Managing Wildfire Through Cultural Burning

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Fire has always been part of California's landscape. But long before the vast blazes of recent years, Native American tribes held controlled burns that cleared out underbrush, encouraged new plant growth, and helped manage wildfires. It's a tradition that disappeared with the arrival of Western settlers. NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer explains how tribal leaders are trying to restore the practice by partnering up with state officials who are starting to see cultural burns as a way to help bring extreme wildfires under control.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:04.8	Hey, everybody.
0:06.5	Emily Kwong here with NPR Climate Correspondent Lauren Summer.
0:10.2	Hey Lauren.
0:11.2	Hey Emily.
0:12.2	So in California where you are this week, the states that are record for the most acres
0:18.2	burned in any fire season, more than 2 million acres so far.
0:23.2	And in an average fire season in California, around 300,000 acres burned.
0:27.2	So things are bad.
0:28.5	Yeah, it definitely is.
0:30.0	I mean, I'm in the Bay Area and when I woke up this morning, the sky is completely full
0:34.8	of smoke because there's three huge fires burning all around this whole area.
0:41.5	But you know, today I'm actually not here to talk about those kind of destructive fires.
0:46.2	I'm here to talk about good fire.
0:48.7	Good fire.
0:49.7	Okay.
0:50.7	This kind of fire, it actually has an incredibly long history and one that was erased
0:55.6	for many decades.
0:57.3	And I got to see it in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
1:00.0	Good morning.
1:02.5	There are around 60 people gathered in this Oakwood land and this was back in February and
1:08.0	everyone was standing in a big circle.
	...

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