Cultural burning: a return to Indigenous wildfire resilience

If fighting wildfires were a college class, the Forest Service would have straight A's; it suppresses around 95 per cent of wildfires on the initial attack (IA).

Yet in 2022, out-of-control fires have burned more than 7.5 million acres in the US despite the Forest Service spending nearly USD 3 billion on suppression. Continued ineffectiveness in spite of enormous spending has caused a growing number of wildfire management leaders to examine the past for a modern solution. 

Cultural burning, as Native tribes call it, or prescribed burning, as the government calls it, refers to intentionally burning parts of the forest. The land then becomes fire-adapted, preventing out-of-control blazes. 

"Today, however, widespread beneficial use of fire has largely been lost," in favour of suppression methods, reads the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission (WFMMC) report to Congress. These expensive tactics have led to fires burning hotter, doing more damage, even though they torch less land. Though controlled burns are effective, "expanding beneficial fire […] faces a number of legislative and policy headwinds." 

Cultural Burning in the Legislature 

The legislative record shows progress. California has passed several bills, including AB 642 and SB 332, in 2021. Respectively, they increased opportunities to engage in prescribed and cultural burns and absolved practitioners from liability should the fires get out of control, so long as the plan was approved by a "burn boss," who oversees the process.  

For Bill Tripp, one of the WFMMC report authors and the ​​Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe, these laws don't go far enough. 

"The state didn't feel like they should be responsible for liabilities, for something that was implemented without a state approval," he told FairPlanet. "Well, the state was instrumental in progressing the fire suppression paradigm and kind of sequestering indigenous fire practitioners over the past century or more, and so who's liable for that?" 

Nearing 50, Tripp doesn't seem like someone who would have a hand in shaping legislation. He does not have a college education, yet he serves as a consultant to various authoritative bodies (often as an individual, rather than a tribal representative), has been writing grants since the 90s, and was appointed by the Biden administration to the WFMMC commission.

Tripp, who is encouraged by the way cultural burning has become part of the lexicon of wildfire management professionals, still maintains that imprecisely worded legislation holds back progress. Native fire experts, he observed, must still jump through state-created hoops. 

Even SB 926, heralded as a big step forward for cultural burning as it established an insurance fund for out-of-control burns, doesn't, in his opinion, grant tribe members total freedom to go out and perform actions that have been in their authority for generations. It took seven years of negotiations to create the USD 20 million fund, according to an article in the ChicoER. 

One current solution, SB 310, would expand rights that California Native American tribes hold "in support of tribal sovereignty with respect to cultural burning," said Tripp. The bill is currently languishing in the California Senate. 

These bills, however, go deeper than cultural burning to the murky level of Tribal Law and determining what power the US government has over Tribes. For advocates like Tripp, tribal sovereignty exists outside the state and federal government. He is pushing for "a law that will enable agencies to honor tribal sovereignty and work with tribes as if they are sovereign."

Until Tribes can have full access to land, he pointed out, progress will remain stagnant. 

What Does a Fire-Adapted Landscape Look Like?

A fire-adapted landscape contradicts the traditional image of a full, green forest that many current climate activists push for. 

In his presentation titled "The Era of Megafires," Dr Paul Hessburg Sr., a Senior Research Ecologist at the Forest Service, refers to several 1930s-era pictures of mountains as "patchy." Contrary to popular belief, fire scares are natural to the landscape; certain animals and trees even need it to reproduce. According to Hessburg, "The burned patches on the landscape helped the rest of the forest to be forest."

The more years without a small fire, the worse the fires become. Today, blazes that evade the IA do more damage than they would have 20, 30 or 100 years ago when the terrain dictated the landscape. Trees would grow further apart in dry areas, while moist areas had denser collections. Today, trees huddle together - waiting to be burned.

Hessburg's solution to the issue: more controlled burns. 

Do Facts Back Up Cultural Burning on a Large Scale? 

Measuring the impact of prescribed burns on the modern landscape is difficult because information on the subject remains highly theoretical, although it is based on several centuries of evidence. A 2023  joint Harvard University, US Forest Service, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study concluded that burns "could dramatically reduce the overall amount of wildfire smoke exposure in vulnerable rural communities and dense population centers across the West." 

Another study found that prescribed burns have a 99.84 per cent success rate, better than suppression tactics. With tens of thousands of wildfires burning per year, the difference may be massive. 

Speaking in round, rudimentary numbers, Tripp estimated that under the proper circumstances, a few people could easily burn 20 acres in a single day, fortifying areas from out-of-control fires. Increasing the small-scale practice of cultural burning can have a significant impact. 

Of course, those people must be knowledgeable enough to identify what parts of the forest are ready and when, usually in February or March. They need to read the landscape and consider factors like how many days of sun there have been or whether the needle cast is moist enough to repel the fire. 

For Tripp and the growing number of cultural burning supporters, it means the government must give back a right that was never theirs to take away.

Image by Issy Bailey.