Science Friday - Managing Wildfires Using A Centuries-Old Indigenous Practice

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

In late September, firefighters in flame-resistant Nomex were strung out along a fireline. It ran midslope through a pine and hardwood forest above the Klamath River and the small northern California town of Orleans.Several members of the Karuk tribe were laying down strands of fire with drip torches.Aja Conrad, who runs the tribal natural resource department’s environmental education field institute, was the firing boss trainee. She kept a close eye as the strips burned together and smoke filled the air.“Can you just keep an eye on that and maybe not put too much fire below it?” she told one of her burners.“Copy that.”Read the rest of this article on sciencefriday.com.Transcript for this radio story will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Flor Lickman. Today in the podcast, what can the government learn about fire management from indigenous tribes? So I think it's pretty clear that we have a quite terrible relationship with wildfire. And I think the tragic L.A. fires only further highlight this reality. The Karuk tribe in northern California has a long history with fire. For millennia, the tribe has managed its land and protected communities from wildfire, in part by using controlled burns. Now the tribe is working with federal agencies and local nonprofits to lead trainings on prescribed burns. Our next guest reported on a recent burn and is here to tell us all

about it. Murphy Woodhouse is a reporter for Boise State Public Radio and the Mountain West News Bureau based in Boise, Idaho. Murphy, welcome to Science Friday. Really glad to be here. Okay. So for your reporting, you watched a prescribed fire on Karuk tribal land. What should I picture? Yeah. So last fall, I went to Northern California to the small town of Orleans, which sits right on the Klamath River. It's a very rural, isolated and just profoundly beautiful part of the state. I was there for what's called Ketrex or the Klamath River prescribed fire training exchange. That's an annual series of burns put on by a coalition, including the Kuruq, area nonprofits and government agencies. So in a steep pine and hardwood forest above the town, you know, there were dozens of firefighters. all strung out along a piece of handline, and that was marking the intended edge of the burn. The burners, mostly Karuk women, they held a brief ceremony. And then, under the supervision of burn boss trainee, Asia Conrad, herself Karuk, they started laying down strands of fire. And what you're hearing there, that's the burn slowly chewing through down branches, leaf litter, and pine needles.

How big an area should I be imagining? This has been described to me as one of the larger burns they've done to date. About 100 acres sitting right above. I mean, you could see the smoke from town and from the river. Is the Kirk Tribe's approach sort of, is it different from a prescribed burn managed by the state, for example? Yeah, so in many ways, I mean, you probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart. So I did four seasons in wildfire. And what I saw were the same trucks, pumps, hand tools, fire resistant Nomex clad,

firefighters that I've seen countless times in the backcountry across the west. The pre-burn ceremony was an obvious distinction, but I think the key differences really come out in the underlying purposes of the burn, as well as the longer-term strategy that Catrix is a part of. Well, what are the purposes? What are the benefits of burning? Yeah, I mean, there are just so many reasons to burn. Prescribed fires can reduce fuel loading in forests, and that's one of the key legacies of decades of suppression-first wildfire policy. And that, in turn, can reduce the risk of extreme wildfire. And of course, the loss of life and property. That means just sort of getting rid of the brush that's going to easily catch fire? Absolutely. So just like imagine we call them ladder fuels, smaller trees, shrubs, etc.

that can help carry fire up into the crowns of fires and leading to quite destructive, fast-moving, extremely hot, hard-to-fight fires. So, you know, regular fire is just an absolutely essential underpinning of many ecosystems, and that very much includes the Karuk's ancestral territory. Prescribed fire can help remove invasive species. It can promote the growth of native species and add new trees. to the soil, improve wildlife habitat. But there are also some purposes of this burn and others like it that's things like promoting the growth of hazel, which is essential to curug basketry or helping black oak

woodlands reestablish, and that's a critical source of food. Murphy, what does the law say when it comes to burns like this? So the one that I saw, I mean, prescribed fire trainings like this, they've been going on all over and for years. But in California, at least, the law around cultural burns conducted by indigenous fire practitioners, that's been shifting in recent years. Some are hopeful that the door could be opening to something that more closely resembles their longstanding traditions. For example, Senate Bill 310 was signed into law, and one of the key elements of that is that it allows the state natural

resources agency to enter into written agreements with federally recognized California tribes that would exempt them from state permitting and regulatory requirements for cultural burning. And shortly before the passage of that bill, Corout Chairman Russell Atterbury called the measure, quote, an opportunity for California to walk the walk when it comes to healing and reconciliation of a violent history towards indigenous peoples and the misguided exclusion of fire. So you mentioned you were you were in fire. Are you a former firefighter? Yeah, yeah. So I did, God, at this point, well over a decade ago, I did a season on an engine and then did three seasons on a type one hand crew based out of southeast Idaho.

Did reporting this story change your perspective at all on fire management? I mean, absolutely. And I really feel represented by what Karuna Greenberg told me. She's a non-native co-lead with a group that puts on KTREX. So her family lost their home to a major wildfire in the area in the late 1980s. But in the wake of the devastation, native plants and animals surged back. And she described it as a rebirth. When you start to pay attention, you can really recognize that fire is a life-giving force. And that, switch in your mindset is really transformative. So I think it's pretty clear and really has been for some time that we have a quite terrible relationship with wildfire. And I think the tragic LA fires only further highlight this reality. But the Kurok have a time immemorial tradition of living well with fire and actively using it on their land. And, you know, recent research found that something on the order of 7,000 annual ignitions burning some 15% of their territory every single year. That was what was common prior to colonization.

And so for me, the group compellingly show that a different relationship with fire is not only possible, but has a history in what we now call the United States measured in centuries. Thanks, Murphy. Really enjoyed it. Thank you. That's Murphy Woodhouse, reporter for Boise State Public Radio and the Mountain West News Bureau based in Boise, Idaho. The story was reported for Our Living Lands, a weekly program exploring climate change on tribal lands. We have to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll talk with the Kirk Tribes Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy about the tribe's long relationship with fire. We've been burning for thousands of years, and so we also have people in our community that have been passing this information down through their families.

We're going to continue this conversation and hear more about the Kurok tribe's relationship with fire from tribal member Bill Tripp, who is the director of natural resources and environmental policy for the Kurok. Bill is also an author on a recent study that estimates the scale of pre-colonial burning by the tribe. We'll talk about it. Bill, welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. Bill, tell me about the Kurok's history with fire. Well, I mean, I'm one of those folks that, you know, was being taught how to burn. earn early as four years old. And I was taught the fundamentals, both through our traditional stories, our oral traditions, as well as through being, you know, guided in practice at a very early age.

We've been burning for thousands of years. And so we also have people in our community that have been passing this information down through their families. And so the principal, are kind of established, you know what I mean? Like what? It's kind of hard to explain, really, but, you know, our stories speak about the responsibilities of the different animals and all the things that they did. And they give you some cues to key in on as you go through practice. And so, you know, by the time I was eight years old, I was burning, you know, by myself,

adults were indoors, but I was out there by myself burning, and I knew I'd, If I had any trouble like you can go in and get some help, but I never did. I never need any help. Who taught you this practice? Well, from the cultural aspect of it, that was my great-grandmother. I was a full-blooded kuduke. I was waiting for her to wake up one morning, and so I started, it was kind of cold, so I started a bit of the fire and stove, and she heard me and came out and said,

well, if you may play on the fire, you're going to do something good with it. And she took me outside and gave me a little test to see if I was able to, you know, observe my environment and my actions and adjust accordingly. And I passed her test. And so she started telling me the stories and started taking me out there whenever the time was right. And just giving me the experience I needed. When you were a little kid learning this, how much land were you burning? What did it look like?

I did a lot of my burning in February and March. And so I didn't get a whole lot burned. You know, I'd probably get a tenth of an acre to maybe an acre and a half, you know, burned in a day. But sometimes I could get, you know, that done every day for a two-week period. And I focused right in close. You can go out underneath a pine tree after two or three days of sun, burn off a layer of pine needles.

You can, around that same time, you can go out in the serpentine where the white thorn patches are, and there's just so much fine dead fuel in that. You know, you can burn those clumps off and break up the continuity of all of that fuel. And then, you know, a few days later, it's starting to dry out underneath the oaks, and then you can burn under those. And so it's a system where you're creating a little bit of black over here, and then a few days later you're able to burn into that black and use that. that as a control feature, right? But you just have to do which component of the landscape is

right in that day, in that time, in that moment. And that's what you learn. And was it, is it for land management only, like stewardship of the land, or are there other reasons? Well, my great-grandmother, she always said that about 80% of our, you know, traditional food, fiber and medicinal resources are fire dependent. When she was young, and this was all done by more people more commonly, there was a lot more open space. There was a lot more spring greens and those kinds of things, a lot healthier foods, a lot more people with better materials for their basket weaving sticks, a lot more smaller dead wood that could be broken and carried back to come the home for cooking and heating. And so our,

relationship with fire connects us to all of these things. Like live oak, for example, it's one of those things you go out in February and you burn underneath the oaks and live oaks, and you'll squirt off a lot of these younger live oak brush, you know, they have really pointy leaves, and that's a product of them being browsed. And so it's a protection from ungulates. It's a really favored brows for large ungulate. And so if you go out and burn those, they'll resprout. But if you don't go and you don't cut off those dead pieces that have all those dried pointy leaves, they can't get their nose in there to bite it. And so there's really intricate relationships there. It just so happens that time of year. We would use that for pushing eel, a lamprey eel to the edge of the river.

And so you go on your burn in February, March, and then April, May June rolls around. you have all this nice freshly burned and dried and cured stuff with one of leaves, then you can enhance your catch of your lamb prey. Then that provides access for large ungulates as they're moving into their young, you know, being born and growing and just a really high nutrient dense resource for them to browse on and have a really good start in life. And then we, you know, depend on, you know, deer meat, note meat, and other things like that for our food later on in that cycle. But another interesting thing is, is by having that browse happen,

it will force the stem to grow out and up. And so about five to seven years later, that that libo branch will be long enough to be used for dip net hoops. And it'll be just perfect to where one small little piece can be tied to your a frame holes that we use for fishing. And then it'll go out and up and around. And so you can tie the two together. your net will hold open for like another foot wide. And so then you can then enhance your catch of salmon and steelhead. So it's all interconnected. So it's much more than just land management or fire protection.

But it does also reduce the amount of fuel loading available during wildfire season. I was just going to say, I mean, it's an integral part of a way of life, not just one tool to prevent, you know, uncontrolled wildfires, it sounds like. Yeah. And as people underestimate the scale of this activity, you know, being a way of life like that, it's, you know, it's when when those timeframes are, you know, upon you. That's what's what you go do. You know, it's hard to get everybody out there doing that these days. You know, you have to develop programs for it or at least develop options where people can provide for their families, you know, in the conduct of doing such. And so we went through and looked at. some of these cultural ignitions, you know, we ended up doing a little analysis of the scale in which that practice would have was historically done. And, you know, we came up with a modest estimate of about 7,000 ignitions a year, you know, and not that large of an area.

So this was a study that you and your team published, looking at the impacts of burning on Kruikland before colonization? Yeah, and it was kind of a little bit of an, attempt to get people to understand, you know, the scale of the need. You know, you figure, you know, a hundred and some odd villages, each village just having a hand, even a handful of people doing this, you know, three, four, five times a year for a couple of solid weeks. It amounts to a lot of burning taking place all the time. Warre, last question. I mean, of course, fires have been national news this month, last month. Watching these fires in L.A., How did they strike you? Did you feel like there were lessons that you wish people would learn from career practices that could be applied here?

Well, you know, I think people have a lot to learn. You know, I went and spent a little time down in L.A. here a year or so ago, and man, driving around in some of that country, it was just like, oh boy, people are going to have a wake-up call. here eventually when the conditions align with the weather event and that ignition it's going to it's trouble and it's not just la you know i mean you're seeing you know places like santa rosa burning in that way a couple times you know you've got your communities all over the place um that are you know the slater fire in 2020 took out 200 homes in happy camp and in our aboriginal territory. And, you know, all of that is, is, you know, trying to come back into, you know, an oak woodland type of condition, but which is the type of condition that we need to be able to do our cultural burning practices and have our culture resources in place.

But it's not going to get there on its own. It needs our help. Bill Tripp is a member of the Kruk tribe and its director of natural resources and environmental policy. He's based in Orleans, California. Thank you for joining us. Yeah, thank you. And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including... Praise, I would she. Sandy Roberts.

Robin Kasmur. Jordan Smudjik. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.