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Periodic reminder of the Native American approach to minimizing the power of forest fires.

They say the California forests are not "natural." They were planted by humans, 10,000 to 20,000 years ago.

They learned that if you don't do controlled burns, that in
~100 years, you get fire tornadoes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mby72d2Vz30

It's difficult for many US people to accept that native Americans planted entire forests. They seem too big.

But just in the past 20 years, we've seen multiple examples in many countries, of one individual human creating entire forests. In India. Brazil. Indonesia. China. Etc.

Like this dude:

https://youtube.com/shorts/APL35AVtWqM?si=Zoqo8tJnKD4ptwuN

The Karuk tribe says, "Making forests is easy! Just plant a few trees every day for a few years. But some years are drier, hotter, and windier. You can't let fuel build up. If you don't do controlled burns, then 1 year within about 100, you will pay a terrible price. The sky will turn red."

Indigenous people learned this the hard way when they were starting out planting forests. They said that the biggest fires crossed entire rivers by raining burning embers for miles, and "created their own weather of wind and lightning." Entire villages disappeared.

Of course we didn't believe them.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q92H5PHsWQY

I guess what I'm saying is, all those feel good videos of people planting entire forests in Brazil and India and China and Mexico etc, are probably making the same mistake that indigenous people in those same places made *checks notes* 20,000 years ago, before they figured it out.

Yes, we do some burns. No, we don't do enough. There's still too much fuel.

And we stopped burns for the better part of the past 100 years. We started limited burns again in large part due to the advocacy of people like Dr. Frank Lake, a Karuk person who also has a PhD in Environmental Sciences.

https://research.fs.usda.gov/about/people/franklake#orgs-tab

To put it in perspective, in 2023, California treated 700,000 acres. That's a lot! But California has ~33 million acres of forest.

For much of the past 20,000 years, many parts of that 33 million acres were treated regularly. Then for the most recent 100 years, they were mostly not treated at all.

https://www.gov.ca.gov/2025/01/08/california-forest-management-hotter-drier-climate/