Is Fire Really a Thief?

Is Fire Really a Thief?

Aug 16, 2021

On a recent trip to Yosemite, traveling through the park's south entrance, my heart sank. I kept hearing tales of how beautiful the area is, I'm a visual person so I watched video after video on Youtube of Van Life Dwellers, Digital Nomads and Vacationers show spectacular images of the park. As I drove through to get to the valley I was not prepared for what I saw.

Acres and acres of trees were decimated by fire.

The aftermath of the Rim Fire in 2013 which burned 257,314 acres, is still evident today in the picture above. I had no idea the vast acreage this fire consumed and I was equally perplexed on why these video bloggers did not acknowledge what happened here. I guess sometimes you must "window dress" to get views.

My intent is not to dwell on past destruction but to understand our relationship to fire. I was fortunate enough to listen to a lecture on cultural burning in my California Naturalists class and the gentleman talked about Native Americans' relationship to fire and how they managed the land to survive.

Fire Suppression

As I dug a little deeper, I realized Yosemite acknowledges years of fire suppression. When lightning struck, they would quickly put out the fire. This eventually leads to overgrowth and has led to unhealthy forests. This leads to larger and more deadly fires. It is worth noting that the Rim Fire was started by a hunter's illegal fire that got out of control. The fire's fast-moving spread was attributed to drought, overgrowth, and severe weather conditions. Yosemite is moving away from fire suppression to Fire Ecology and Monitoring.

Fire Ecology and Monitoring

According to Yosemite’s site, “Fire dependence refers to plants and animals that are adapted to and rely on the effects of fire to survive. For example, lodgepole pine and giant sequoia trees use fire to help open their or sealed cones, to remove litter and duff from the ground to allow seeds to germinate, and to burn open the canopy, affording seedlings the sunlight they need to grow big and tall.”

Yosemite is committed to the restoration of the natural fire cycles through prescribed burning and other managed fires. The goal is to restore and protect the natural abundance, diversity, and distribution of flora and fauna in the park.

 Fire Stewardship in the Pacific Northwest

National Forest Services are now setting up fire stewardships with indigenous cultures because of their close connection to the land. In the Pacific west of the United States has joined with the local tribes of the region.

The Karuk and Yurok Tribes are reinstating Indigenous fire stewardship practices among different jurisdictions: tribal, federal, and private lands.

Most traditional cultural burns use "cool" fires – smaller, low-intensity fires – which reduce the risk of extreme, high flames that can burn whole trees and forest canopies.

These low-intensity quick fires have several benefits:

Save flora and fauna. Animals, including beetles and ant colonies, have enough time to escape. Young trees can survive and the fire keeps grass seeds intact for regrowth. The heat, which is much cooler than a hazard reduction burn, doesn't ignite the oil in a tree’s bark. It's a "tool for gardening the environment".

Self-extinguishing. The fire extinguishes straight after it burns the grass (“self-extinguishing fire”).

Avoid chemical weed killers. Introduced species, for example, grasses, are not fire-resistant and can be removed with fire instead of chemicals.

You can tell if a fire was a cool burn when the burnt grass still has its previous shape.

Today, driving through burned scared land still breaks my heart but my understanding of fire has deepened. Indigenous people have the answers, they do not look at the nature of fire as a thief but as a great transformer.


Source, Cool burns: Key to Aboriginal fire management - Creative Spirits, retrieved from https://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/land/aboriginal-fire-management

Video on Cultural Burning

https://www.linktv.org/shows/tending-the-wild/episodes/cultural-burning

 

 

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