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I'm shocked this isn't being done already. But what on earth is the reasoning in this article? There are plenty of great reasons to do controlled burns, but for

by alexb_ 3y ago

I'm shocked this isn't being done already. But what on earth is the reasoning in this article? There are plenty of great reasons to do controlled burns, but for some reason the article says controlled burns are good because: > purposeful burns have been used by Indigenous people to keep forests and wildland healthy for millenia. When talking about the reason for overgrowth, the article talks about how it's the fault of Europeans who said controlled burns are primitive. The person they reference is not someone in the forest service, or someone who is an expert in this. They reference the "UC Davis professor of Native American Studies Beth Rose Middleton Manning". Is this article supposed to be about controlled burns being put in California? Or is it supposed to be how the europeans were so stupid, native americans were so smart, and wildfires are the fault of westward expansion? Why not talk about more concrete reasons that controlled burns are good without appealing to it being opposite of racists?

cmh89 3y ago
> The person they talk to is not someone in the forest service, or someone who is an expert in this. They talk to "UC Davis professor of Native American Studies Beth Rose Middleton Manning". They didn't talk to anyone, they just used an article with more depth to support their little, less deep article. >Is this article supposed to be about controlled burns being put in California? Or is it supposed to be how the europeans were so stupid, native americans were so smart, and wildfires are the fault of westward expansion? Why not talk about more concrete reasons that controlled burns are good without appealing to it being opposite of racists? What does this mean? You can't talk about wildfires in the west without talking about how westward expansion brought terrible forest management practices and suppressed traditional management practices that kept forests healthy. How are you involving racism in this topic?
- alexb_ 3y ago
  Thank you, corrected. It's not that I don't think that discussion has a place. It's that I don't think saying "natives did it" is a justification for bringing it back. There are plenty of great justifications for bringing it back, and I'm glad they are, but "native americans used to do this" is not a reason. That sort of reasoning is how you get people claiming that "alternative medicine" is better than the medical miracles we produce today. You need actual data and reasons to support things, not just "native americans did it and racist europeans rejected it".
  - cmh89 3y ago
    >I don't think saying "natives did it" is a justification for bringing it back That's not the justification. The author is bringing up traditional burning practices because suppression of those practices is a cause of our current mega fires. "Thanks to centuries of overzealous fire protection and the suppression of Indigenous cultural burns — which Europeans found “primitive” — forests have become overgrown, accumulating piles of underbrush and fallen trees. In trying to prevent wildfires altogether, we’ve been essentially storing up bigger and bigger piles of fuel. And with that extra fuel comes fires that burn more ferociously, exacerbated by drought and drier conditions from climate change. “When you talk to different native people from the Yosemite area, they talk about how it used to look when fire was used as a management tool,” UC Davis professor of Native American Studies Beth Rose Middleton Manning said in a University of California article. Areas that were once open valleys are now choked with conifers and other fuel sources that were not there when cultural burns helped groom the land." The justification for controlled burns is written here "Setting fires intentionally may sound like a paradoxical approach to fire control, but if they are done correctly, controlled burns reduce the fuel available for wildfires, helping to prevent the catastrophically large, hot fires that overwhelm firefighting resources. They also are beneficial for a healthy ecosystem." It sounds like you'd like to know more about wildfire and how indigenous burning practices suppress mega fires. I encourage you to read the linked materials, as this little article isn't going to go deep enough to answer your questions.
    - brightlancer 3y ago
      > The author is bringing up traditional burning practices because suppression of those practices is a cause of our current mega fires. tl;dr Yes, we should do more controlled burns. No, our current situation has very little to do with "traditional burning practices". Racism against First Peoples isn't the biggest or near one of the biggest reason we haven't been doing controlled burns in California -- leftwing greenies have opposed burns because they oppose man's intervention with nature. _Was_ racism a reason? Sure, but the past is not the present. The present situation with fires is mostly driven by leftwing politics. The greenies didn't just oppose "traditional burning practices" but also _modern_ burning practices that are used in other US states, and they have much more control over California's policy (and even Fed Interior policy) than racist bogeymen. Even this correction is being driven by those politics, as a return to "traditional burning practices" after (real and imagined) historical injustice.
CWuestefeld 3y ago
Yes, welcome to 2023 politics, when there's one reason that's the universal argument for or against anything.
- cududa 3y ago
  The article mentions for one sentence that Europeans thought it was “primitive”. The majority of the articles focus is on insurance liability. Do any of you people actually read before you comment?
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    "Europeans" thought it was "primitive", universally? Or some white person somewhere in the annals of time wrote down that opinion once? What's bizarre is that in spite of that non-sequitur, fire suppression was mandated by the very first session of the California Legislature in 1850. This isn't some ancient technique we're only just now rediscovering. It's been well-established practice for over a century, only recently eschewed in favor of assuaging irrational environmentalists.
    - test098 3y ago
      no, early europeans who first settled in California believed the practice was primitive. later generations would continue: > In a 1918 letter, a district ranger at Klamath National Forest wrote to his supervisor that the US Forest Service’s most important duty was to keep fires to a minimum, but “renegade whites and Indians” were setting fires “for pure cussedness”, not caring whether the fires harmed others. > He suggested that the solution was “to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him”. He also suggested hiring a female missionary who had “gained the confidence” of Indigenous people to convince them to adopt settler theories about fire. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-affirms-indigenous-right-to-controlled-burns https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-...
      - chrisco255 3y ago
tivert 3y ago
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- iosono88 3y ago
  Honestly thank you! Further it's been hypothesized that they didn't do controlled burns in the sense we do it now it's literally just letting nature take it's course. Leaving it alone.
  - tivert 3y ago
    By the way, your account appears to be shadowbanned. All your comments are hidden by default unless enough people vouch for them.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>purposeful burns have been used by Indigenous people to keep forests and wildland healthy for millenia. Is there any evidence of this? I mean, I know that the indigenous people did so to try to contain fires, because wildfires have been an issue for millions of years. But is there any evidence it was "more successful" historically? I'm not a huge believer that ancient cultures had these things figured out.
- pixl97 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire_in_ecosystems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire_in... I'll let you go into the further reading section for more information.
  - throwaway829 3y ago
    No native writing system was known among North American Indians at the time of first European contact. Please explain the type of evidence you could gather that would tell you American Indians thought intentional burning was a good idea and part of their planned forest management. From what I'm reading on your link the evidence is evidence of fires burning things down, thus the Indians had an advanced forest management system in place.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Instead of being argumentative about this, look where we actually have documentation, which is aboriginal burns in the AU. It turns out that people that lived in fire country for hundreds/thousands of years built up practices of burning when fires would remain calm rather than explode into conflagrations. "Advanced" is relative in this sense. Between this and natural fires the landscape had a patchwork quality that acted as natural fire breaks.
bluefishinit 3y ago
The article talks about the historical reasons that controlled burns weren't used in California by the settlers. They're talking to Native American historians because they're leveraging Native American preservation techniques. Addressing the root cause of the problem is important. Here's a good video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe43QK85448 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe43QK85448
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  I feel like other states could equally inform California of techniques for controlled burns because the techniques weren’t lost? UC Davis didn’t empower ancient indigenous community practices uncovering mystical oral history, they went to people that just googled it like everyone else because there has been perpetual cross drift in how to do controlled burns in even more optimal ways. Gullible af wow. This is like the Blazing Saddles of fire control. The only reason California wasn't doing controlled burns, according to the article, is because they didnt have hush money for when they inevitably burn your house down and lose the lawsuit, and now they topped it up with a paltry $20 million. The rest of this article is quite a bit of deflection.
  - danaris 3y ago
    But if there are specific techniques the indigenous nations within California's borders used, those are likely to be more relevant, because California's forests are not New York's forests are not Georgia's forests etc.
    - sidewndr46 3y ago
      What are those specific techniques?
      - danaris 3y ago
        No idea. That's why I said "if". I'm neither indigenous nor a firefighter or forestry expert.
    - 3y ago
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Ditto. Every wildfire season we hear about how controlled burns would help mitigate the risks and...they haven't been doing that? At what point does the Fed Gov say, "wait a minute, if you want disaster funding you've got to clean up your act." And certainly the insurance industry has lobbying power, and nothing from them either? This has a foul smell. I'm rarely pro-litigation but CA residents should start a class action suit again the state for what looks like negligence.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  The federal government has full control over much of forest land in california and could have done burns there whenever they wanted.
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    Then name them in the suit as well. But this we have a helpful tool but we're not going to use it is absurd.
seydor 3y ago
the article is about being read and help the publisher make money. the narrative "we bad , they good" always sells
aaomidi 3y ago
Europeans weren’t stupid. They just labeled native populations as primitive and decided what they do is how everything should be. You can see this from ignoring food forests and insisting on farming when the soil was just throwing up rocks year on year in north east U.S.
- redundantly 3y ago
  Saying they weren't stupid then providing a list of stupid things they did kind of under minds your point.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    It's not out of stupidity, its out of feelings of superiority.
    - redundantly 3y ago
      Which is stupid.
      - 2devnull 3y ago
        But not stupid in a racial way.
        redundantly 3y ago
        Their bigoted mindset dismissed how the indigenous people did things because they saw themselves as better than them. It absolutely was racist. And stupid.
        2devnull 3y ago
        History is more nuanced than people want it to be. If you think that white skinned people specifically are or were all racists in a unique way that sets them apart from other nations, creeds, tribes, then yes that is both stupid (demonstrably ahistorical) and itself racist. If you want to compare the relative intellectual achievements of different races, it sounds like you do, that to me is inherently racist. Grouping people of a different historical epoch based on the color of their skin and assigning some judgement to that group, beyond obvious historical fallacy, is literally racism. But I don’t see that sort of racism as being unique or even uncommon. It’s just the racist thinking that’s fashionable today. Don’t follow fashion, that’s the lesson history should teach us. Natives respect their ancestors you should too, but all of them not just the dark skinned.
themitigating 3y ago
It doesn't call Europeans stupid, talks about westward expansion, or racism. I think you are so on edge looking for anti western bias that you extrapolate what the article said so that it fits your narrative.
- alexb_ 3y ago
  I don't have a narritive here. I don't even think they are wrong it what they say - europeans WERE being racist idiots by completely disregarding what natives did because they thought they were better. What I'm saying is, that in and of itself is not a reason to bring back controlled burns. The reason you bring back controlled burns is not because Europeans rejected it due to racism. The reason you bring back controlled burns is because they work.
  - test098 3y ago
    but the article doesn't say any of that at all... so where are you getting this? can you actually quote a portion of the article that calls europeans "racist idiots" (a term which you've used multiple times throughout this thread), or provide a quote that states that we should bring back controlled burns because it's anti-racist? the entire article is literally saying that we should bring back the burns because they work, not for the reasons you're listing.
  - themitigating 3y ago
    No where in the article does it suggest that
brookst 3y ago
You’re shocked it’s not being done already, and uninterested in why that might be? I’m of European descent, too. It’s ok. Our ancestors were imperfect. It’s perfectly fine to acknowledge that and to learn from this example where the so-called primitives had better practices than the self-described civilized people. It’s not a personal attack if you don’t take it personally.
- themitigating 3y ago
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  - Levitz 3y ago
    Is that really all that is happening though? There is a trend that glorifies native populations over colonizers and it has been going on for years now, said trend is pretty often just thinly veiled racism. I don't think it's insecurity as much as awareness.
    - alexb_ 3y ago
      I don't think "glorifying" victims over oppressors is "thinly veiled racism". Colonizer isn't a race.
      - throwawaymaths 3y ago
        as a non-member of the "primary race" it absolutely is racism.
    - throwbadubadu 3y ago
      But, I cannot find any trend nor glorification in this article? Even not that there is a tone of "we don't do it because it's the opposite of what racists did" thinking (as a sibling poster states).. if someone gets that impression out of this article here, imo they have a problem - or I am too ignorant?
    - jonathanlb 3y ago
sdflhasjd 3y ago
Funny, because back in Europe (or just the UK really), controlled burns would be more strongly associated with the "landed gentry" and their grouse shooting.
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
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efa 3y ago
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- efa 3y ago
  And what the hell are "cultural burns"??
  - warkdarrior 3y ago
    This is the only thing that comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-14597,_Berlin,_Opernplatz,_B%C3%BCcherverbrennung.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning#/media/File:Bunde... From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning
bagacrap 3y ago
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- callalex 3y ago
  Are you claiming there is no connection between wildfires and climate change?
  - bagacrap 3y ago
    I definitely don't believe that climate change is the main reason for the proliferation of large fires over the past 5-6 years. I believe that California naturally has a lot of fires and humans have made it worse by putting out the small ones. I also think that Newsom likes to invoke climate change to cover for poor decisions humans have made in California because it displaces the blame to other humans outside of California and furthers his political agenda. It's a convenient bogeyman.
ortusdux 3y ago
This is a rather jaded take. The article covers the overlap of two newsworthy things: #1 - To the best of our knowledge, the forests of the region were actively managed via fire for thousands of years. This changed a few hundred years ago, and the result is the unprecedented fires we have been experiencing. The government is reacting by greatly increasing funding for prescribed burns which, to the best of our knowledge, is the best solution at this time. #2 - The state is bound by federal treaties with the sovereign nations that reside within its borders. The bounds of these treaties are hotly contested. The sovereign nations believe that the treaties grant them the right to the lifestyle they historically had. The federal government wants to curtail activities they believe, if unchecked, might cause lasting negative effects. One of the rights these sovereign nations had restricted were controlled burns, which they call cultural burns. These rights are being slowly returned now that the state and feds view controlled burns in a more positive light. There is a 3rd indirect element to this article, which is that it is trying to address an audience that has been affected by years of the Smokey the Bear 'all fire is bad' mentality. You should reread the article. I'm pretty sure you brought along the baggage you are complaining about.
- csharpminor 3y ago
  The messaging around managed fires by indigenous peoples is a smart narrative for California. You will not persuade hardcore preservationists in California by listing out the economic/quality of life benefits of controlled burns. They (and I am generalizing) have a deep passion for returning nature to its natural state. The key to changing preservationists minds is not to say "there are many benefits to controlled burns (for humans)" but rather, "the state we are creating in forests without burns is not natural."
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
    This is exactly what is happening. People have been arguing for controlled burns for decades, and they're finally making headway now that that they have a relatively bulletproof argument: these fires are a newer development since humans settled this land, the original settlers had a tested and proven method for dealing with them, so let's go back to doing that.
kayfox 3y ago
The TL;DR of why is that without ground clearing fires there is a build up of trees and debris, resulting in what would have previously been a patchwork of groves of trees turning into thick continuous forest coverage with no breaks. In addition to this the ground gets cluttered with fuel like dead trees, needles and the like, and there is a build up of intermediate trees that help carry any fire on the ground into the canopy of the larger trees. Paul Hessburg of the Forest Service and University of Washington has a good TEDx talk on this that helps explain it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edDZNkm8Mas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edDZNkm8Mas
- deleted 3y ago
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stcroixx 3y ago
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cjensen 3y ago
Controlled burns are being done already by the government. The government owns most of the forested land. This is about a major expansion of the concept, and includes (1) an insurance scheme so that private landowners can do a burn without fear of bankruptcy and (2) restoring cultural burns that Indians performed to manage land before they were banned by people who didn't understand them.
deleted 3y ago
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bluepod4 3y ago
In my opinion, you seem to think there’s some sort of left-leaning political agenda in this post. Interestingly, a right-leaning college “friend” on Facebook uses (and links to articles that use) the same “Indians have been doing it for thousands of years” argument to complain about Democrats, California, and conservationists.
- alexb_ 3y ago
  Okay? I don't care what "side" someone is on when they use this argument. I still think that's not a valid argument. Just because I agree with the conclusion he reaches (controlled burns are good) doesn't mean the logic was sound.
  - bluepod4 3y ago
    Ok. It was hard to tell based on the language you used. > Why burn on purpose? It admittedly seems counterintuitive — or even dangerous — but purposeful burns have been used by Indigenous people to keep forests and wildland healthy for millenia. This is what you’re getting hung up on when you should really be focusing on the highlighted (and enlarged) quote: “Setting fires intentionally may sound unusual, but if done correctly they reduce the fuel available for wildfires and are beneficial for a healthy ecosystem.” The logic is sound in my opinion. Group X of people were doing things a “better” way, have continued to want to do things the “better” way but were prevented by Group Y, and it’s been _proven_ that their “way” was and is indeed “better”. I will acknowledge that the article is lacking in the _proven_ sense. But it’s still there. The reason why this article even mentions Native Americans though is because the new program that is being sponsored specifically targets cultural (i.e. Native American) burns.
thescriptkiddie 3y ago
> I'm shocked this isn't being done already It is being done already, and has been for over a century. It's just facebook boomers got it in their heads that it wasn't.
proc0 3y ago
My understanding is that it was being done until relatively recently when CA politicians leaned so heavily left that burning small fires to prevent bigger ones was somehow a threat to the environment and global warming. I haven't confirmed this personally, but if lawmakers are passing laws to ban gas powered leaf blowers and kitchen stoves, it's not hard to believe.
- asdff 3y ago
  At the end of the day politicians weigh the opinions of their constituents who vote them in more than experts. Given two politicians in an area, one who listens to expert advice about controlled burns, and one who buckles to public pressure surrounding local air quality or forest closures, the latter is always going to be more likely to remain in office.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  You should read the article. It is about how they are limiting liability and encouraging more burning. Burning is allowed, has been allowed, and has been an active part of California forest management for decades. Bans on small off-road engines and new indoor gas burning appliances are generally driven by health concerns (smog, indoor air quality, and noise pollution), and backed by pretty solid science. Not that global warming isn't also a damn good reason to ban these things. I'm perfectly fine with politicians who ban convenience devices that cause extreme externalities to other people like smog, excess noise, and childhood asthma. That doesn't seem like a radical left position.
  - proc0 3y ago
    The article doesn't explain why this wasn't a problem before, I mean at least I don't remember having "fire season" a decade ago. Maybe it's some other cause but I'm still doubting the reasons behind what I would call "society engineering" in politics instead of incentivizing alternative technologies so that they are better and cheaper.
asdff 3y ago
What is particularly harmful about the take you cite is that its not even relevant. What is relevant is the opposition to controlled burns today are more or less the exact same as they've always been I'd guess: local people who have no interest in breathing shit air for two or three weeks. By focusing on this other narrative we misunderstand today's stances on the issue, and how they might be rectified. For example, I'm sure local residents in impoverished rural areas wouldn't mind a stipend for the poor air quality during the burn period, for instance, which might make these burns more politically palatable.
nancyhn 3y ago
This is the Successor Ideology that's infecting everything. The managerial class views the world through this fashionable secular religion that's based on original sin, self-flagellation, and believes in the noble savage myth.
goodbyesf 3y ago
> I'm shocked this isn't being done already. What's more shocking is why it wasn't being done. > Why not talk about more concrete reasons that controlled burns are good without appealing to it being opposite of racists? We are talking concrete reasons. We have to first understand the concrete reasons why it wasn't being done already first. You yourself said it is shocking. Don't you want to know why? What were the reasons against controlled burn? Then we can figure out if we should do it. Just because the concrete reasons upset you doesn't mean they aren't worthy of being discussed. There are many things to be upset about. I don't think controlled burns are it.
- drekipus 3y ago
  > I don't think controlled burns are it. it's not being upset about controlled burns, but the "you're racist yet again and you didn't even know it!"
subsubzero 3y ago
But why burn something - trees that can be used for useful purposes, ie. house building and paper products? For a sensible approach it would be - do select logging and then let small controlled fires happen in the area that has been logged. That way you get into situations where you don't have these tinderbox situations and are extracting 100% renewable resources.
- tokai 3y ago
  The dead trees left behind are a huge boon for insects and the animals that feed on them. Focusing on extracting resources are missing the point of managing a healthy forest. As many leftovers of burns and logging as possible should stay in the ecosystem.
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    What about global warming? If you believe burning fossil fuels is damaging (it is), then shouldn’t we try to minimize that?
sholladay 3y ago
The article may be needlessly framing forest fire management as a racial issue. But it shouldn’t surprise or offend anyone that the people who are from here and have a deep respect for nature as part of their culture would have a better understanding of how to maintain the forest. That professor has valuable knowledge to share and for a long time, people weren’t willing to listen.
eweise 3y ago
I've seen controlled burns being done in California in past. Not sure what is new. Maybe state vs federal properties?
honkycat 3y ago
Nobody wants to accept liability if a fire gets out of control. If it happens naturally, it's nobody's fault. If it happens because the state is doing a controlled burn, the state foots the bill. Take a look at how many of the wildfires are due to unmaintained power lines if you REALLY want to blow a gasket.
GeekyBear 3y ago
> I'm shocked this isn't being done already. Unfortunately, we didn't just stop prescribed burns, we stopped natural burns as well. > In 1935, the Forest Service established the so-called 10 a.m. policy, which decreed that every fire should be suppressed by 10 a.m. the day following its initial report. Other federal land management agencies quickly followed suit and joined the campaign to eliminate fire from the landscape. https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service-history/policy-and-law/fire-u-s-forest-service/u-s-forest-service-fire-suppression/ https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service... So we have forests laden with nearly a hundred years worth of unburned fuel.
CodeWriter23 3y ago
> I'm shocked this isn't being done already. But what on earth is the reasoning in this article? There are plenty of great reasons to do controlled burns, but for some reason the article says controlled burns are good because: >> purposeful burns have been used by Indigenous people to keep forests and wildland healthy for millenia. Don't be shocked. Part of the reason they're couching it this way is to avoid acknowldeging yet another Sacramento Policy Failure "In California, two different approvals are needed for a burn — an air permit and a smoke management plan from the California Air Resources Board or a regional air-pollution district. In some cases, Cal Fire has to sign off, too." https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article249345695.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article24934569...
throwaway09223 3y ago
"Why not talk about more concrete reasons that controlled burns are good without appealing to it being opposite of racists? " This article is weird because forest management became an extremely partisan issue recently. Do you remember the whole "rake the forests" thing? Specifically, no of course we don't rake the forests. But generally, yes, accumulated fuel and forest management is at fault. Great pains are taken to redefine policies in progressive terms to avoid the appearance of agreeing with one's political opponents. Both sides do this btw.
dang 3y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by alexb_ 3y ago

cmh89 3y ago

> The person they talk to is not someone in the forest service, or someone who is an expert in this. They talk to "UC Davis professor of Native American Studies Beth Rose Middleton Manning". They didn't talk to anyone, they just used an article with more depth to support their little, less deep article. >Is this article supposed to be about controlled burns being put in California? Or is it supposed to be how the europeans were so stupid, native americans were so smart, and wildfires are the fault of westward expansion? Why not talk about more concrete reasons that controlled burns are good without appealing to it being opposite of racists? What does this mean? You can't talk about wildfires in the west without talking about how westward expansion brought terrible forest management practices and suppressed traditional management practices that kept forests healthy. How are you involving racism in this topic?

alexb_ 3y ago
Thank you, corrected. It's not that I don't think that discussion has a place. It's that I don't think saying "natives did it" is a justification for bringing it back. There are plenty of great justifications for bringing it back, and I'm glad they are, but "native americans used to do this" is not a reason. That sort of reasoning is how you get people claiming that "alternative medicine" is better than the medical miracles we produce today. You need actual data and reasons to support things, not just "native americans did it and racist europeans rejected it".
- cmh89 3y ago
  >I don't think saying "natives did it" is a justification for bringing it back That's not the justification. The author is bringing up traditional burning practices because suppression of those practices is a cause of our current mega fires. "Thanks to centuries of overzealous fire protection and the suppression of Indigenous cultural burns — which Europeans found “primitive” — forests have become overgrown, accumulating piles of underbrush and fallen trees. In trying to prevent wildfires altogether, we’ve been essentially storing up bigger and bigger piles of fuel. And with that extra fuel comes fires that burn more ferociously, exacerbated by drought and drier conditions from climate change. “When you talk to different native people from the Yosemite area, they talk about how it used to look when fire was used as a management tool,” UC Davis professor of Native American Studies Beth Rose Middleton Manning said in a University of California article. Areas that were once open valleys are now choked with conifers and other fuel sources that were not there when cultural burns helped groom the land." The justification for controlled burns is written here "Setting fires intentionally may sound like a paradoxical approach to fire control, but if they are done correctly, controlled burns reduce the fuel available for wildfires, helping to prevent the catastrophically large, hot fires that overwhelm firefighting resources. They also are beneficial for a healthy ecosystem." It sounds like you'd like to know more about wildfire and how indigenous burning practices suppress mega fires. I encourage you to read the linked materials, as this little article isn't going to go deep enough to answer your questions.
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    > The author is bringing up traditional burning practices because suppression of those practices is a cause of our current mega fires. tl;dr Yes, we should do more controlled burns. No, our current situation has very little to do with "traditional burning practices". Racism against First Peoples isn't the biggest or near one of the biggest reason we haven't been doing controlled burns in California -- leftwing greenies have opposed burns because they oppose man's intervention with nature. _Was_ racism a reason? Sure, but the past is not the present. The present situation with fires is mostly driven by leftwing politics. The greenies didn't just oppose "traditional burning practices" but also _modern_ burning practices that are used in other US states, and they have much more control over California's policy (and even Fed Interior policy) than racist bogeymen. Even this correction is being driven by those politics, as a return to "traditional burning practices" after (real and imagined) historical injustice.

CWuestefeld 3y ago

Yes, welcome to 2023 politics, when there's one reason that's the universal argument for or against anything.

cududa 3y ago
The article mentions for one sentence that Europeans thought it was “primitive”. The majority of the articles focus is on insurance liability. Do any of you people actually read before you comment?
- chrisco255 3y ago
  "Europeans" thought it was "primitive", universally? Or some white person somewhere in the annals of time wrote down that opinion once? What's bizarre is that in spite of that non-sequitur, fire suppression was mandated by the very first session of the California Legislature in 1850. This isn't some ancient technique we're only just now rediscovering. It's been well-established practice for over a century, only recently eschewed in favor of assuaging irrational environmentalists.
  - test098 3y ago
    no, early europeans who first settled in California believed the practice was primitive. later generations would continue: > In a 1918 letter, a district ranger at Klamath National Forest wrote to his supervisor that the US Forest Service’s most important duty was to keep fires to a minimum, but “renegade whites and Indians” were setting fires “for pure cussedness”, not caring whether the fires harmed others. > He suggested that the solution was “to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him”. He also suggested hiring a female missionary who had “gained the confidence” of Indigenous people to convince them to adopt settler theories about fire. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-affirms-indigenous-right-to-controlled-burns https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/3/new-california-law-...
    - chrisco255 3y ago

tivert 3y ago

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iosono88 3y ago
Honestly thank you! Further it's been hypothesized that they didn't do controlled burns in the sense we do it now it's literally just letting nature take it's course. Leaving it alone.
- tivert 3y ago
  By the way, your account appears to be shadowbanned. All your comments are hidden by default unless enough people vouch for them.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>purposeful burns have been used by Indigenous people to keep forests and wildland healthy for millenia. Is there any evidence of this? I mean, I know that the indigenous people did so to try to contain fires, because wildfires have been an issue for millions of years. But is there any evidence it was "more successful" historically? I'm not a huge believer that ancient cultures had these things figured out.

pixl97 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire_in_ecosystems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire_in... I'll let you go into the further reading section for more information.
- throwaway829 3y ago
  No native writing system was known among North American Indians at the time of first European contact. Please explain the type of evidence you could gather that would tell you American Indians thought intentional burning was a good idea and part of their planned forest management. From what I'm reading on your link the evidence is evidence of fires burning things down, thus the Indians had an advanced forest management system in place.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Instead of being argumentative about this, look where we actually have documentation, which is aboriginal burns in the AU. It turns out that people that lived in fire country for hundreds/thousands of years built up practices of burning when fires would remain calm rather than explode into conflagrations. "Advanced" is relative in this sense. Between this and natural fires the landscape had a patchwork quality that acted as natural fire breaks.

bluefishinit 3y ago

The article talks about the historical reasons that controlled burns weren't used in California by the settlers. They're talking to Native American historians because they're leveraging Native American preservation techniques. Addressing the root cause of the problem is important. Here's a good video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe43QK85448 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe43QK85448

yieldcrv 3y ago
I feel like other states could equally inform California of techniques for controlled burns because the techniques weren’t lost? UC Davis didn’t empower ancient indigenous community practices uncovering mystical oral history, they went to people that just googled it like everyone else because there has been perpetual cross drift in how to do controlled burns in even more optimal ways. Gullible af wow. This is like the Blazing Saddles of fire control. The only reason California wasn't doing controlled burns, according to the article, is because they didnt have hush money for when they inevitably burn your house down and lose the lawsuit, and now they topped it up with a paltry $20 million. The rest of this article is quite a bit of deflection.
- danaris 3y ago
  But if there are specific techniques the indigenous nations within California's borders used, those are likely to be more relevant, because California's forests are not New York's forests are not Georgia's forests etc.
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    What are those specific techniques?
    - danaris 3y ago
      No idea. That's why I said "if". I'm neither indigenous nor a firefighter or forestry expert.
  - 3y ago

chiefalchemist 3y ago

Ditto. Every wildfire season we hear about how controlled burns would help mitigate the risks and...they haven't been doing that? At what point does the Fed Gov say, "wait a minute, if you want disaster funding you've got to clean up your act." And certainly the insurance industry has lobbying power, and nothing from them either? This has a foul smell. I'm rarely pro-litigation but CA residents should start a class action suit again the state for what looks like negligence.

mrguyorama 3y ago
The federal government has full control over much of forest land in california and could have done burns there whenever they wanted.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Then name them in the suit as well. But this we have a helpful tool but we're not going to use it is absurd.

seydor 3y ago

the article is about being read and help the publisher make money. the narrative "we bad , they good" always sells

aaomidi 3y ago

Europeans weren’t stupid. They just labeled native populations as primitive and decided what they do is how everything should be. You can see this from ignoring food forests and insisting on farming when the soil was just throwing up rocks year on year in north east U.S.

redundantly 3y ago
Saying they weren't stupid then providing a list of stupid things they did kind of under minds your point.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  It's not out of stupidity, its out of feelings of superiority.
  - redundantly 3y ago
    Which is stupid.
    - 2devnull 3y ago
      But not stupid in a racial way.
      - redundantly 3y ago
        Their bigoted mindset dismissed how the indigenous people did things because they saw themselves as better than them. It absolutely was racist. And stupid.
        2devnull 3y ago
        History is more nuanced than people want it to be. If you think that white skinned people specifically are or were all racists in a unique way that sets them apart from other nations, creeds, tribes, then yes that is both stupid (demonstrably ahistorical) and itself racist. If you want to compare the relative intellectual achievements of different races, it sounds like you do, that to me is inherently racist. Grouping people of a different historical epoch based on the color of their skin and assigning some judgement to that group, beyond obvious historical fallacy, is literally racism. But I don’t see that sort of racism as being unique or even uncommon. It’s just the racist thinking that’s fashionable today. Don’t follow fashion, that’s the lesson history should teach us. Natives respect their ancestors you should too, but all of them not just the dark skinned.

themitigating 3y ago

It doesn't call Europeans stupid, talks about westward expansion, or racism. I think you are so on edge looking for anti western bias that you extrapolate what the article said so that it fits your narrative.

alexb_ 3y ago
I don't have a narritive here. I don't even think they are wrong it what they say - europeans WERE being racist idiots by completely disregarding what natives did because they thought they were better. What I'm saying is, that in and of itself is not a reason to bring back controlled burns. The reason you bring back controlled burns is not because Europeans rejected it due to racism. The reason you bring back controlled burns is because they work.
- test098 3y ago
  but the article doesn't say any of that at all... so where are you getting this? can you actually quote a portion of the article that calls europeans "racist idiots" (a term which you've used multiple times throughout this thread), or provide a quote that states that we should bring back controlled burns because it's anti-racist? the entire article is literally saying that we should bring back the burns because they work, not for the reasons you're listing.
- themitigating 3y ago
  No where in the article does it suggest that

brookst 3y ago

You’re shocked it’s not being done already, and uninterested in why that might be? I’m of European descent, too. It’s ok. Our ancestors were imperfect. It’s perfectly fine to acknowledge that and to learn from this example where the so-called primitives had better practices than the self-described civilized people. It’s not a personal attack if you don’t take it personally.

themitigating 3y ago
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- Levitz 3y ago
  Is that really all that is happening though? There is a trend that glorifies native populations over colonizers and it has been going on for years now, said trend is pretty often just thinly veiled racism. I don't think it's insecurity as much as awareness.
  - alexb_ 3y ago
    I don't think "glorifying" victims over oppressors is "thinly veiled racism". Colonizer isn't a race.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      as a non-member of the "primary race" it absolutely is racism.
  - throwbadubadu 3y ago
    But, I cannot find any trend nor glorification in this article? Even not that there is a tone of "we don't do it because it's the opposite of what racists did" thinking (as a sibling poster states).. if someone gets that impression out of this article here, imo they have a problem - or I am too ignorant?
  - jonathanlb 3y ago

sdflhasjd 3y ago

Funny, because back in Europe (or just the UK really), controlled burns would be more strongly associated with the "landed gentry" and their grouse shooting.

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

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efa 3y ago

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efa 3y ago
And what the hell are "cultural burns"??
- warkdarrior 3y ago
  This is the only thing that comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-14597,_Berlin,_Opernplatz,_B%C3%BCcherverbrennung.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning#/media/File:Bunde... From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning

bagacrap 3y ago

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callalex 3y ago
Are you claiming there is no connection between wildfires and climate change?
- bagacrap 3y ago
  I definitely don't believe that climate change is the main reason for the proliferation of large fires over the past 5-6 years. I believe that California naturally has a lot of fires and humans have made it worse by putting out the small ones. I also think that Newsom likes to invoke climate change to cover for poor decisions humans have made in California because it displaces the blame to other humans outside of California and furthers his political agenda. It's a convenient bogeyman.

ortusdux 3y ago

This is a rather jaded take. The article covers the overlap of two newsworthy things: #1 - To the best of our knowledge, the forests of the region were actively managed via fire for thousands of years. This changed a few hundred years ago, and the result is the unprecedented fires we have been experiencing. The government is reacting by greatly increasing funding for prescribed burns which, to the best of our knowledge, is the best solution at this time. #2 - The state is bound by federal treaties with the sovereign nations that reside within its borders. The bounds of these treaties are hotly contested. The sovereign nations believe that the treaties grant them the right to the lifestyle they historically had. The federal government wants to curtail activities they believe, if unchecked, might cause lasting negative effects. One of the rights these sovereign nations had restricted were controlled burns, which they call cultural burns. These rights are being slowly returned now that the state and feds view controlled burns in a more positive light. There is a 3rd indirect element to this article, which is that it is trying to address an audience that has been affected by years of the Smokey the Bear 'all fire is bad' mentality. You should reread the article. I'm pretty sure you brought along the baggage you are complaining about.

csharpminor 3y ago
The messaging around managed fires by indigenous peoples is a smart narrative for California. You will not persuade hardcore preservationists in California by listing out the economic/quality of life benefits of controlled burns. They (and I am generalizing) have a deep passion for returning nature to its natural state. The key to changing preservationists minds is not to say "there are many benefits to controlled burns (for humans)" but rather, "the state we are creating in forests without burns is not natural."
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
  This is exactly what is happening. People have been arguing for controlled burns for decades, and they're finally making headway now that that they have a relatively bulletproof argument: these fires are a newer development since humans settled this land, the original settlers had a tested and proven method for dealing with them, so let's go back to doing that.

kayfox 3y ago

The TL;DR of why is that without ground clearing fires there is a build up of trees and debris, resulting in what would have previously been a patchwork of groves of trees turning into thick continuous forest coverage with no breaks. In addition to this the ground gets cluttered with fuel like dead trees, needles and the like, and there is a build up of intermediate trees that help carry any fire on the ground into the canopy of the larger trees. Paul Hessburg of the Forest Service and University of Washington has a good TEDx talk on this that helps explain it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edDZNkm8Mas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edDZNkm8Mas

deleted 3y ago
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stcroixx 3y ago

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cjensen 3y ago

Controlled burns are being done already by the government. The government owns most of the forested land. This is about a major expansion of the concept, and includes (1) an insurance scheme so that private landowners can do a burn without fear of bankruptcy and (2) restoring cultural burns that Indians performed to manage land before they were banned by people who didn't understand them.

deleted 3y ago

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bluepod4 3y ago

In my opinion, you seem to think there’s some sort of left-leaning political agenda in this post. Interestingly, a right-leaning college “friend” on Facebook uses (and links to articles that use) the same “Indians have been doing it for thousands of years” argument to complain about Democrats, California, and conservationists.

alexb_ 3y ago
Okay? I don't care what "side" someone is on when they use this argument. I still think that's not a valid argument. Just because I agree with the conclusion he reaches (controlled burns are good) doesn't mean the logic was sound.
- bluepod4 3y ago
  Ok. It was hard to tell based on the language you used. > Why burn on purpose? It admittedly seems counterintuitive — or even dangerous — but purposeful burns have been used by Indigenous people to keep forests and wildland healthy for millenia. This is what you’re getting hung up on when you should really be focusing on the highlighted (and enlarged) quote: “Setting fires intentionally may sound unusual, but if done correctly they reduce the fuel available for wildfires and are beneficial for a healthy ecosystem.” The logic is sound in my opinion. Group X of people were doing things a “better” way, have continued to want to do things the “better” way but were prevented by Group Y, and it’s been _proven_ that their “way” was and is indeed “better”. I will acknowledge that the article is lacking in the _proven_ sense. But it’s still there. The reason why this article even mentions Native Americans though is because the new program that is being sponsored specifically targets cultural (i.e. Native American) burns.

thescriptkiddie 3y ago

> I'm shocked this isn't being done already It is being done already, and has been for over a century. It's just facebook boomers got it in their heads that it wasn't.

proc0 3y ago

My understanding is that it was being done until relatively recently when CA politicians leaned so heavily left that burning small fires to prevent bigger ones was somehow a threat to the environment and global warming. I haven't confirmed this personally, but if lawmakers are passing laws to ban gas powered leaf blowers and kitchen stoves, it's not hard to believe.

asdff 3y ago
At the end of the day politicians weigh the opinions of their constituents who vote them in more than experts. Given two politicians in an area, one who listens to expert advice about controlled burns, and one who buckles to public pressure surrounding local air quality or forest closures, the latter is always going to be more likely to remain in office.
dghlsakjg 3y ago
You should read the article. It is about how they are limiting liability and encouraging more burning. Burning is allowed, has been allowed, and has been an active part of California forest management for decades. Bans on small off-road engines and new indoor gas burning appliances are generally driven by health concerns (smog, indoor air quality, and noise pollution), and backed by pretty solid science. Not that global warming isn't also a damn good reason to ban these things. I'm perfectly fine with politicians who ban convenience devices that cause extreme externalities to other people like smog, excess noise, and childhood asthma. That doesn't seem like a radical left position.
- proc0 3y ago
  The article doesn't explain why this wasn't a problem before, I mean at least I don't remember having "fire season" a decade ago. Maybe it's some other cause but I'm still doubting the reasons behind what I would call "society engineering" in politics instead of incentivizing alternative technologies so that they are better and cheaper.

asdff 3y ago

What is particularly harmful about the take you cite is that its not even relevant. What is relevant is the opposition to controlled burns today are more or less the exact same as they've always been I'd guess: local people who have no interest in breathing shit air for two or three weeks. By focusing on this other narrative we misunderstand today's stances on the issue, and how they might be rectified. For example, I'm sure local residents in impoverished rural areas wouldn't mind a stipend for the poor air quality during the burn period, for instance, which might make these burns more politically palatable.

nancyhn 3y ago

This is the Successor Ideology that's infecting everything. The managerial class views the world through this fashionable secular religion that's based on original sin, self-flagellation, and believes in the noble savage myth.

goodbyesf 3y ago

> I'm shocked this isn't being done already. What's more shocking is why it wasn't being done. > Why not talk about more concrete reasons that controlled burns are good without appealing to it being opposite of racists? We are talking concrete reasons. We have to first understand the concrete reasons why it wasn't being done already first. You yourself said it is shocking. Don't you want to know why? What were the reasons against controlled burn? Then we can figure out if we should do it. Just because the concrete reasons upset you doesn't mean they aren't worthy of being discussed. There are many things to be upset about. I don't think controlled burns are it.

drekipus 3y ago
> I don't think controlled burns are it. it's not being upset about controlled burns, but the "you're racist yet again and you didn't even know it!"

subsubzero 3y ago

But why burn something - trees that can be used for useful purposes, ie. house building and paper products? For a sensible approach it would be - do select logging and then let small controlled fires happen in the area that has been logged. That way you get into situations where you don't have these tinderbox situations and are extracting 100% renewable resources.

tokai 3y ago
The dead trees left behind are a huge boon for insects and the animals that feed on them. Focusing on extracting resources are missing the point of managing a healthy forest. As many leftovers of burns and logging as possible should stay in the ecosystem.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  What about global warming? If you believe burning fossil fuels is damaging (it is), then shouldn’t we try to minimize that?

sholladay 3y ago

The article may be needlessly framing forest fire management as a racial issue. But it shouldn’t surprise or offend anyone that the people who are from here and have a deep respect for nature as part of their culture would have a better understanding of how to maintain the forest. That professor has valuable knowledge to share and for a long time, people weren’t willing to listen.

eweise 3y ago

I've seen controlled burns being done in California in past. Not sure what is new. Maybe state vs federal properties?

honkycat 3y ago

Nobody wants to accept liability if a fire gets out of control. If it happens naturally, it's nobody's fault. If it happens because the state is doing a controlled burn, the state foots the bill. Take a look at how many of the wildfires are due to unmaintained power lines if you REALLY want to blow a gasket.

GeekyBear 3y ago

> I'm shocked this isn't being done already. Unfortunately, we didn't just stop prescribed burns, we stopped natural burns as well. > In 1935, the Forest Service established the so-called 10 a.m. policy, which decreed that every fire should be suppressed by 10 a.m. the day following its initial report. Other federal land management agencies quickly followed suit and joined the campaign to eliminate fire from the landscape. https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service-history/policy-and-law/fire-u-s-forest-service/u-s-forest-service-fire-suppression/ https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service... So we have forests laden with nearly a hundred years worth of unburned fuel.

CodeWriter23 3y ago

> I'm shocked this isn't being done already. But what on earth is the reasoning in this article? There are plenty of great reasons to do controlled burns, but for some reason the article says controlled burns are good because: >> purposeful burns have been used by Indigenous people to keep forests and wildland healthy for millenia. Don't be shocked. Part of the reason they're couching it this way is to avoid acknowldeging yet another Sacramento Policy Failure "In California, two different approvals are needed for a burn — an air permit and a smoke management plan from the California Air Resources Board or a regional air-pollution district. In some cases, Cal Fire has to sign off, too." https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article249345695.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article24934569...

throwaway09223 3y ago

"Why not talk about more concrete reasons that controlled burns are good without appealing to it being opposite of racists? " This article is weird because forest management became an extremely partisan issue recently. Do you remember the whole "rake the forests" thing? Specifically, no of course we don't rake the forests. But generally, yes, accumulated fuel and forest management is at fault. Great pains are taken to redefine policies in progressive terms to avoid the appearance of agreeing with one's political opponents. Both sides do this btw.

dang 3y ago

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html