Cultural burning is the process of using prescribed burns to manage landscapes, a process used primarily by Indigenous peoples; more specifically the Indigenous people of Australia and the Western parts of North America[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] have been found to use this method extensively. This practice created a relationship between the land and the people so strong that the local flora became dependent on patterned burnings. The practice then elevated the Indigenous peoples of their respected environments to a keystone species status as the interspecies connections strengthened over time,[7] which is partially why Indigenous people still manage 40-60% of all ecological reserves.
Besides the ecological function there is also the cultural aspect. Species most adapted to the burns are also ones most used by the Indigenous peoples, such as California Black Oak. Lands historically occupied by Indigenous peoples have become attuned to this process of low frequent burns, but all environment are not adjusted to this management.
A study done was done in Western Australia that looked into different fire management strategies and how they influence an endangered plant species known as the Backwater grevillea. They compared the different effects of current fire suppression strategies, cultural burning and wildfires on this species. From their results they concluded the cultural burning was the best management style for the conservation of this species. But besides just benefitting this species they also noticed it had a greater effect in slowing the spread and occurrence of wildfires in the area benefitting other plant species and people as well. Incorporating cultural burning was also found to have a secondary benefit to the local communities. Returning the Indigenous peoples' connection to the land created an opportunity for knowledge and kinship of local plants to be restored. This was due to the close studying done on the plants to find out what intensity of fire best suited their growth patterns. What the authors concluded as to why this management method proved more effective is that current fire management strategies are to generalized and do not take into account on site ecosystem relations and services. When the people working on the site have a spiritual connection to it they know how the ecosystem will respond to the fire and can better control its trajectory.
In California fire was an integral part to how the Indigenous population managed the land. It has been shown that areas managed using Indigenous practices had created forests that were open and had a mixed stand of tree species. With lower fuel levels the understory could host a diverse number of plants species. This in turn increased the forests' resistance to drought and fire with the smoke from the small regular fires even decreasing pests and pathogen levels in the forests leading to a healthier tree stand. Without fire, California forests are now experiencing and over-densification of conifer trees which crowd out understory species and hinder the success rate of Black Oak saplings. Due to the lack of diversity these forest are then more susceptible to drought and can create huge forest fires as the fuel builds up.
Today some groups are currently working to bring back cultural burns to Californias forests in order to create healthier forests and reduce wildfires. The North Fork Mono Tribe and Sierra National forests have been implementing a 3 stage process designed in turn with other local tribes in 2015. The first stage was to remove as many invasive species, small conifers, and fuel sources as you could from a site before conducting an initial burn to reduce the fuel level even further. In the second stage they would then try and remove as many large conifers as possible focusing around the black oaks followed by another burn. In the final stage they would prune and trim the Black Oaks to encourage a tree shape that would have existed prior to the conifers' take over. This would be followed by another low intensity burn. The tribe then planned to keep up management practices with routine burns and smoking the trees regularly to deter pests. The Plumas National Forest has been working with The Greenville Rancheria to incorporate prescribed burns for the purpose of maintaining an open understory and conserving Black Oak forests. They hope to use the site for gathering acorns, cultural activities and the development of cultural items using saplings. These restoration efforts are extremely important as they not only improve the environments' resilience to climate change but also grant more opportunities to tribes and low income communities as they now have more ecological services and cultural benefits.
Many Indigenous populations still depend on gathering and foraging to engage in their cultural practices and to live a life of self subsistence. As many tribes in California have been forced to live on small reservations having a productive forests nearby is necessary to keep their traditions and way of life alive. However due to the lack of fire and the over-densification of forests finding the plants needed to make medicines or cultural materials can be difficult or impossible to find. Suppressing the ability of these tribes to carry out cultural burns eventually leads to the forests providing less of its cultural ecosystem services. Eventually these tribes will be unable to perform their cultural activities as they can no longer connect to the land in the same way their ancestors did. With Black Oaks being forced to compete with conifer trees they are forced to grow taller and narrower when in the past they would have low branches extending for 30–40 ft. On these low branches children would run and play while their family could easily gather everything they needed. Ron Reed, a member of the Karuk Tribe from Northern California, has explained the importance of having access to these vital resources: “You can give me all the acorns in the world, you can get me all the fish in the world, you can get me everything for me to be an Indian, but it will not be the same unless I'm going out and processing, going out and harvesting, gathering myself. I think that really needs to be put out in mainstream society, that it's not just a matter of what you eat. It's about the intricate values that are involved in harvesting these resources, how we manage for these resources and when.”
10 Common Questions Related to Wildfire Management (Figure1):
| (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? | Broad-scale evidence of fire exclusion is strong across disciplines and western forest ecosystems. Although high severity fire was a component of many historical fire regimes, the frequency and extent of high severity fire over the past few decades is outside the range of historical range of variability | Hessburg et al. (2005), Reynolds et al. (2013), Stine et al. (2014), Safford and Stevens (2017), Stephens et al. (2020), Hagmann et al. (2021) | |
| (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? | Thinning alone can sometimes mitigate fire severity, but through residual logging slash, desiccation of understory fuels, and increased surface wind flow without accompanying surface fuel reduction, thinning can contribute to high-intensity surface fires and abundant mortality | Stephens et al. (2009), Fulé et al. (2012), Martinson and Omi (2013), Kalies and Yocom Kent (2016) | |
| (3) Can forest thinning and prescribed burning solve the problem? | Although thinning and prescribed burning have been shown to be highly effective, not all forests are appropriate for this treatment (e.g., thin-barked species common in cold mixed-conifer forests). This type of fuel treatment is also not appropriate for wilderness and other roadless areas | DellaSala et al. (2004), Battaglia and Shepperd (2007), Reinhardt et al. (2008) | |
| (4) Should active forest management, including forest thinning, be concentrated in the wildland urban interface (WUI)? | The majority of designated WUI is in private ownership and hence these lands are sometimes more difficult to treat than public lands. Treating dry and moist mixed-conifer forests beyond WUI buffers can modify fire behavior and change the intensity of wildfires arriving at communities | Kolden and Brown (2010), Bladon (2018), Hallema et al. (2018), Kolden and Henson (2019), Schultz et al. (2019) | |
| (5) Can wildfires on their own do the work of fuel treatments? | Unplanned fires that escape suppression often burn under extreme fire weather and can have severe wildfire effects. In contrast, prescribed burns and managed wildfires generally burn under more moderate weather conditions and contribute to variable fire effects and surface fuel reduction that can mitigate future wildfire severity | Miller and Safford (2012), Parks et al. (2015a, 2016), Prichard et al. (2017), Stevens et al. (2017), Kane et al. (2019), Huffman et al. (2020), Rodman et al. (2020) | |
| (6) Is the primary objective of fuel reduction treatments to assist in future firefighting response and containment? | Although fuel reduction treatments can assist in suppression operations, primarily using fuel treatments to suppress future wildfires actually contributes to wildland fire deficit. Adaptive treatments in fire-adapted landscapes aim to restore the patch to landscape role of fire as an ecological process, reduce fire effects and need for aggressive suppression when the fire next occurs | Reinhardt et al. (2008), Safford et al. (2012), Stephens et al. (2020) | |
| (7) Do fuel treatments work under extreme fire weather? | Fire behavior associated with persistent drought, high winds and column-driven spread are associated with higher burn severity in western North American forests. However, strong scientific evidence across dry and moist mixed conifer forests demonstrates effectiveness at mitigating burn severity, often even under extreme fire weather conditions | Arkle et al. (2012), Yocom-Kent et al. (2015), Povak et al. (2020), Prichard et al. (2020) | |
| (8) Is the scale of the problem too great? Can we ever catch up? | The current pace and scale of treatments is decidedly inadequate to restore fire-resilient and climate adapted landscapes. However, evidence strongly supports that expanded use of fuel reduction treatments can be effective | Collins et al. (2009), North et al. (2012), Parks et al. (2015a, 2016), Ager et al. (2016), Barros et al. (2018), Liang et al. (2018) | |
| (9) Will planting more trees mitigate climate change in wNA forests? | Temperate rainforests and other wet forests have the capacity to store and sequester high amounts of forest carbon. However, planting to increase tree density and continuity in fire-prone forests is unsustainable due to high fire danger, anticipated climatic water deficits and drought stress | Thompson et al. (2007), Veldman et al. (2019), Holl and Brancalion (2020) | |
| (10) Is post-fire management needed or even ecologically justified? | Active forest and fuels management may be required beyond the initial fire response in order to promote future forest resilience to disturbance and climate change. Due to fire exclusion, uncharacteristically dense patches of dead trees may contribute to high-severity reburns as they fall and create heavy surface fuel accumulations | Peterson et al. (2015), Lydersen et al. (2019a), North et al. (2019) |
Fire in the Pacific Northwest has been shown to help beargrass populations as well. Low severity fires have been proven to benefit the low elevation species of this grass by increasing the overall biomass in the region. While there was no effect on seedling establishment with the low severity method, high severity fires showed an increasing in seed germination and establishment. It was also found that for bear grass to grow long enough to produce basket making leaves there must be one every 20 years. This is to keep down on shrub encroachment while giving the time for the perennial grass to grow a deep root structure.
Native Americans of the olympic peninsula in Washington have been known to manage their ecosystems in favor of beneficial plants like the Bear Grass which is used for basket weaving. This method of management was a form of cultural burning that maintained the savannah and wetland prairie system of the peninsula's low land environments.In 2008 it was found that after the suppression of these burns the area has since been forested by Douglas Firs with a decrease in the Bear Grass population.
Source 5:Integrating Biophysical and Eco-Cultural Fire Processes in Canada’s Parks and Protected Areas
Wildfires are an integral ecological process in Canada as well. They play a key role in stabilizing the region's various vegetation communities from grasslands and prairies to conifer and deciduous forests. The cause of these wildfires are still disputed with Canadian forest fire researchers still declaring lightning strikes the cause not believing the Indigenous population capable of creating large scale fires. However there is evidence showing the Indigenous population used fires to change their ecosystem and decrease fuel load to lessen the severity of natural wildfires. In 2004 fire suppression methods were used to control the majority of Canada's wildfires. This would involve monitoring the weather, fuel, and topographic data of the region to predict when and where a lightning strike could occur, and where it could travel once igniting. If these methods did not work they would log or thin parts of forests near communities. Recently efforts have been undertaken by the Canada Parks system to incorporate prescribed burns. What they have found is a reduction in wildfire intensity in parks using prescribed burns though they did uncover some problems. In area with prescribed burns and a high herbivore population experience negative effects regarding in sapling occurrence. The solution was to start the fires more infrequently as to give the plants time to recover from the herbivore grazing. The study recognized from this and many other examples the restoring fire requires a holistic ecosystem restoration. That in order to have a successful management you must take into account the varying biospheres at play and the long-term human element and how we used to contribute to our local environments
More recently 2022 has shown unprecedented wildfires in Australia and which bring into question the current management strategies of the countries Forest Managers. To date the management service has focused on a fire suppression model in all cases. This resulted in a build up in fuel on the forest floor that could not be cleared manually. Not to mention the increase of tree cover and density which reduced the coverage of more fire resilient ecosystems. Looking at traces of pollen in Australia soils during the precolonial and modern eras Mariani, Michela, et al found that the landscape in the precolonial era were composed of 51% herbs and grasses, 15% tree cover, and 34% shrub cover. This is in stark contrast to today where the landscape is composed of 35% herbs and grasses, 48% tree cover, and 17% shrub cover. Allowing tree cover to dominate expand in western Australia has resulted in greater intensity and frequency of wildfire. The reason for the expansion of these forests is credited to the suppression of cultural burns conducted by the indigenous population of Australia.