00:00Fire serves a vital role.
00:04It clears areas for species that need sunlight.
00:07It keeps diseases at bay by thinning and eliminating unhealthy trees.
00:11And it provides nutrients to the soil.
00:14Fire is an essential part of the cycle of life in western forests.
00:18And just like each forest is different, each forest's fire is unique.
00:23Here in the western United States, those forests had typically evolved
00:29where fire would come every 3, 4, 5, 10 years.
00:34The forest developed a structure that was beautifully adapted to fire.
00:40In fact, it was sort of collaborative with the fire.
00:45The native people that first settled this land understood the importance of fire.
00:51And, as its first land managers, they learned to use the fire to their advantage.
00:57Historically, the tribes have always done prescribed burning as a management tool
01:03to keep the inventory of the brush and the biomass and the trees to a minimum level.
01:10Amerindians from New Jersey to California burned our forests
01:15to create open patches for game and food.
01:19They kept the forest floor pretty clean so they could have basket material
01:24and hunt game more easily.
01:27Native Americans actively managed our wildlands here in California for millennia
01:32using prescribed fire and prescribed burns.
01:35You would see 4 to 12 million acres burn annually with prescribed fire.
01:44A prescribed burn works like this.
01:47During a part of the year when the land is dry enough to burn,
01:51but not so dry that fire can't be controlled,
01:54often in late winter or early spring,
01:56an area of the forest is purposely ignited.
01:59As it burns, fire managers ensure that it stays in the controlled area.
02:04The goal is to burn the underbrush, grass, and other material on the forest floor,
02:09but not to burn so hot that the larger trees are damaged.
02:13This accomplishes many useful things.
02:16It clears out the forest, making it easier to travel and hunt.
02:20It rejuvenates the soil and makes room for beneficial plants to grow
02:24that would otherwise be choked out by the underbrush.
02:28And perhaps most importantly, it makes it much harder for uncontrolled fires,
02:33for example those caused by lightning, to move from the forest floor to the canopy.
02:38This is because controlled burn removes the so-called ladder fuels,
02:42any tall, woody material that could create a fire path from the forest floor to the canopy.
02:48In this way, prescribed burns provide a very resilient fire protection
02:52for those living in or near the forest.
02:55It's a very efficient way to manage forests,
02:58which raises the question, if fire is a natural part of Western forests,
03:03and Native peoples who live there develop ways to coexist with,
03:06and in fact thrive with, fire, what changed?
03:10How did we go from this...
03:13to this?
03:15So we're trying to get back to a state where we have fire on the landscape
03:19that has that historical, restorative impact
03:23that is part of that traditional ecological knowledge
03:26and that tribes had actively and successfully managed for millennia.
03:30The evolution and the history of this is important
03:33because cultural fire was eliminated in California starting in the 1600s
03:39when you started getting colonizations.
03:41The new arrivals found giant trees growing in open savannas,
03:45full of grass with which to graze their animals, acorns, berries, and abundant game.
03:51The new settlers thought they had arrived in Eden,
03:54an unpeopled land God had made specifically for them.
03:58In reality, they were witnessing thousands of years
04:01of careful forest management by Native peoples.
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