The Native American Way of Fighting Wildfires
State and federal officials are learning some lessons about how the continent’s forests were managed before the Europeans arrived.
The Dixie fire, Greenville, Calif., August 2021.
Photographer: JOSH EDELSON/AFPThe wildfires that have engulfed millions of acres of forest in the American West in the last few years have brought environmental politics in the region to an unfamiliar place. In Oregon and California, forests are no longer just wondrous cathedrals of nature. They inspire fear as well as awe.
“They’ve gotten denser, they’ve gotten more hazardous and, when they burn, they can burn with ferocious high intensity,” said Scott Stephens, a wildfire researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. That has led to “a pivot” in the public’s thinking about wildfires, he said. “People are asking the question: ‘What can we do?’”