Recent searches
Search options
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/
@mekkaokereke This is wonderful and interesting information!
"It's difficult for many US people to accept that native Americans planted entire forests."
I'm reminded that (IIRC) estimates are that 50% to 90% (!!!) of Native Americans in the Americas were killed, the vast majority by disease, within the first century or two after Europeans arrived. Hernán de Soto documented dozens or hundreds of sophisticated, populous walled cities on his journey across what is now the US south. Archaeology tells us vast civilizations existed in North, Central, and South America hundreds to thousands of years ago.
According to one author (I'm trying to remember who), the social landscape of Native Americans in North America in the 1600s-1700s was not some long-term state; it was the result of the *majority* of people dying over the previous century or so from disease. Entire civilizations had virtually disappeared, leaving whatever existed when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
[Edit: meaning that the population was nearly destroyed, the civilizations were collapsed in horrific apocalypses of varying intensity, and what was there in the 1600s was the Mad Max-style remains, both socially and ecologically; some groups had managed to preserve much of their original culture & society, while others preserved much less, and had begun adapting to cultural survival with a tiny percent of their original population. The white settlers eventually did their best to even that out.]
Native American stories about golden periods in their collective past are probably based on reality. There seems little doubt that a huge proportion (possibly the majority) of the jungle forests of central and south America are the result of aggressive human intervention, now grown wild after a near-extinction event for the humans. The evidence certainly seems consistent with the idea that something similar was happening in big parts of North America, as well.
@guyjantic @mekkaokereke the book “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” is excellent for its discussion of the sophistication and variety of early civilizations — Native Americans and others.
@colinaut @guyjantic @mekkaokereke That's by Graber (sp?), isn't it?