Federal money will support Native American burn practices in Oregon’s oak habitats
A project incorporating traditional Native American management practices for oak habitat restoration in Oregon has been awarded $9.23 million. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service awarded the money, which will go to the Oregon Agricultural Trust and its partners.
The traditional management practices include setting fire to the landscape in order to rejuvenate certain plants, eradicate pests, and reduce slash and debris, commonly known as “cultural burns.”
Indigenous fire practices can help Oregon wildfires, land management
As fires appear to haunt Oregon’s imagination of summertime, we sit to reflect on the need to define our collective relationship with fire through an engagement with Indigenous science or ways of knowing and understanding the world.
Native American communities in western Oregon have been tending the land with fire since time immemorial. This practice, known today as cultural burning, offers many lessons on the value of fire to care for land and water. Cultural burnings are an ecological practice grounded in Indigenous science that prevents disastrous fire seasons, nourishes watersheds, sustains traditional food sources and maintains cultural practices and keeps memories alive across generations.
In western Oregon, Native communities have carefully burned to maintain oak groves for acorns, used mindful fire in meadows for camas and other foods and pruned and burned hazel patches for basketry materials. These practices, among many others, require the use of fire as a transformational element — fire to clear grassland, maintain forest health and encourage new growth, while rejuvenating springs and water tables.
Groups Seek Liability Reforms to Fight Wildfire
According to Karuk Natural Resources Director and traditional fire practitioner Bill Tripp, "My ancestors practiced cultural burning for millennia along the Klamath and Salmon Rivers. Low intensity burns at the right time of year reduce wildfire risks in our communities and promote forest health. We must enact policies to enable and encourage rural communities to do this important work."
Reading the Landscape for Fire
In the aftermath of the extensive fires that burned across California and the West in the 2020 fire season, there is a lot to reflect upon. People grappling with the trauma of disaster. Communities trying to recover and plan for future fires. Ecosystems responding to fire within the landscape. More carbon dioxide released through combustion and thus further contributing to our already troubling atmospheric conditions. Fires that reinforce the likelihood of more fire by decreasing forest cover, damaging the soil’s health and moisture retention, and contributing dead and dying vegetation to the landscape. These are just some of the cycles that are perpetuating fire until we make change.
Hands on the land, heart in community: Returning cultural fires
It was a California Summer. I was working in a plant nursery tucked into the Cascade Mountain Range—blue mountains in the distance and rivers and creeks to splash in.
But I couldn't clearly see my hand outstretched in front of me. It's the smoke. Like almost every summer of my childhood, a wildfire raged in a nearby forest.
Looking back, what was most disturbing was not the smoke or the thick layer of ash on my car after work, it was how normal this was. Evacuations and high severity forest fires are an almost annual occurrence. California's forest fire problem now routinely makes international news as entire cities are destroyed.
Now more than ever California forest fires have become synonymous with death, destruction, and long-term economic depression.
Tribes and firefighters work together to prevent catastrophic wildfires
Elizabeth Azzuz had already worked with fire three times during the week I spoke with her from her home at the confluence of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers in Northern California. Azzuz is a member of the Yurok Tribe, which has used fire for cultural and ecological reasons for hundreds of generations. She burns dense understory to cleanse conifer forests and promote the growth of hazel for basket weaving. At night, she ignites leaf litter and grasses; the resulting smoke discourages weevils and moths, which can infest the acorns used in traditional foods.
Elizabeth Azzuz had already worked with fire three times during the week I spoke with her from her home at the confluence of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers in Northern California. Azzuz is a member of the Yurok Tribe, which has used fire for cultural and ecological reasons for hundreds of generations. She burns dense understory to cleanse conifer forests and promote the growth of hazel for basket weaving. At night, she ignites leaf litter and grasses; the resulting smoke discourages weevils and moths, which can infest the acorns used in traditional foods.
https://grist.org/climate/tribes-and-firefighters-work-together-to-prevent-catastrophic-wildfires/
The fire we need. Can managed fire heal more than just the forests?
The fire we need. Can managed fire heal more than just the forests?
Good Fire on the Klamath
Native people have been applying good, medicinal fire to their homelands along the Klamath River for thousands upon thousands of years. Recently, amid intensifying climate, wildfire, and social crises, Karuk and Yurok people have been organizing TREX, prescribed fire training exchange events conducted in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and a diverse, international set of participants.
Native Solutions to Big Fires
Cultural burning practices are working to reduce wildfires in northern Australia. Can they work in California, too?