Cultural Burn

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 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 respective environments to a keystone species status as the interspecies connections strengthened over time, 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.

Cultural Significance

Indigenous communities use cultural burning as part of their land management practices, but it is also a fundamental part of their identity and customs. Sacred locations and ecosystems that are essential to Indigenous food supplies are protected by cultural burning in the Pacific West region of the United States. Based on traditional ecological knowledge, this approach to fire control highlights the interconnectedness of fire, people, and the environment (Lake et al., 2021). Cultural burning exemplifies how Indigenous land stewardship supports ecosystems and cultural practices. It demonstrates that fire is a means of caring for the land, ensuring long-term survival and spiritual connection, rather than only being a preventative measure.

Indigenous civilizations have developed methods for using fire to protect biodiversity and promote the growth of essential plants in rainforests, where burning is challenging due to high humidity. These burns change the environment in ways that reduce the risk of destructive wildfires while encouraging the growth of fruits and medicinal plants (Bird et al., 2020). This strategy demonstrates significant ecological expertise because it preserves plant diversity, promotes new development, and even helps mitigate enormous wildfires by clearing the forest floor of accumulated fuel.

In today's society, many people view fire as dangerous, while many Indigenous people view fire as an element that gives life. Cultural burning upholds a respectful relationship with the environment and has ceremonial and spiritual importance (Kimmerer, 2013). This ideology differs from Western views, which regard fire as primarily hazardous. Instead, cultural burning acknowledges the healing and environmental benefits of fire.

Cultural burning is a global practice, and similar techniques are used in Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Africa. For example, Indigenous Australians have long practiced “cool burning” to manage landscapes(Gammage, 2011), while First Nations in Canada use fire to maintain berry patches and caribou habitats(Hoffman et al., 2022). In the Amazon, Indigenous groups employ controlled burns to enhance soil fertility and biodiversity (Mistry et al., 2005). These fires have been used to control wildlife populations, maintain places of worship, and restore environments. Although these practices are ecological instruments, they represent generations-old knowledge systems. This illustrates the importance of including Indigenous ideas in contemporary environmental management (Codding et al., 2016). Cultural burning is a worldwide activity with ecological and cultural significance, as demonstrated by specific examples like the Aboriginal fire management of Kakadu National Park in Australia(Russell-Smith et al., 2013) or the Yurok Tribe’s prescribed burns in California(Norgaard, 2014). These time-tested methods can inspire modern, more environmentally friendly approaches to maintaining grasslands and woodlands.

Benefits

A study 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):

Figure 1 comes from an article discussing the climate adaptation strategies currently being taken in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. During their research they worked to answer these 10 questions to determine if fire treatments are a valid adaptation strategy. From their research they concluded that pre-emptive burns have been proven to be effective and largely call for an increase of these efforts and a more habitual management strategy to follow these prescribed burns. Cultural burns need to occur regularly and can be used to adapt to the microclimates in order to improve its effectiveness.

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.

See also

*Fire-stick farming
*Native American use of fire in ecosystems
*Biochar
*Controlled burn

References

# Bird, Rebecca B., et al. “Burning in the Rainforests: The Ecology and Anthropology of Indigenous Fire Management in Humid Environments.” National Center for Biotechnology Information, 2020, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4485971/
# Codding, Brian F., et al. “Global Patterns in the Use of Fire as a Resource Management Tool.” Royal Society Open Science, vol. 3, no. 3, 2016, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.160382
# Gammage, B. (2011). ''The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia''. Allen & Unwin. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263079351_The_biggest_estate_on_earth_How_Aborigines_made_Australia
# Hoffman, K.M.; Christianson, A.C.; Dickson-Hoyle, S.; Copes-Gerbitz, K.; Nikolakis, W.; Diabo, D.A.; McLeod, R.; Michell, H.J.; Al Mamun, A.; Zahara, A.; Mauro, N.; Gilchrist, J.; Ross, R.M.; Daniels, L.D. 2022. The right to burn: barriers and opportunities for Indigenous-led fire stewardship in Canada. https://www.nwfirescience.org/sites/default/files/publications/Hoffman%20et%20al_2022_The%20right%20to%20Burn_Barriers%20and%20opps%20for%20Indgenous-led%20fire%20stewardship%20in%20Canada.pdf
# Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013
# Lake, Frank K., et al. “The Importance of Indigenous Cultural Burning in Forested Regions of the Pacific West, USA.” ResearchGate, 2021, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354289733_The_importance_of_Indigenous_cultural_burning_in_forested_regions_of_the_Pacific_West_US
# Mistry, J., Berardi, A., Andrade, V. ''et al.'' Indigenous Fire Management in the Cerrado of Brazil: The Case of the Krahô of Tocantíns. ''Hum Ecol'' 33, 365–386 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-005-4143-8
# Managing fire regimes in North Australian savannas: Applying Aboriginal approaches to contemporary global problems - Russell-Smith - 2013 - Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment - Wiley Online Library. (n.d.). https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1890/120251
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