Prescribed Burning

The Karuk of Northern California are one of many Native peoples with a long tradition of burning their ancestral lands. These practices are key inspiration for an annual prescribed fire training that’s been going on for more than a decade.

The Klamath Prescribed Fire Training Exchange – or KTREX – has been held Northern California since 2014. Part of what sets it apart from similar efforts is the central role played by the Karuk Tribe, and the emphasis on their cultural burning practices. Like many Native people, the Karuk have a time immemorial tradition of burning on their ancestral lands, and many point to it as a key inspiration for thinking of new and better ways to live with fire.

In the wake of the devastating Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in 2022, the U.S. Forest Service paused prescribed fires – which started the infernos – to review the agency’s program. A newly released Government Accountability Office report looks into how well the agency has implemented changes since then. While acknowledging that changes necessary to resume burning have been made, the government watchdog says more work remains.

Beneficial fire is an essential part of confronting the wildfire crisis. But for now, there’s not enough people to do the work. A prescribed burn this spring in Central Idaho shows how partnerships can get more workers on the line.

Home insurance is becoming a more uncertain market, in large part due to climate-fueled disasters like wildfires. Some states in the West are taking steps to address the situation, like Oregon where a 2023 law requires insurers to account for home-hardening measures in their underwriting models. In California, they’re trying to take it a step further.

U.S. federal agencies and sovereign tribal agencies often work together on shared goals like managing wildfire, improving wildlife habitat and other issues. A new repository collects a number of these co-stewardship - or sovereign-to-sovereign - agreements in an effort to help tribes and others better understand their possible uses.

Prescribed fires and mechanical thinning efforts are increasingly common land management tools intended to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. But research into their long term effectiveness is somewhat limited. A recent study looked at the effects of such interventions over more than 20 years on a dry, low-elevation research forest in Montana, and found that the combination of thinning and burning was the most likely to reduce fire risk.

The Forest Service’s recently released “Strategy to Expand Prescribed Fire Training in the West” document is blunt: “The prescribed fire implementation environment continues to grow in complexity, IT READS, whereas the ability of practitioners to practice and hone their expertise has lagged, particularly in the Western United States.” The newly established Western Prescribed Fire Training Center is a major effort to address that workforce issue.

It made national headlines in October 2022 when Forest Service burn boss Ricky Snodgrass was arrested while overseeing a prescribed fire in rural Oregon. Now, a year and a half later, Snodgrass has been indicted on a misdemeanor reckless burning charge. The union he’s a member of is hopeful that he won’t be found guilty, but a representative says the case has still had impacts.

Prescribed fires can be an effective way to reduce the risk of severe wildfires. But they of course also give off smoke, and researchers are trying to better understand that public health tradeoff. A new paper finds that prescribed fire can reduce overall smoke exposure, but that those benefits can diminish as the level of prescribed fire increases.