How Indigenous Techniques Saved a Community From Wildfire

Dave Gill, general manager of Ntityix Development, in a 50-acre forest largely spared by the 2021 Mount Law fire after six years of fuel mitigation.

New York Times article, Aug. 27, 2023

The forest management industry is beginning to see, and accept, some of the methods to reduce wildfire potential by listening to indigenous history and understanding their practices. For millennia, natives have used cultural fire to live with lightning and fire-prone forests.  

Not only is this management shift important for reducing losses from wildfire, but also for improving forest health through thinning small-diameter trees, reducing ladder fuels and providing native habitat along with basket materials and food sources. 

Some public agencies are now actively learning these ancestral practices rather than opposing them. Yet years of work are ahead to accomplish this shift and, then, to follow up with regular maintenance and good fire use in the decades to come.