Indigenous wildfire ecologists say ‘cultural burning’ can ease fire danger

Can Native American approaches to wildfires limit their destructive power?

An audience of 60 people, including 10 firefighters, heard a panel of Indigenous fire ecologists and grazing experts say they can.

The group gathered under the shady Villa Chanticleer picnic area at the base of Fitch Mountain in Healdsburg Wednesday night to hear how a concept known as “cultural burns” can prevent catastrophic wildfires.

The event was hosted by the Healdsburg Fire Department in the shadow of the over-grown and fire-prone Fitch Mountain.

The city, which owns the mountain, received a $505,000 grant for Fitch Mountain wildfire prevention in May.

“We’ve all been worried about Fitch Mountain for years,” Jason Liles, chief of staff for state Sen. Mike McGuire, told the crowd.

Clint McKay, Indigenous education coordinator for Pepperwood Preserve, a wildlife refuge and conservation organization in Sonoma County, said a Euro-centric approach to wildland fire management has eliminated the natural cycle.

“Boy am I going to (tick) a lot of people off, many who are here,” McKay said as he gestured to the firefighters in uniform. “But it’s not to point fingers and blame anyone.”

Too often, he said, the Western response is to try to extinguish every blaze, even when it may be healthier for the land to let it burn.

He said the Native American practice of cultural burns could help provide a sustainable solution to today’s massive fires.

However it’s going to take a lot of work on behalf of the community and firefighters to get to the point where regular cultural burns can be practiced safely by the tribes, McKay said.

Cultural burns are low, confined and slow-burning fires used mostly in grasslands to eliminate undergrowth and restore natural balance to the wildlife and vegetation.

They also provide nutrients and help some native species propagate, while protecting against future wildfires.

McKay’s family, who come from the Dry Creek Pomo, Northern Sierra Miwok, Wappo and Winum tribes, doesn’t use the term “fire management.” Instead tribes like to use the term “stewardship,” he said.

“If we think that we can manage fire, then we’re really in for it,” McKay said.

McKay explained that fire is a natural part of life and essential to nearly all aspects of tribal life: hunting, food preparation, ceremonies, trail maintenance and cultural burns. Stewardship means caring for the land through natural and cultural means.

Coastal areas in the Northwest United States like Sonoma County lack lightning-caused wildfires, and forests like Fitch Mountain become overgrown and susceptible to man-caused fires.

Cultural burns, along with maintaining fire lines, reducing fuel load through grazing and prescribed burns, are essential, or else “devastation is what we get,” McKay said.

Peter Nelson, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at University of California, Berkeley, said colonialism in the late 1800s and early 1900s removed Indigenous communities from desirable locations. That helped lead to the spread of invasive species and ultimately to too much fire suppression in the name of conservation.

The Western impulse to put out fires ignores the fact that fire occurs in the natural world and serves a purpose.

“The creation of wilderness area was also wrapped up in this idea of the separation between people and nature,” Nelson said. “What that’s created is this tinderbox of all of these fuels that have accumulated around us.”

‘Nature will come back into our lives whether we want it or not,” Nelson said as members of the crowd, mostly concerned Healdsburg residents, nodded in agreement.

Working with tribes and agencies and bringing community resources together can help restore a natural and less-devastating fire cycle, both Nelson and McKay said.

Prescribed grassland burns throughout the county have been successful and safe, Nelson said.

One of the ways county officials have been reducing fuels is by introducing goats to graze on unwanted vegetation from wildfire prone areas.

Stephanie Larson, County Director and Livestock Range Management adviser, said the benefits of grazing were “targeted and cost-effective.”

At the end of the panel, a 60-year-old Healdsburg woman raised her hand and said she wants to be a part of the effort to become a steward for the land and offered to allow cultural burns and grazing on her property.

“Why should we wait to start?” She asked. “We should get back to the roots.”

Larson directed interested residents to University of California Cooperative Extension, Pepperwood and Tukman Geospatial’s Wildfire Fuel Mapper, which provides landowners with maps and resources to understand their land, reduce fuels and protect the community from wildfires.

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-521-5224 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.