| Emily Burgueno calls them "sovereign burns." |
| It's the subversive act of simply identifying a need in the landscape or the community — maybe the community garden could use some soil revitalization, or the oak trees plagued with weevil pests could use some fumigation — and tending to it with cultural fire. No need for permission. |
| California has made supporting Indigenous fire stewardship a priority in recent years to help address the state's growing wildfire crisis. But burning freely across the landscape (with perhaps only a phone call to the local land manager or fire department to give them a heads up) is still a dream, a long way off. |
| California outlawed cultural burning practices at statehood in 1850 and in most cases, burning freely without permits and approvals is still illegal. Even recently, Burgueno, a cultural fire practitioner and citizen of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel in San Diego County, has seen local authorities arrest an elder on arson charges for using cultural fire in tending the land. |
| It's a practice far older than prescribed burning, the intentional fires typically set and managed by U.S. government fire personnel. |
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| With the tradition comes wisdom: Through joint trainings and burns, fire officials versed in prescribed fire are often delighted by the detailed knowledge of fire's role in an ecosystem that cultural fire practitioners can nonchalantly drop — for example, the benefits of burning after bees pollinate. |
| While prescription burns carried out by the Forest Service often focus on large-scale management goals, cultural burns are an elegant dance, deeply in tune with the individual species on the landscape and the relationships they have with each other and fire. Burning is one of many tools tribes have to shape the ecosystem and help it flourish through the years. |
| "It is grounded in our creation stories, our sacred beliefs and philosophy," Burgueno said. "It helps us understand how to be a steward of the land, which requires us to be a steward within ourselves — to have a healthy body, mind, and spirit." |
| For Don Hankins, a Miwok cultural fire practitioner and a geography and environmental studies professor at Chico State, it's this fundamental tie to culture that makes the practice unique. |
| The way willows grow back after fire, for example, "they're long; they're slender. They're more supple than if they were not tended to with fire," Hankins said. "As a weaver, those are really important characteristics." |
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| The state now sees its prohibitions, enforced with violence, as wrong and has taken significant steps in recent years to address the barriers it created to sovereign burning. In order to freely practice, tribes need access to land, permission to set fire and the capacity to oversee the burn. But the solutions, so far, are still piecemeal. They only apply to certain land under certain conditions. |
| Hankins, who started practicing cultural burning with his family when he was about 4, has made a practice of pushing the state and federal government out of their comfort zones. He, too, dreams of a day when a burn is defined solely by the needs of the land and its life. |
| "The atmospheric river is coming in, and we know that once it dumps the rain and snow ... we close out the fire season — but what if we went out ahead of that storm, and we lit fires and worked through the ecosystems regardless of ownership?" he said. "That's the long-range goal I have. In order to get fire back in balance, first we have to take some pretty bold steps." |
More recent wildfire news |
| At an October town meeting in Topanga, a fire official with the Los Angeles County Fire Department told residents that, during a wildfire, the department may order them to ride out the blaze in their homes. It's part of an ongoing debate in California about what to do when an evacuation could take hours, but a fire could reach a town in minutes. |
| The Los Angeles City Fire Department is requesting a 15% increase in its budget to support wildfire response, my colleague Noah Goldberg reports. The request includes funding for 179 new firefighter recruits and a second hand crew specializing in wildfire response. LAFD's union is also proposing a ballot measure for a half-cent sales tax to raise funds for new fire stations and equipment. |
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| The U.S. Forest Service completed prescribed burns on more than 127,000 acres during the government shutdown, the Hotshot Wake Up reports, despite fears the disruption would severely limit the Forest Service's ability to burn during optimal fall weather conditions. |
A few last things in climate news |
| A proposed pipeline could end California's status as a "fuel island," connecting the golden state's isolated gasoline and diesel markets with the rest of the country, my colleague Hayley Smith reports. The state is grappling how to balance consumer affordability with the transition to clean energy, with the upcoming closure of two major refineries. |
| The Department of Energy is breaking up or rebranding several key offices that support the development of clean energy technologies, Alexander C. Kaufman reports for Heatmap News. It's unclear how the restructuring will impact the Department's work. |
| During the COP30 climate conference in Brazil — which produced a last-minute incremental deal that did not directly mention fossil fuels — the South American nation recognized 10 new Indigenous territories, the BBC's Mallory Moench and Georgina Rannard report. The hundreds of thousands of acres they span will now have their culture and environment legally protected. Although, the protections are not always enforced. |
| This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here. |
| For more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social on Bluesky. |
