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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 Kurook 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 Kurok, 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

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