for Australia if we continue to apply short term thinking to what is a long-term problem, [one] that has been 200 years in the making." This sentiment could apply to California, Oregon, and Washington as well, where the ban of cultural burning practices over the last 200 years has resulted in the accumulation of small trees, grass, brush, leaves, and other forest debris that provide the fuel needed for a wildfire to grow into a severe burn. Climate change and rising temperatures make these landscapes every more fire-prone than they already were.

In Northern California, fire experts from the North Fork Mono, Karuk, and Yurok Peoples have begun to partner with the Forest Service to integrate traditional practices, including cultural burning, into governmental land management plans. The state of California has committed to reducing undergrowth on half-a-million acres, and the federal government has a similar goal. Unfortunately, this is not an easy problem to fix, as fire cannot be easily added back into an ecological system that has been impacted by decades of fire suppression. Another problem is the general lack of governmental consensus. President Trump blamed the severity of the wildfires solely on poor forest management and suggested that the solution be an increase in logging, ignoring the impact of climate change, as well as the benefits of restoring traditional Indigenous forest management practices. Within the state of California, changes in forest management policy have also been made difficult due to r egional air regulators who still require burn permits due to concerns over smoke and air pollution. Only certain counties offer special burn permits for Tribes to engage in cultural burning practices.

The Karuk Tribe, whose lands span northwestern California and southern Oregon, put together the Somes Bar Integrated Fire Management Project, which combines strategic forest thinning with controlled burns in a groundbreaking piece of policy that incorporates the most Indigenous knowledge into traditional policy in the United States to date. The project has stalled in the early stages due to continued resistance from federal officials to allow Tribal members to engage in controlled burns, as well as the recurrence of devastating fire seasons, which by necessity push officials back into using fire suppression tactics to deal with the problem in the short-term.

The result is a job left dangerously half-done. Karuk fire management professionals completed the first part of the project, which entailed strategic forest thinning. The resulting collection of slash piles, composed of debris and branches, were never burned as was originally intended. Federal officials were too busy dealing with the catastrophic wildfire season to arrange for their own people to do the controlled burns, and they did not want to turn the responsibility over to the Karuk Tribe, citing liability issues, despite the fact that the Tribe has members who are certified in controlled burn management. What is left is a collection of fuel piles that could make an already catastrophic fire season worse. Bill Tripp (Karuk), the director of natural resources and environmental policy for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources, wrote in an article for The Guardian that the federal government keeps giving "excuses, not solutions." Excuses have ranged from lack of environmental clearance under the National Environmental Policy Act, the previously mentioned liability concerns, lack of personnel to supervise the burn, and the latest - COVID-19.

The problem is not simply one of crisis management, but also one of Indigenous rights, Tribal sovereignty, and cultural preservation. According to Tripp, "Overcoming the structural racism at the root of this problem has been a multi-generational task. It shouldn't have to be." The multi-generational task doesn't just involve the fight to be included in governmental land management policy, but also the need to ensure that the traditional knowledge held by the elders of different Indigenous Peoples is being passed on before it is lost.

Photo by Tony Salas.

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West Coast Fires Disproportionately Affect Indigenous Communities

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This year's wildfire season, which started as early as mid-May in California, has been disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities in two very different ways. The first is the reality of fires burning through Tribal r eservations as well as on sacred lands.

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Federal Government Denial of Climate Change Impacts on Wildfires for Centuries

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Federal Government Denial of Climate Change Impacts on Wildfires for Centuries

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The US government has rejected the notion that wildfires have increased in frequency and intensity due to climate change. The relationship had been rejected, and therefore there were no actions put forward to limit the effects of climate change on the forests by following Native American practices of controlled fires."In North American grasslands, decadal-scale wet periods facilitated widespread fire activity because of the abundance of fuel promoted by pluvial episodes. In these settings, human impacts on fire regimes are assumed to be independent of climate, thereby diminishing the strength of climate–fire relationships."

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Moving, Once Again, due to America's Wrongdoings

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Moving, Once Again, due to America's Wrongdoings

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The Biden administration is offering money to help tribes move away from rivers and coastlines to help mitigate the effects of climate change on the reservations. However, this neglects the importance of ancestral land and is merely just a bandaid to the overall issue of climate change directly harming Native American land. Native Americans shouldn't have to move because the U.S. was neglectful with their use of the land, yet if they don't their belongings and homes might be subjected to complete destruction.

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Progressive Action Plans Established Throughout the Years

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Progressive Action Plans Established Throughout the Years

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During 2021 alone, "40 wildfire prevention programs, including 22 Tribally-managed programs" were established within tribes and those action plans "serve 1,102 communities." Native Americans have been dedicated to combating climate change and with that wild fires as the issue arises, not after the fact as the majority of Americans do.

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Division of Wildland Fire Management | Indian Affairs

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The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Division of Wildland Fire Management (DWFM) is responsible for the development and implementation of policies and standards for all wildland fire management in Indian Country, a total of approximately 69 million acres, through either direct, self-determined or self-gove…

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Tribes have been at the Forefront of Combating Climate Change and Putting Forward Action Plans to Preserve their Land

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Tribes have been at the Forefront of Combating Climate Change and Putting Forward Action Plans to Preserve their Land

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Despite Native Americans being one of the most respectful communities of the land, they are being dramatically hurt by climate change. They've noticed the land change from early on and have been some of the first communities to enact legislation and action that will benefit their land rather than continue to harm it through dangerous practices. "In 2010, the Swinomish became one of the first communities to assess the problems posed by a warming planet and enact a climate action plan. An additional 50 Native American tribes have followed, creating climate strategies to protect their lands and cultures, ahead of most U.S. communities."

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For 10,000 years, the Swinomish tribe has fished the waters of northwestern Washington, relying on the bounty of salmon and shellfish not only as a staple of its diet but as a centerpiece of its culture. At the beginning of the fishing season, the tribe gathers on the beach for a First Salmon ceremony, a feast honoring the return of the migratory fish that binds the generations of a tribe that calls itself the People of the Salmon.

At the ceremony's conclusion, single salmon are ferried by boat in four directions - north to Padilla Bay, east to the Skagit River, south to Skagit Bay and west to Deception Pass - and eased into the water with a prayer that they will tell other salmon how well they were treated.

In recent years, though, the tribe's harvest, diminished by vanishing habitat and warming waters fueled by climate change, hasn't been sufficient to feed the hundreds of people who come to pay homage to their ancestors and to the fish that sustained them.

"We don't have that abundance anymore," said Lorraine Loomis, an elder who has managed the tribal fishery for 40 years. "To get ceremonial fish, we buy it and freeze it."

For the Swinomish, perched on a vulnerable, low-lying reservation on Fidalgo Island, the effects of a warming world have been a gut punch.

The tribe has responded with an ambitious, multipronged strategy to battle climate change and improve the health of the land and the water and the plants, animals and people who thrived in harmony for generations. In 2010, the Swinomish became one of the first communities to assess the problems posed by a warming planet and enact a climate action plan. An additional 50 Native American tribes have followed, creating climate strategies to protect their lands and cultures, ahead of most U.S. communities.

The Swinomish see the tasks beyond addressing shoreline risk and restoring habitats. They look at climate adaptation and resilience with the eyes of countless generations. They recognize that the endangered "first foods" - clams, oysters, elk, traditional plants and salmon - are not mere resources to be consumed. They are central to their values, beliefs and practices and, therefore, to their spiritual, cultural and community well-being.

Loomis is 80. Every member of her family, from her grandfather to her nine great-grandchildren, has fished the tribe's ancestral waters. She has watched over the decades as the salmon disappeared and her family turned to crab, geoduck and sea cucumbers. She's seen the salmon season drop to only a few days per species from the eight months - May through December - of decades past in order to protect populations. The Skagit River is the last waterway in the continental United States that's home to all five species of Pacific salmon.

Progress has been slow; some researchers say it could be 90 years before the salmon recover. Loomis is taking the long view. "If I didn't believe we would recover [the fishery], I guess I wouldn't still be working on this," she said.

In recent years, the tribe has fostered salmon recovery through a variety of projects. It has restored tidelands and channels, planted trees along streambeds to cool warming waters, and collaborated with farmers to increase stream setbacks to improve water quality.

Restoring salmon populations is just part of an ambitious climate action plan to blunt the effects of increased flooding, ocean acidification, rising river temperatures, more-destructive storms and habitat loss.

The Swinomish are rebuilding oyster reefs for the native Olympia oyster. They're planning the first modern clam garden in the United States on the reservation's tidelands, reviving an ancient practice. They're monitoring deer and elk populations through camera traps to understand the climate change pressures and to inform hunting limits. And they have ongoing wetland restoration projects to explore preserving native plants and to help naturally manage coastal flooding.

"They're doing really innovative climate adaptation," said Meade Krosby, a senior scientist with the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington. "They were way ahead of the curve. And that really shouldn't be surprising, because the tribes have shown tremendous leadership in climate adaptation and mitigation."

While the Swinomish have been pioneers, they are among an increasing number of Indigenous communities across the country that have created climate plans guided by science and culture.

The Tulalip tribes, neighbors to the south, are relocating nuisance beavers from urban areas to streams with salmon to improve water quality and lower the temperature, reduce sediment flowing into streams and mitigate the effects of increasingly intense storms. The Karuk tribe of Northern California has a 232-page plan that calls for prescribed burning to reduce increasing wildfires and removing dams to help decreasing salmon and eel populations.

The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes of Montana have a resilience plan that calls for prescribed burns and restoring whitebark pine, a key part of tribal culture. They plan to identify trees resilient to blister rust - a fungus exacerbated by climate change - collect their seeds and eventually plant 100,000 seedlings on their lands.

And in Alaska, a partnership of 11 tribes has formed to identify harmful algae blooms so that it's clear when shellfish can be safely harvested.

Native Americans acutely feel the effects of the changing climate because they were forced onto the most vulnerable lands, places that were of little use to others, said Nikki Cooley, co-manager of the Tribes and Climate Change Program for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals.

"There's that big push to address climate change because we're feeling the effects more so than other places," said Cooley, 40, who grew up without electricity or running water, herding sheep in the sprawling Navajo Nation reservations of the Arizona desert.

The institute has consulted with more than 300 of the 574 tribes in the United States, Cooley said. It's natural that Indigenous people who have lived with the land for generations, attuned to the cycles of nature, would be leaders in adapting to climate change and marrying that to culture and health. "We've always been taught and are still being told we have to preserve for the future generations," she added.

'A symbiotic respect'

An 1855 treaty established the Swinomish Reservation, a 15-square-mile skinny rectangle on Fidalgo Island with 2,900 acres of tidelands and 7,450 acres of uplands. The tribe, which has about 1,000 members, owns a casino, an RV park and a golf course on the island 80 miles north of Seattle. It leases 420 acres of the reservation to a planned community of 2,000 people.

The hydrology of the area has been radically altered over a century, destroying critical habitat for fish and wildlife. For example, the Swinomish Channel, once a complex waterway on the eastern edge of the reservation, was dredged and 900 acres of tidelands were diked and drained in 1937, blocking the way for young salmon to reach the tidal channels critical to their development as places to feed, grow and rest.

In early 2006, a 100-year storm struck the island, causing damaging flooding. Later that year, another storm downed trees and power lines, isolating the residents and causing evacuations. Those extreme weather events helped spur the tribe to examine a future imperiled by climate change.

Their plans merge traditional and academic resources. When looking at ways to protect wetlands, Todd Mitchell, the tribe's director of environmental protection, discovered that knowledge about traditional plantings passed down through the generations was lost. So he turned to the University of Washington, which had archived notes by ethnographers and anthropologists who had interviewed tribe elders in the 1950s and 1960s.

A tribal member who earned a geology degree from Dartmouth College and a master's degree at Washington State University, Mitchell returned to work for the tribe 20 years ago. "I think the missing piece - and I've been working on it ever since I got here - is how to take this straight-up science in the academic sense and put it together with traditional knowledge."

One way the tribe's approach differs from others is an innovative focus on community health. While the health effects of a changing climate have become a focus in recent years, the Swinomish, typically, have developed a broader view.

Jamie Donatuto, the tribe's environmental health officer, and Larry Campbell, a 71-year-old tribal elder, have created a tool, Indigenous Health Indicators, that goes beyond typical morbidity and mortality measures and considers ecosystem health, social and cultural beliefs, and values integral to a community. "It's a very different way of thinking about health," she said.

Seen through that lens, restoring "first foods" is important not just for diet and nutrition but for nourishment of the soul. Living somewhere for a long time fosters a sense of place, and a sense of place fosters stewardship.

"It's a different worldview," said Donatuto, who has a doctorate in resource management and environmental sustainability from the University of British Columbia. "The salmon and the crabs and the clams are relatives. They're living relatives. They're not just resources. And so you treat them with a symbiotic respect. They feed you because you take care of them. It's a very different way of thinking about why these areas are important."

Donatuto and Campbell have created an index of six health indicators: cultural use, community connection, self-determination, resiliency, transferring traditional knowledge across generations, and natural resource security.

"We believe that if we can go back to the foundation of our teachings, the foundation of what our elders knew, that it would help us in the long run," Campbell said, adding that merging traditional knowledge with Western science is "the best of both worlds."

Plans for the clam garden exemplify the intersection of community health and climate adaptation. Donatuto and Campbell surveyed tribal members about three possible sites on the west side of the reservation. They discovered that one, which had been returned to the tribe after years in private hands, had a meaningful history. Elders told stories about growing up playing on the beach all day. It had been a popular clam-digging spot and place to net fish from the beach. But for years, members had been chased off the tidelands by the property owners.

Creating the garden at that spot would not only provide first foods - including the return of native littleneck clams that were once a Swinomish staple - but symbolize community health.

A clam garden requires tribal members to work together to build and maintain a low rock wall at the shoreline. Once in place, the garden will create a spot for elders to share stories, passing on tribal knowledge. It will supply a first food while serving as an example of the tribe's resilience, self-determination and cultural stewardship, all health indicators.

Krosby said the tribe's outreach is a lesson. "When we engage communities and when we incorporate their knowledge and concerns into climate planning, you wind up with a more equitable and robust outcome," she said. "You wind up with the backing of the community. You end up with the benefit of their knowledge and expertise. And that's especially important for front-line communities."

Mitchell and Shelly Vendiola, a tribal elder, are chairs of the Protect Mother Earth Committee, working on involving the community in the plan's update and creating a climate change curriculum for schoolchildren and adults that marries an introduction to tribal lore with climate science.

The idea is to interest members in exploring science, going away to study and perhaps returning to help develop and implement future climate adaptation.

"Climate change," Mitchell said, "is going to last for a long time. So what we set up now builds the foundation."

Consider it newly traditional knowledge to pass down across the generations.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the Skagit River is the last waterway in the continental United States that's home to all five species of Pacific salmon. It is the last waterway in the continental United States to host all five species. This story has been updated.

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An ancient people with a modern climate plan

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A native American tribe living on an island off the coast of Washington long ago recognized the threat of climate change. They implemented a climate action plan in 2010, melding traditional practices with science. Now, 50 other native tribes across the country have similar strategies, way ahead of U.S. communities.

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Native Americans have been deeply connected with cultural burning practices prior to colonizers arriving on their land. "American Indians have great respect for the fire phenomenon—some named it 'Grandfather Fire.'" Not only do tribes have respect for fire, but they also regard it as a wise figure that has life. Fire is not a dangerous figure within tribes, but it's a necessary aspect of life.

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Fire can promote biodiversity amongst plants and animals. Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Missouri.

Fire has been a benevolent, mystical, and religious symbol of great significance for cultures throughout the world.

Culture and History

The mythology of ancient Egypt contained a large, magnificently colored bird named the phoenix. According to the myth, the phoenix lived for up to 600 years. At the end of its life, the great creature built a funeral pyre (fire) and immolated (sacrificed) itself. From the funeral fire's ashes a new phoenix emerged with the freshness of youth to live out yet another cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Other mythical stories from the hills of ancient Italy tell of the guardian priest, the king of the wood. He was regarded as the spirit of vegetation and was believed to be endowed with a magical power to make trees bear fruit. Although his life was held precious by his worshipers, the very value attached to it ensured his death. The ritual killing of the incarnate tree-spirit was believed to be the only way of preserving the spirit from inevitable decay. Each king of the wood had to be killed by fire so that the divine tree-spirit within him would be transferred in its entirety to a younger and more robust successor.

An analogy can be made between these recurring stories from classical antiquity and wildland fire management today. In a sense, naturally recurring wildland fires are analogous with a contemporary killing of the tree-spirit or the rebirth of the phoenix. Wildland fire, where properly prescribed and managed, fosters new plant growth and expands wildlife populations.

Forest Health

Fires remove dead trees and litter from the forest floor. Shrubs and trees invading grasslands also are killed by fires. In each example, new healthy regrowth occurs. Fire does not imply death, but rather change. As fire was associated with rebirth and renewal in mythology, fire today is recognized as an instrument of change and a catalyst for promoting biological diversity and healthy ecosystems.

People still often mistakenly consider all fires to be negative, destructive forces. However, when properly managed, fire can be an effective natural resource management tool.

Fire has been used throughout history to shape the environment, improve hunting, and as an instrument of war. Today, fire is used regularly to benefit natural habitats and resources.

History

American Indians have great respect for the fire phenomenon-some named it "Grandfather Fire." Historically, many American Indians used fire as a tool to shape their environment and improve areas for hunting. A century before European settlers arrived on North American shores on the Mayflower, the bison (or American buffalo), traditionally a western North American species, moved to the eastern portion of the continent following fires, many of which were probably set by American Indians. These fires burned the brush and trees and are believed to have helped in the creation of more open areas conducive to growth of grasslands, the lands upon which bison depend for food.

Fire was used by American Indians for hunting many different animals. Desert tribes removed ground cover with fire to facilitate lizard hunts. The Apaches used smoke to attract deer that were tormented by mosquitoes and flies. The deer would enter smoky areas to escape the bothersome insects and thus become easy targets for the hunters. European settlers observed American Indians using fire to herd deer onto peninsulas. Once in these small areas, deer could be hunted more easily from canoes.

More than improving hunting, fire was also used as an instrument of war. To protect from this, nomadic peoples burned the areas surrounding their lodges to thwart their enemies' attempts to burn them out. When hunting parties entered another tribe's territory, some of the parties would deliberately set fires. This often would deprive the home tribe of forage that year but would make for better hunting in the following year when the interloping tribe returned.

Firefighters on the Yosemite fire look on as the Southern Sierra Miwuk engage in a ceremony and traditional methods to ignite a prescribed fire at Yosemite National Park.
NPS photo by Brent Johnson.

In California's Yosemite Valley, American Indians used fire as a tool to shape the lands for at least 4,000 years. The cumulative effects of the thousand years of burning by American Indians had profound impacts on the landscape that European settlers found. When the first European colonists landed in the New World, they were amazed at how much savanna (or grassland) existed. As European settlers advanced across the continent, though, the frequency of fires declined. Consequently, woody vegetation and forests overtook some grassland corridors originally created by the fires set by American Indians.

Europeans held a view of fire and its effects that was very different from the American Indian view of the natural phenomena. At the close of the 19th century, settlers concentrated on permanent husbandry of the forests to protect watersheds and forest products. Crops also were of concern when wildfire control was discussed. As fences began to create a patchwork across the once open expanses of prairie and forest, fire became an enemy capable of destroying all that had been achieved.

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Wildland Fire: Cultural Interpretations of Fire and Human Use (U.S. National Park Service)

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Fire has been a benevolent, mystical, and religious symbol of great significance for cultures throughout the world. The mythology of ancient Egypt contained a large, magnificently colored bird named the phoenix. According to the myth, the phoenix lived for up to 600 years.

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Western View of Fire Suppressing Natives from the Culture and Protection of Land

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Western View of Fire Suppressing Natives from the Culture and Protection of Land

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While Natives may have a loving and respectful relationship with fire, the U.S. government deemed it as a source of evil and therefore suppressed Native Americans from their culture. "After 1910, the predominant view of fire among professional foresters hardened into a nearly unanimous consensus. Now almost all of them seemed to agree that any forest fire, including 'light burning,' was something wholly destructive and even morally evil." With ban of controlled fires, there wasn't a decrease in wildfires. Instead, the fires dominated forests and reservations. "The result was a dramatic escalation in fire suppression in the West, including in the forests of Salish-Pend d’Oreille aboriginal territory and on the Flathead Reservation itself. The fires that swept through the tribe’s homeland, in short, had far-reaching impacts on national policies, and those policies in turn only accelerated the ecological transformation of western Montana."

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&nbsp&nbspCSKT | Division of Fish, Wildlife, Recreation, & Conservation

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After 1910 | &nbsp&nbspCSKT | Division of Fish, Wildlife, Recreation, & Conservation

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After 1910, the predominant view of fire among professional foresters hardened into a nearly unanimous consensus. Now almost all of them seemed to agree that any forest fire, including "light burning," was something wholly destructive and even morally evil.

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Although tribes have been given such a small amount of land, hundreds of thousands of acres have been burned from wildfires. As climate change continues to become more and more damaging, reservations are becoming a victim to the actions of the rest of the country. "Increasingly severe wildfires have had significant impacts on Tribal lands over the past decade. In 2021 alone, nearly 400,000 acres of federal Indian reservation lands were burned by wildfires as of November 1, with additional acreage burned on state reservations and other Tribal lands."

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More than 6.5 million acres of land managed by the Interior Department is within 50 miles of Tribal lands. Map generated by Interior's Office of Wildland Fire.
BY ERIN MCDUFF

Wildfires know no boundaries. They easily cross between federal, Tribal, state, and private lands, making coordination between wildland fire management agencies essential.

Nationwide, 56.2 million acres are administered as federal Indian reservations. The reservations were created in an era of policies that promoted the subjugation, relocation, and assimilation of American Indians and Alaska Natives, with devastating impacts for Tribes and Native people, the effects of which are still being felt today.

Of the 574 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes, about 90 currently manage their own wildland fire programs, with direct management services or funding provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as part of the government's treaty obligations.

Increasingly severe wildfires have had significant impacts on Tribal lands over the past decade. In 2021 alone, nearly 400,000 acres of federal Indian reservation lands were burned by wildfires as of November 1, with additional acreage burned on state reservations and other Tribal lands.

"[It] has become ever so challenging as we transition from what used to be fire seasons to fire years," said Cody Desautel, President of the Intertribal Timber Council. "There is no single entity across wildland fire management that will be able to successfully manage the landscape before, during, and after a wildfire without help."

Lands managed by the Department of the Interior share 5,500 miles of border with American Indian and Alaska Native lands. Approximately 6.5 million acres of Interior lands are within 50 miles of Tribal lands. This proximity and interconnectedness necessitates close communication on wildland fire management in order to protect Tribal communities, economies, sacred landscapes, and traditional uses of natural resources.

As the primary intertribal organization that supports the common goals of the majority of Indian Tribes with significant forested landscapes, the Intertribal Timer Council plays a vital role in addressing the threat posed by wildfire. On September 14, the Intertribal Timber Council and Interior Department announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding to improve collaboration on wildland fire management.

"The Intertribal Timber Council is pleased to announce the establishment of a memorandum of understanding between the two organizations that will foster relationships and opportunities to engage in mutually beneficial actions mitigating wildland fire risk and founded in the Federal Trust Responsibility for Tribes," said Desautel.

The agreement between Interior's Office of Wildland Fire and the Intertribal Timber Council will improve coordination between Tribes and all four Interior Department bureaus that administer wildland fire management programs: the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The agreement commits both organizations to collaboratively work toward reducing wildland fire risk and mitigating post-wildfire impacts, including by:

Utilizing information technology to improve decision making among partners;

Highlighting common conservation priorities to combat the effects of climate change;

Coordinating workforce development efforts;

Developing joint analyses and reports; and

Facilitating the exchange of perspectives and information to increase awareness, understanding, and engagement between the two organizations.

"The ITC would like to recognize Office of Wildland Fire Director Jeff Rupert, and his staff, for their work on this MOU" said Desautel, "and look forward to the continued effort to pursue and promote stewardship of our lands for the benefit of our communities."

The Interior Department is committed to honoring and fulfilling its trust responsibilities to Tribal nations. This agreement represents yet another step toward strengthening nation-to-nation relationships and promoting climate resiliency across landscapes and communities while reducing wildfire risk on both Tribal and federal lands.
Erin McDuff is a public affairs specialist with the Interior's Office of Wildland Fire.

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Improving Wildland Fire Management Across Tribal and Federal Lands

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With more than 6.5 million acres of land managed by the Interior Department in proximity to Tribal lands, collaboration is essential to address the increasingly large wildfires confronting the U.S. As we continue to recognize Native American Heritage Month throughout November, learn about a new agreement that will facilitate improved wildland fire management across departmental and Tribal lands.

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Within just one week, there were several fires that burned through reservations. This not only damages the land, but also depletes the minimal resources tribes have to combat these issues. "'The size and number of the wildfires threaten to exhaust firefighting resources.'"

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Joaqlin Estus
Indian Country Today

In Oregon, Karuk tribal citizen Troy Hockaday Sr. watched helplessly last fall as a raging wildfire leveled the homes of five of his family members, swallowed acres of forest where his people hunt deer, elk and black bear, and killed a longtime friend.

Now, less than a year later, the tribal councilman is watching in horror as flames encroach on the parched lands of other Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest that already are struggling to preserve traditional hunting and fishing practices amid historic drought. At least two tribes have declared states of emergency amid the devastation.

Nearly 70 active wildfires have destroyed homes and burned through about 1,500 square miles in mostly western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. California, Oregon and Washington are all hard hit.

The National Interagency Fire Center reports large, complex fires are burning throughout several geographic areas, threatening to exhaust firefighting resources. At least 80 percent of the country's wildland firefighting crews and management teams are already deployed.

The fire center Wednesday declared Wildland Fire Preparedness is at Level 5, the highest level of fire activity. The Level 5 declaration makes more federal resources available for firefighting efforts.

In California, a fire was rapidly expanding Wednesday in the Feather River Canyon, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Paradise, the foothill town largely destroyed by a 2018 wildfire that killed 85 people.

The largest fire in the U.S. on Wednesday was burning in southern Oregon. The lightning-caused Bootleg fire was encroaching on the traditional territory of the Klamath Tribes, which still have treaty rights to hunt and fish on the land, and sending huge, churning plumes of smoke into the sky visible for miles.

The Chuwea Creek Fire on the Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation in Washington has grown to 32,000 acres and is 20 percent contained. That's according to a Northwest Incident Management Team status report issued Thursday around 4 p.m PT.

The team expects the fire to grow as high temperatures, low relative humidity and gusty winds are predicted across the area.

Lightning sparked the fire on Monday evening. It spread quickly through tall grass, sagebrush and timber. Nespelem, a town of 200 on the reservation, was evacuated that night.

The team said, "11 structures in Nespelem were lost during the initial phase of the fire, three primary residences and seven outbuildings." An unknown number of livestock and other animals died or were injured and had to be put down.

The management team early Thursday said 200 firefighters are working to contain the Chuwea Creek Fire. They have deployed two fire engines, 14 bulldozers, 4 water tenders, 3 helicopters, and 1 fixed-wing aircraft.

"Additional resources have been ordered and will be assigned to the fire as regional priorities allow. Air resources will be heavily utilized again today," stated the management team Thursday morning.

The promise of added resources follow an update by Wednesday's incident commander, Bobby Shindelar, who reported, "with the current weather there are simply not enough resources to protect residences and other structures and contain the amount of fire perimeter. Additional engines and crews are needed along with line supervisors to manage them. Additional heavy equipment is needed as well."

Kathy Moses of the tribes' Mt. Tolman Fire Agency told Q13 News the wildfire is moving towards timber resources that are important to the tribe.

Chuwea Creek Fire is one of several fires in north central Washington, where hundreds of people are under level 1 and 2 evacuation orders. At level 1, people are advised to get ready and be alert to danger. At level 2, people may leave voluntarily or make plans and pack to be ready to go at a moment's notice as significant danger is in their area.

Level 3 mandatory evacuations were in effect due to a fire in Chelan County in central Washington. It was threatening 1,500 homes along with orchards and a power station, authorities said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency Tuesday authorized the use of federal funds to help with firefighting costs for the Chuwea Creek Fire.

The Colville Reservation is the latest victim of massive wildfires in Indian country. (File Photo courtesy of Washington Interagency Incident Management Team)

Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation Chairman Andy Joseph Jr., said in a prepared statement Tuesday, "our priority is always the safety of all people on the Colville Reservation, and we will also protect property to the best of our ability," Joseph said.

"Our hearts and thoughts go out to the people already impacted by these fires. We thank those coming onto our land to assist us in fighting these fires, and we appreciate the donations and offers for help that are already coming in. The need for action to protect our climate, and to mitigate the effects of climate change, becomes clearer with each passing year and each round of devastating fires," Joseph said.

On Tuesday the tribe closed the reservation to the public and to industrial activities. It placed non-essential staff on administrative leave.

The governor of Washington on Wednesday declared a drought emergency. The Washington state Department of Ecology reports a "historically dry spring and summer, followed by a record-breaking heat wave, have affected water supplies across Washington. (Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett are excluded from the declaration).

The ecology department said on its website that Washington had its fourth-driest March through April on record, which led to a drought advisory for 29 counties. It stayed dry through June. Then came triple-digit temperatures that smashed all-time records and rapidly worsened drought conditions.

Climate change has made the American West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

Scientists have long warned that extreme conditions will continue as the world warms.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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wildfires in the west hitting tribes hard

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Wildfires in the west hitting tribes hard

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Joaqlin Estus Indian Country Today In Oregon, Karuk tribal citizen Troy Hockaday Sr. watched helplessly last fall as a raging wildfire leveled the homes of five of his family members, swallowed acres of forest where his people hunt deer, elk and black bear, and killed a longtime friend.