California is the epicenter
of the wildfire epidemic.
Over the paste few years wildfires
have gotten more destructive, more deadly
and more expensive to put out.
Many link this to climate change,
but that's not the whole story.
- Fire doesn't have to be scary.
- Fire on our term is good.
Fire not on our term could be bad and devastating.
- [Voice Over] Some believe that fighting fires
has made things worse.
- Europeans are gonna fight fire,
it's like, why don't you fight rain,
or fight earthquakes?
It's just kind of this ridiculous idea.
- [Voice Over] The Karuk Tribe in Northern California
thinks the only solution is to embrace fire.
Before European colonization indigenous tribes
practiced traditional burning for generations
as a way to actually protect their forests
from catastrophic wildfires.
- Humans have been using fire
as a management tool for millennia.
- Prescribed fire is the most effective tool we have
to prevent wildfires.
- [Voice Over] For over 100 years federal and state policy
has pushed to put out every fire at all costs.
Now the Karuk Tribe is leading the movement to change that.
They believe that both their land and their culture
depend on it.
- Our birthright was taken from us as fire people
and fix the world people.
We're trying to restore that for the kids.
We're playing catch up.
We need to renew our relationship with fire.
The clock is ticking.
- So this is home.
This is where my family's been since the beginning
and over the years I just kinda watched it
get thicker and thicker because of the laws there were.
We weren't allowed to treat it traditionally
like our ancestors used to do.
By prescribed fire we're able to keep evasive species out
and keep the heavy fuel loading down to a minimum
so that way our resources like the elk, the bears
and the deer, 'cause they can still pass through
the brush and the woods.
We got away from some of that traditional knowledge
that we're bringing it back.
- [Voice Over] Herman Albers is
the Wildland Fire Operation Specialist
for the Karuk Fire and Fuels Program.
- Starburry, Albers, Olanger Pete
we are at the zone's workstation getting things together.
We'll see the crew when they get here.
- [Voice Over] His crew helps thin the forest
by clearing the buildup of highly flammable brush
and dead vegetation.
They strategically gather it into piles
away from larger trees then they burn them.
But these prescribed burns are an act of resistance.
A 1911 federal policy made it illegal
for people to start fires on public land.
Another law said that all fires must be put out
by 10:00 a.m. the following day.
Fires temporarily decreased,
but in turn the forest thickened.
- The reality is that things right now
are so out of balance
simply because we've taken fire out of the landscape.
- These forests are just tinderbox waiting to go
and we have to have fire on the landscape
to keep catastrophic fire from destroying the landscape.
If we don't get to accept fire
we'll just keep losing these huge swaths of forest.
- [Voice Over] The tribe's ancestral territory
spans over one millions acres along the Klamath River
in Humboldt and Siskiyou Counties.
But just like all other indigenous tribes in California
the Karuk don't have full jurisdiction over their land.
So in order to legally implement prescribed burns
they must work in collaboration
with the U.S. Forest Service.
- We've got 1.2 million acres
that we wanna treat and restore, and we can't do it alone.
If we're trying to do it ourselves
it's gonna take way too much time.
We're never gonna get ahead of the curve.
We're way behind right now.
- [Voice Over] Last year the Forest Service
signed a new implementation plan to support
traditional Karuk burning practices.
The plan was born
out of the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership.
A historic collaboration between the Karuk Tribe,
the Forest Service and other community stakeholders.
They all agree on one thing.
Wildfires have gotten out of hand.
- Wildfires have heavily impacted this landscape
in ways that make me wanna Voice Overmit and cry.
Incredible, sacred landscapes that have been gutted
by high severity wildfire.
- We're sort of the doctors treating the landscape.
Giving it their prescription
to where they can be healthy again
and grow and thrive.
It scares me that it might not happen fast enough
that I won't be able to witness it.
- [Voice Over] The government now admits
that a century of misinformed fire suppression policy
contributed to the wildfire epidemic in the state.
And today anti-fire policies
and general public sentiment linger nationwide.
- You know, with the Passage of the Weeks Act
in 1911 there was a zero tolerance policy
for any kind of prescribed fire
and the reality is that everybody who lived here
at that time used fire in one way or another.
The cattlemen, the ranchers, the gold miners,
the tribal communities all used fire as a tool.
- [Voice Over] But here's the thing.
Forest fires were a financial threat to the timber industry.
The U.S. Forest Service
was created in large part to secure continuous
timber supply for the American people.
But for more than half a century they implemented
an aggressive fire suppression agenda.
- [Narrator] Fire, fire that roars up the valleys
to the peaks.
Burning, exploding, sweeping everything in its path
leaving nothing but gray ashes, and charred stumps
and dead animals.
Destroying millions of board feet of timber
that we need to win the war.
Another American tragedy, another careless happy-go-lucky
patriotic American like you has made Hitler happy.
- [Voice Over] The Forest Services Advertising icon,
Smokey Bear became a household name.
One with lasting effect on the American psyche.
- [Narrator] Thanks to those who help make America great.
- The next time you come to the forest
do me a faVoice Overr.
Only you can prevent forest fires.
- [Voice Over] Only you can prevent forest fires
was a constant reminder to Americans
that all forest fires were bad, the enemy.
- Just to be a Karuk you're already illegal.
If we just be ourselves we're breaking all types of laws.
Our hunting practices, our fishing practices,
our burning practices.
Maybe they could've continued with ceremonial fire,
but maybe I wouldn't be here today
because they would've been rubbed out,
or they'd be doing 40 years in prison for arson.
- It's the right of people to use fire as a tool
and people have resisted fire suppression
at the risk of being thrown in prison.
This place in California is the hotbed of resistance
against fire suppression policy.
- [Voice Over] As the Karuk try to push
for more prescribed burns California wildfires
continue to get worse.
In 2018 over 1.6 million acres burned across the state.
That includes Camp Fire,
the deadliest and most destructive fire
in California history
that killed 86 people and destroyed over 18,000 structures.
While there is progress being made
to implement prescribed burns
some say it's just not happening fast enough.
- I'm not gonna see the results of my work
and that's okay 'cause we don't do it for ourselves,
we do it out of this responsibility.
I'm doing it because that's my job
as a Karuk person.
The thing I'm most afraid of is coming up short.
Not actually able to do the amount of work
that needs to be done.
- [Voice Over] In 2018
the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership
began a project to implement a 5570 acre prescribed burn
in Karuk territory.
Across the entire United States 11.3 million acres
were treated with prescribed fire in 2017.
But prescribed fires are still difficult to implement,
especially in the West.
This is due to weather limitations, air quality
and smoke regulations, and a fear of liability lawsuits.
California has the strictest air quality regulations
in the country, and private properties
are speckled throughout the state's mountains.
Those homes are often protected at all costs
but at the same time the Karuk are worried
about protecting their way of life.
- For me I came to it through
how do we protect a community from wildfires?
Well, we use fire to fight fire,
but for the tribal community it's how do we get
the cultural materials to keep the culture alive?
Whether that's regalia, or food, or medicine.
They all depend on fire.
- My fear is how do I continue being myself
if I don't have these things?
Whether it's salmon, a forest, how do I live?
Maybe I'm still alive but would you wanna be
if your landscape is completely gone?
With regular burn intervals it'll burn up into here.
Eventually, you know, another 50 years
this'll be a huge tree and this'll be a huge hole
and you could have quite a bit larger animal
living in there.
A little bit of fire isn't gonna effect this nice hard part
but it'll make a nice home inside.
Fire can create all this wonderful habitat
that we've been sorely lacking,
where this tree's begging for it.
- [Voice Over] Prescribed fires are already
proving beneficial to traditional plants.
- These are wonderful little basket material,
and you see you've got your shade, all your trees
didn't get totally nuked.
It'll just be wonderful.
I can see the pliability there
and it hasn't even cut near anything.
- Some of the needles still here.
It's not all ash and dust.
What that does is allow for the nutrients
that are within these to go back into the soil
and help promote this good growth of these shoots.
Whereas if it was high intensity all you would see
is just pits of white ash everywhere.
When it's just decimated it can't come back
to its natural state without a lot of love and care
and help from the people.
- [Voice Over] For the Karuk fire is a matter of survival.
They worry that prescribed burns aren't happening
at the scale they need to be.
Nearly 50% of Karuk Territory hasn't been touched by fire
in the last 100 years,
and because of that it was left completely vulnerable.
- We're doing good work here.
Being a Karuk tribal member has way more meaning
to me to do this because this is what my ancestors did,
and it's what was taken from them in the past,
and we're gonna make a movement,
and you're gonna hear about it all over the world,
and it started right here.