Reigniting the Good Fire: Using Indigenous Networks and NGOs to Enhance Government to Government Work on Prescribed Burning for Reducing Wildfire Risk

Abstract

With the worsening impacts of climate change, catastrophic wildfires have been making frequent headlines. But a dive into American history shows that naturally occurring fires have been part of the ecosystem, pre-colonization, and that US suppression policies have ultimately led to intense uncontrollable fires due to the removal of smaller fires from the ecosystem. US Forest Service now has a new attempt to mitigate the impacts of wildfire by treating 50 million acres of land with prescribed burning and thinning treatment over the next 10 years. But with recent recognition of tribal ecological knowledge by the Biden administration, there is also a new pressure to incorporate tribal perspectives and experience into the work. Prior to mass colonization and relocation, many tribes had robust fire regimes, fitted to the ecological landscape. But European colonization suppressed many of these fire regimes and outlawed burning in some territories. Now with increased understanding of the validity of tribal knowledge, there have also been pushes to allow tribes to reclaim their historical burning practices, for cultural and ecological reasons. But due to the landscape of fire policies, and almost a century of public negative perception of fire led by Smokey the Bear, restarting indigenous burning regimes is complex. Because of this, The Nature Conservancy in collaboration with US Forest Service has sponsored a set of agreements and networks for the purpose of fire resilience. The most recent being the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network. With the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network, tribes can overcome obstacles to restart their burning practices and enhance collaboration between tribes and federal agencies. For this thesis, interviews with participants of the Indigenous Peoples Burning network were conducted to understand the barriers to effective fuel management work, and how the network can assist. Important policies regarding burning and collaboration were analyzed and recommendations were made in hopes of enhancing tribal burning and the greater goal of US Forest Service fuel management.