Cover artwork by Lux Meteora
Summary
What happens after the smoke clears? What does recovery look like when the disasters never end?
In this episode, we're visiting the sites of some of BC's biggest burns of 2017 and 2021 — making the link between the mega-fires and the floods and landslides that followed. We'll hear about how the land is (and isn't) recovering, and the factors that spell the difference.
This is the 4th instalment in our series of indeterminate length, "On Fire", but don't feel obliged to listen to parts 1-3 beforehand.
Ongoing support for this podcast comes from listeners just like you. To keep this show going, join our community at patreon.com/futureecologies
Show Notes and Credits
This episode was produced by Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski, with the voices of Lori Daniels, Sarah Dickson-Hoyle, and Sam Draney, plus Marianne and Ron Ignace.
With music by Thumbug, Any-Angled Light, and Sunfish Moon Light
And thanks to Lux Meteora and Daniel Pierce.
This episode includes audio recorded by klankbeeld, Benboncan, tim.kahn, and Diegolar, accessed through the Freesound Project, and protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses.
Citations
Dickson-Hoyle, S., et al. (2021) Walking on two legs: a pathway of Indigenous restoration and reconciliation in fire-adapted landscapes. Restoration Ecology (30) 4. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13566
Dickson-Hoyle, S., Char, J. (2021) Elephant Hill: Secwépemc leadership and lessons learned from the collective story of wildfire recovery. Secwepemcúl ̓ ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society.
Dickson-Hoyle, S., Char, J. (2021) Elephant Hill - Summary and Recommendations. Secwepemcúl ̓ ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society.
Hessburg, P., et al. (2021) Evidence for widespread changes in the structure, composition, and fire regimes of western North American forests. Ecological Applications (31) 8. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2431
Hessburg, P., et al. (2021) Wildfire and climate change adaptation of western North American forests: a case for intentional management. Ecological Applications (31) 8. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2431
Kwetásel’wet Wood, S. (2021) After the fire: the long road to recovery. The Narwhal
Lavoie, J. (2021) Connecting the dots between B.C.’s floods, landslides and the clearcut logging of old forests. The Narwhal
Prichard, S., et al. (2021) Adapting western North American forests to climate change and wildfires: 10 common questions. Ecological Applications (31) 8. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2433
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Future Ecologies is recorded and produced on the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Penelakut, Hwlitsum, and Lelum Sar Augh Ta Naogh, and other Hul'qumi'num speaking peoples, otherwise known as Galiano Island, British columbia, as well as the unceded, shared, and asserted territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil-Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcription
Introduction Voiceover 00:04
You're listening to Season Five of Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins 00:10
I don't usually do this, but I have to know if you're willing to tell me. How did you meet?
Ron Ignace 00:18
She got cursed to be here.
Marianne Ignace 00:19
Yep.
Adam Huggins 00:20
Cursed?
Ron Ignace 00:21
Yeah.
Marianne Ignace 00:21
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 00:23
Oh.
Marianne Ignace 00:23
I'm originally from Northwestern Germany from a, if you want, a sort of minority in Europe. So my ancestors right down to my parents spoke Plautdietsch as we call it, or Plattdütsch. It's closer to Dutch than to standard German. So that's where I was born and raised and then as a young adult, traveled to Haida Gwaii and lived there for a number of years. When in 1982, my mother was visiting and I had a toddler, my daughter, Jessica, and we were driving to the interior. I'd never been east of Hope. So we traveled for hours through the sagebrush, bunchgrass ponderosa pine, if even there were some. And finally, it was when we were right at the mouth of like the highway here – by the mouth of Deadman Creek. We turned to each other, and I said "What a godforsaken area is this anyway?"
Marianne Ignace 01:35
We've said ever since that's when I cursed myself for the rest of my days, and of course, I you know, I came to Secwépemc territory just a bit after that.
Ron Ignace 01:49
I was raised and lived in this valley here. I was adopted by my great grandmother, Sulyen. I was fortunate Shuswap great grandmothers have the right to look amongst all their grandchildren and adopt one and raise it as their own. And I say that I won the lottery ticket. And as a result, I got some understanding of our language and our ways in our knowledge, traditional knowledge. And I mean, I remember my great grandmother's Sulyen would have her her old saddle horse and her birch bark baskets, and we would jump on the horse — me riding in the back — and we'd be riding all these hills picking the Saskatoonberries off of horseback.
Ron Ignace 02:35
But one of the things that my great grandmother, she told me before she left this place, she said, "I want you to go out into the world and study it. Once you do that, then you come home and help your people." And I tried to not live up to the admonishments, but to forget about them and do my own thing. But nonetheless, I ran away from the Kamloops Indian Residential School with an incomplete grade eight, went traveling around working here on ranches and farms and things of this nature. But I went back to university and got my master's degree from there.
Marianne Ignace 03:15
My sort of mentor, supervisor of my postdoc, was Ron's thesis supervisor.
Adam Huggins 03:22
Right!
Marianne Ignace 03:23
So one time he mentioned, "oh, yeah, you gotta meet this guy. He wrote a really good master's thesis, you should read it. Maybe look him up one day." You know, since those days, we've co-authored many times and working together with Dr. Nancy Turner from UVic took us to begin studying the wider context in which plants and animals interact with humans and vice versa, but also how our ecologies are rapidly changing through fragmentation and destruction of our lands, our homelands. And in more recent decades, the impacts of drought, climate change, floods, and of course fires.
Newsreel Montage 04:12
Look at this dashcam video you're seeing here. One family trying to flee a wildfire engulfing parts of Canada. The flames and smoke... The smoke from the wildfire western Canada. We are facing the large wildfire ever recorded in EU history... Devestating wildfires are ravaging part of the Big Island and the island of Maui... An astonishing milestone this week. Monday and Tuesday, the hottest days ever recorded on Earth... Severe weather yet again, from an atmospheric river that has dumped rain in the central part of the state tonight, causing massive flooding... For the third time in a week an atmospheric river is drenching Southwestern BC, where flooding and landslides have already disrupted the lives of 1000s of people.
Ron Ignace 04:52
Fire and water were heads and tails of the same coin really. Because if you don't respect and honor fire, it will cause you great harm and danger, likewise with water. Water can be equally as destructive. So it's how you respect and honor the land and we have what you know, like our word [Secwepemctsin]. If you don't honor the land, the land will turn on you. And you experience great grief and sorrow through floods and fires. And basically, that's what's happening with us today.
Mendel Skulski 05:40
Welcome back, my name is Mendel.
Adam Huggins 05:43
And I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski 05:44
And to cap off another record season of floods and wildfires. We're dipping back into the hottest topic in the more than human world. And it's a perennial favorite of ours on this show.
Adam Huggins 05:57
This is the next installment in our long running series on fire. We're calling this one under water.
Mendel Skulski 06:06
We've spoken about fire at length three times before this, but don't worry if you're just joining us for this one.
Introduction Voiceover 06:14
Broadcasting from the unceded, shared and asserted territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh, this is Future Ecologies – exploring the shape of our world through ecology, design, and sound.
Mendel Skulski 06:56
So, Adam, another year, another record shattering fire season, and a seemingly endless list of disasters close to home, and around the world.
Adam Huggins 07:09
Mhm
Mendel Skulski 07:09
Plus unprecedented heat waves, with scientists reporting, the hottest day ever recorded.
Adam Huggins 07:16
Three straight days in a row in July.
Mendel Skulski 07:19
And then beyond fire, we've witnessed catastrophic floods ripping through communities on practically every continent.
Adam Huggins 07:26
And of course, in my home state of California, which was literally underwater for most of the winter.
Mendel Skulski 07:31
Yeah. So we're all living out the climate crisis right now, together in different ways. How are you feeling about it?
Adam Huggins 07:45
To be honest, I'm feeling pretty angry about it right now. I just traveled to the Rockies and back. And everywhere that I went, there were fires burning, could see them from the road. We could see them progress over time, as we, you know, went out and then came back. And my community has been fine so far. But I can't say the same for some of my friends.
Mendel Skulski 08:06
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 08:07
Honestly, I feel like we're living in the world that we were warned about decades ago. And watching our neighbors get burned and flooded out of their homes.
Mendel Skulski 08:16
Yeah...
Adam Huggins 08:17
It just seems like it's gonna get worse. And, you know, usually when there's a disaster, we grieve, we recover. The mayor makes some statements in the local newspaper about rebuilding, and we move on. So I guess the question that we have to ask ourselves under these circumstances is, what does recovery look like when the disaster just never ends? When it just keeps going? What does recovery mean, when the crisis that we're experiencing is chronic?
Mendel Skulski 08:56
Well, to start to answer that question, I think we have to rewind the clock a little bit. We're gonna go back to 2021 in my home province of British Columbia. Where during the summer, another unprecedented heatwave or heat dome, which is a word we now all know, but at the time had never heard before.
Adam Huggins 09:17
Yeah.
Mendel Skulski 09:18
That heat dome hit the Northwest.
Adam Huggins 09:20
That was the summer that the town of Lytton, in the interior of BC, experienced the highest temperatures ever recorded in Canada.
Mendel Skulski 09:29
Coincidentally for three straight days in a row in July.
Adam Huggins 09:33
Yeah. And then was razed to the ground the next day in a massive wildfire. One of hundreds that would burn throughout the province that summer.
Mendel Skulski 09:41
Then later that Fall, an atmospheric river!
Adam Huggins 09:45
Which is another term that most of us learned for the first time in 2021.
Mendel Skulski 09:48
Yeah. That resulted in massive floods across the Northwest and in BC they were so bad that they literally severed major highways, cutting Vancouver off from the rest of the country for a time.
Adam Huggins 10:03
And both Mendel and I were living through all of this and trying to make sense of it as well. So we turned to someone that we knew might have some answers.
Lori Daniels 10:11
Yes, my name is Dr. Lori Daniels. I'm a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia in the faculty of forestry. And I do research on wildfire science and management.
Mendel Skulski 10:23
Longtime listeners will recognize Lori from the previous installment in this series. So there we were, in the spring of 2022, still reeling from the disastrous floods of that previous Autumn, and thinking back to the fires from that Summer. And so we asked Lori to help us understand the connection between fires, landslides, and floods.
Lori Daniels 10:48
So there's a really amazing well documented relationship between fire and hydrology and the types of landslides and slope failures that we observed in November. Normally, under normal circumstances, when we get a lot of rain onto the steep slopes of mountainous environments, the forest kind of acts like a sponge that absorbs a lot of that moisture into the organic material on the forest floor, which can hold a lot of water. The water slowly trickles down into the soil...
Mendel Skulski 11:18
But when a wildfire sweeps through and removes all of that organic material, it dramatically reduces the landscape's ability to intercept, absorb and retain that precipitation.
Lori Daniels 11:31
The heat of the fire also takes all of the material in the vegetation that burns.
Adam Huggins 11:37
Vegetation, which around here would mainly be the needles of coniferous trees.
Lori Daniels 11:43
Those needles have waxy coatings on them – that are adaptations that make them survive well in this environment.
Mendel Skulski 11:49
And all of those oils and fats and waxy coatings, in the heat of the fire, not all of it burns away,
Lori Daniels 11:57
It merges together, it sinks down into the soil, and then it re-solidifies kind of like wax paper.
Adam Huggins 12:03
Creating an impermeable, hydrophobic layer across the burned forest floor.
Lori Daniels 12:09
So, imagine dropping water onto wax paper. It forms beads, instead of soaking down into the paper. The soils did the same thing. Hydrophobic soils caused by the intensity of the fire meant that the water that came down onto those surfaces now sat and pooled instead of infiltrating down into the ground. And eventually, on our steep mountain slopes, it begins to flow overland, carrying with it the ash and the debris that was left after the fire.
Mendel Skulski 12:36
And during the megafires of 2021, and as we're seeing again in 2023, entire watersheds were burned. Add all of this up together...
Lori Daniels 12:46
And so now we have this intense rainfall onto these ecosystems on these mountain slopes that are highly altered. And we've created a situation where we have excessive rain, we have excessive runoff, and then you get this huge erosion power, the amount of power in those rivers as the water collects in the headwater streams, and moves down slope, gaining volumes of water, amounts of debris, and gaining energy as it flows down slope. We saw those catastrophic effects.
Adam Huggins 13:18
So case closed, you get massive wildfires. And you can pretty much expect there to be massive floods afterwards.
Lori Daniels 13:25
It's all interconnected. It's a classic disturbance cascade, you know, that started in June and culminated in November and will have lasting impacts... for years if not decades in British Columbia.
Mendel Skulski 13:44
But then, when we were wrapping up the interview, Lori planted a little seed.
Lori Daniels 13:49
I'm gonna do a little sales pitch here. Sarah Dixon oil is one of the PhD students that I co supervise.
Mendel Skulski 13:56
She told us Sarah was working with an organisation called the Secwepemcúl'ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society.
Lori Daniels 14:02
And they have just released a big report on the Elephant Hill Fire
Mendel Skulski 14:07
Detailing and the recovery efforts jointly led by this Secwepemc First Nations and the province of BC.
Lori Daniels 14:14
It's like a 200 page report – could probably be the topic for an entire podcast. I think you guys would do a fantastic job with it.
Mendel Skulski 14:22
Which just goes to show how susceptible we are to flattery!
Adam Huggins 14:28
Well, we actually didn't follow up on this tip immediately. I mean, she really did have me until she said the words 200 page report.
Mendel Skulski 14:35
Yeah, well, you're only human.
Adam Huggins 14:37
But fast forward another year, another round of global climate disasters. And you'll never guess who gets in touch.
Mendel Skulski 14:45
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle.
Adam Huggins 14:46
And she's now a postdoctoral research fellow with the faculty of forestry at the University of British Columbia and still working in partnership with the Secwepemcúl'ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society. She invited me to visit her and the communities that she works with up in the interior, to see how the post-fire, post-flood recovery was shaping up. That little seed that Lori had planted was finally getting some light. So I took her up on it.
Adam Huggins 15:14
Earlier this summer, before the latest disasters in Maui, Kelowna, and Yellowknife, among others, I made the drive through the Fraser Valley from the coastal rainforest up into the coast ranges, east of Hope.
Mendel Skulski 15:27
Which is a town by the way, not just an expression.
Adam Huggins 15:31
And winding my way through the scenic Fraser Canyon, which was still undergoing repairs from the 2021 flooding, by the way.
Mendel Skulski 15:37
Mhm
Adam Huggins 15:38
I went past the former village of Lytton, which still doesn't have any structures two years later. And that's where I forked off of the Fraser River and headed up the Thompson. Pretty quickly the dry Douglas fir forests of the interior gave way to sagebrush bunchgrass and ponderosa pine – really some of the driest country I've seen anywhere in the province. And as I camped out right beside the Thompson River in the evening light, with these massive freight trains on both sides of the river, rattling my tent about every hour or so, I finally cracked open that 241 page report that Laurie told us about.
Mendel Skulski 16:19
... you, you waited until the night before your interviews to read the report?
Adam Huggins 16:24
In my defense, Sarah had only sent it to me a few days before.
Mendel Skulski 16:28
Okay...
Adam Huggins 16:29
And I actually burned right through it.
Mendel Skulski 16:31
Oh my god.
Adam Huggins 16:32
Anyway, the report raised lots of questions and made me really excited to see Sara the next morning, so got up early rolled down to the village of Cache Creek, surrounded by dry hills and irrigated fields of hay and alfalfa. But what immediately caught my attention, Mendel was the flood damage all through the center of town. Everywhere I looked, there were sandbags, huge piles of rubble, washed out roads and busted culverts. It was so striking that when I finally met Sarah, I forgot to ask her to introduce herself. I just took her straight over to Cache Creek.
Mendel Skulski 17:06
You're talking about the creek that the whole town is named after.
Adam Huggins 17:09
Exactly. And when it isn't flooding. It's actually not that much to look at.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 17:14
Yeah, I've driven over that creek so many times and barely even glance to that. It's amazing. It can do that much damage.
Mendel Skulski 17:22
How much damage are we talking about here?
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 17:25
I mean, this used to be a bridge. This used to be a road into town.
Adam Huggins 17:28
We were standing at what used to be a road and is now essentially just a bunch of riprap with Cache Creek running through it. The asphalt has collapsed in on either side, and the culverts are buried in rubble. I actually tried to drive over this, because Google Maps routed me that way.
Mendel Skulski 17:44
Oh no...
Adam Huggins 17:46
And this damage is much more recent than just 2021.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 17:49
Yeah, this entire town was flooded out maybe a month ago.
Adam Huggins 17:53
Cache Creek has been flooding regularly for the past several years. And this is a direct consequence of climate driven extreme weather events repeatedly hammering a burned landscape.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 18:04
We saw that with the atmospheric river in 2021 that fires and floods often go hand in hand. It's just crazy seeing these roads you've driven so many times, suddenly, you know, completely under rubble, or these, you know, rivers and creek lines just spilling out over the banks. We're staying at the RV park just up the road. And it's right on the river. And you can see just off to the edge. They've done a lot of work. But there's just still cars tipped on their side and RVs kind of everywhere. And the creek just completely overflowed.
Mendel Skulski 18:34
Wow. So you didn't even have to get out of town to see the damage.
Adam Huggins 18:38
No, not at all. But eventually, I hop into Sarah's car and she took me for a ride up this steep grassy slope above the town through an active landfill, actually.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 18:50
Take a drive up the lovely dump road, as it's called, to give you access and a bit of a viewpoint down over the fire.
Adam Huggins 18:57
And pretty soon we start to see some trees. But they've seen better days.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 19:02
I look around we're in this incredibly dry, you know almost desert ecosystem. It's sagebrush. It's a bunch grasses, you look up on the hills that used to be forest and now it's really just burnt sticks.
Adam Huggins 19:15
So we make our way up through those burnt sticks. And then we step out of the car and into the footprint of the 2017 Elephant Hill Fire – six years, almost the day from when it ignited. We're actually squinting a bit through the smoky haze from another wildfire farther north — par for the course in a summer like this. And Sarah points across the valley to a cleft in a dry hillside.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 19:38
See there's kind of a deep gully running up the flat back of that hill? Right above that house down...
Adam Huggins 19:43
Yes, that's what I'm looking at too
Adam Huggins 19:45
The base of the hill looks a little bit like the rear end of a large animal
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 19:50
Or the tail perhaps! And then you go up and it's the elephant's back. Then it's kind of hot through this haze, but you can almost see like a big elephant ear and then a trunk. So this big hill here is Elephant Hill.
Mendel Skulski 20:01
I see... Elephant hill looks like an elephant.
Adam Huggins 20:05
Yes, it does.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 20:07
And that's where the fire started down near Ashcroft on a really hot, dry, windy day.
Mendel Skulski 20:14
Wait, isn't Ashcroft where?
Adam Huggins 20:17
Yeah, the fire ignited just a few kilometers from the Ashcroft Indian Band and burned right through the reserve.
Mendel Skulski 20:25
Which we heard about from Chief Maureen Chapman, back in part three of this series.
Adam Huggins 20:30
Yeah. Yeah, it was an awful day.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 20:33
Just the heat and the wind on that day, just pushed that fire up over the provincial park, up over Elephant Hill, down to Cache Creek. And then it jumped the highway and was off.
Adam Huggins 20:44
After burning around the village of Cache Creek, the fire found its way into the forest and plateaus of BC's interior, consuming almost 200,000 hectares, and releasing about 38 million tons of greenhouse gas. It happened so quickly that people who are out on the road just doing errands that day, got trapped on the wrong side of the fire, and had to camp out until they could get around again. So Sarah and I were basically staring at the epicenter of one of the largest megafires of 2017 — a fire season that put the term megafire into our collective vocabulary. And now here it was six years later.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 21:22
We're walking in what used to be an Interior Douglas Fir forest, and now really is quite a weedy grassland with the remnants of those trees. So we have these really tall, completely blackened trees. A lot of them have been falling down, coming down over the last few years. I'm sure we're actually still seeing some mortality from the fires. You know, you look around here and I can't see a single green tree anywhere.
Adam Huggins 21:47
And not only are there no green trees, I couldn't see any tree regeneration. Like at all. You've got to remember this was a Douglas Fir forest. And it's been...
Mendel Skulski 21:59
Six whole years.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 22:01
You know, it was burnt right down to mineral soil. There were these big treacherous holes that you had to be careful of when fire had just burnt out the roots under the soil. And completely right down, consuming all organic matter. So we're not seeing a lot of natural tree regeneration in these forests here at all, particularly in these really dry sites here.
Adam Huggins 22:19
Eventually, we do bump into a few Ponderosa Pine seedlings, but they've been planted as part of the recovery efforts. Otherwise, it's sort of a mix of weeds.
Mendel Skulski 22:30
Such... such as?
Adam Huggins 22:32
Knap weeds, annual grasses, typical stuff.
Mendel Skulski 22:35
Right.
Adam Huggins 22:35
And then there are these really cool patches of naturally regenerating native bunchgrass and wildflowers and some shrubs too
Mendel Skulski 22:43
Pretty!
Adam Huggins 22:43
It's actually pretty patchy. We see some Mariposa lilies, lots of Yarrow, Roses, some Saskatoonberry, Arrowleaf Balsamroot...
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 22:52
This is Arrowleaf Balsamroot. It looks like it's been grazed,
Mendel Skulski 22:56
Uh... grazed by what?
Adam Huggins 23:00
Most likely cows.
Mendel Skulski 23:03
There... there are cows... on the fire footprint?
Adam Huggins 23:07
Everywhere we went,
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 23:08
Yes, I mean, this is all so-called crown range tenure. So they did rescind some of those licenses after Elephant Hill. Essentially meaning that they worked with the range holders, the ranchers to take cows off this landscape because it was so impacted.
Adam Huggins 23:24
So this pasture was mostly ungrazed for the first three or so years after the fire.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 23:29
You can see cows back out all over this landscape, you can see it's quite weedy, particularly up these roads.
Mendel Skulski 23:35
But why were the cows put back on? Wouldn't that really affect the regeneration?
Adam Huggins 23:42
Sure. I mean, it's a trade off for what is basically an economic imperative in the region. Actually, range recovery was one of the three so called "great goals" of the immediate post fire recovery process. And range recovery basically meant rebuilding range fences.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 24:01
So when the fences are gone, you know, they had cattle roaming out into the highway, cattle congregating around water sources, maybe over-grazing some areas. So they had to really quickly rebuild a lot of those fences. But you can see here, I mean, these have just been super heavily grazed, all these bunch grasses are really grazed down. And then you see Kentucky Bluegrass, which is a Poa species. It's an introduced species. It's not actually from Kentucky. Although it is the floral emblem, I think. But it's really tolerant to heavy grazing. And so it's just naturalized throughout these landscapes.
Adam Huggins 24:37
And the Bluegrass seemed to be doing just fine. Whereas most of the native shrubs that I was seeing were being heavily browsed by cattle. And we were walking through a landscape that completely absent any shrub or tree cover was actively eroding with these big gullies forming wherever water collects.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 24:55
You know what is the impact of cows when you've got no vegetation cover? When you got incredible erosion? When you're concerned about invasive species spread across these fire guards? I really don't think that's a lot of understanding.
Mendel Skulski 25:10
Wait... what's a fire guard?
Adam Huggins 25:13
It's basically a fire break.
Mendel Skulski 25:15
Okay, yeah.
Adam Huggins 25:15
They were constructed to contain the fire.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 25:19
They're about 600 kilometers of fire guards, so essentially roads, put in across this landscape. And actually you talk to a lot of community members who say, you know, we saw fire guards been put in or access roads being punched in in areas where there was already access, or where there were natural fire breaks. You know, we didn't need 600 kilometers of disturbance across this already quite impacted landscape.
Mendel Skulski 25:40
Right, I guess some of those fire guards are critical for stopping the fire from traveling further. But not all of those breaks end up being actually necessary. And once you've ripped out all the vegetation and the organic material, that's a pretty serious impact on the landscape.
Adam Huggins 25:59
Exactly. And so the second great goal of the recovery process was rehabilitating all of those fire guards, basically, ripping them, seeding them, planting them. But still...
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 26:12
It's not like it's back to how it was before.
Adam Huggins 26:19
This is especially the case in areas that burned with high heat and high severity. But that isn't the only story for this landscape.
Mendel Skulski 26:27
No?
Adam Huggins 26:28
No. So we hopped into the car and went a bit further up hill. Sarah wanted to show me some of the areas that burned less severely, where there were still species of cultural significance to this Secwépemc People.
Mendel Skulski 26:41
Whose territory this is.
Adam Huggins 26:43
Yes, along with the Nlakaʼpamux. So she walks me up to this area where there's a fence and a cattle guard across the road. And the difference from one side of the fence to the other is just crystal clear.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 26:56
Yeah, you can see on one side, it's pretty heavily grazed, the other side, we've got really tall Fireweed, we've got Balsamroots go a little bit further up in there we've got these beautiful patches of Chocolate Lily.
Adam Huggins 27:07
So we walk over to this field of native wildflowers and grasses – still surrounded, of course, by the remains of burnt trees.
Mendel Skulski 27:14
Of course.
Adam Huggins 27:14
And it's full of chocolate lilies!
Mendel Skulski 27:17
You must have been in heaven.
Adam Huggins 27:19
I mean, they were all mostly gone to seed at this point. But yeah, I could picture what they had been like when they were flowering.
Mendel Skulski 27:25
You know, it's actually really nice to get you talking plants on the show again.
Adam Huggins 27:29
I know... it's been so long.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 27:31
So we set up a number of plots, in the fire, outside the fire, at these different elevations, and specifically targeted areas that had high abundance of these culturally important plants.
Adam Huggins 27:41
And they're studying these plots to try to understand how different severities of fire at different elevations impact the regeneration of native plant communities.
Mendel Skulski 27:49
Mmm... so, what are they learning?
Adam Huggins 27:53
Well, nothing's published yet. But the preliminary results are that in areas where the fire burned with low to moderate severity, there's been a really strong regeneration of native plants, and especially those culturally significant ones.
Mendel Skulski 28:06
That's encouraging.
Adam Huggins 28:08
Definitely. On the other hand, though, areas that burned with high severity had much poor regeneration overall. Less culturally significant plants, for sure, and more introduced weeds.
Mendel Skulski 28:19
Right. And since these mega fires are burning, so much of the landscape at higher and higher severities...
Adam Huggins 28:29
It means lots of areas with poor regeneration. And then you have to layer on all of the other variables. Some of those are differences in elevation, microclimate, moisture, or soils, but so much of it is variation resulting from human impacts.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 28:45
So we're thinking not just about fire, but how fire was interacting with these other disturbances that are kind of layered, historically, and still now onto this landscape.
Mendel Skulski 28:54
Right, like roads and fire guards and livestock.
Adam Huggins 28:59
And forestry. But it turns out that fire severity is still a key variable.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 29:05
There's not just one kind of monolithic fire, there's so many different types of fires. So we need to be thinking about when is the fire burning? How intensely is it burning? How much is it consuming that vegetation? You know, what season is it burning in? And what ecosystem is it burning in? And what are the specific adaptations of plants or animals in that area to fire? So if we look around at an ecosystem like this, that would have been a relatively open very dry Douglas Fir forest. You know, historically, this is characterized by more frequent low severity fires, maybe, you know, sporadic more high intensity fires. But predominantly, this was a kind of low to mixed severity fire-adapted ecosystem. So these kinds of fairly frequent really large and intense fires, that are killing all of the trees like this, are probably not characteristic are typical of what this ecosystem is adapted to.
Adam Huggins 29:58
My major takeaway from that experience is that the areas that burn at the highest intensities just aren't recovering that well.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 30:06
We found across all these forest types across Elephant Hill, we're seeing fairly limited short term recovery, we're seeing low species richness, low species diversity. But in contrast, in areas burned at kind of low to even moderate severity, we actually saw a really high abundance of species of cultural significance. So species, perhaps, that were managed with fire, or are still managed with fire in some areas. So even compared to areas that aren't burnt at all, we're actually seeing higher diversity and more cultural species in those areas that had maybe some of that cool ground fire coming through. So that really speaks to the potential for restoring some of these areas by putting the right fire back in the right place at the right time.
Mendel Skulski 31:00
So what else can we learn from the Elephant Hill fire?
Adam Huggins 31:04
Well, for starters, enough to fill a 241 page report. Did I mention?
Mendel Skulski 31:09
Duh. Yeah.
Adam Huggins 31:09
241 pages?
Mendel Skulski 31:10
Yes.
Adam Huggins 31:11
Sarah was telling me about the process of writing the report, in the car on the way down. It actually started as a way to follow up on the 2018 Abbott Chapman report.
Mendel Skulski 31:21
Which we discussed in the previous installment of this series.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 31:25
So I'd been doing all these interviews as part of my PhD with community members, Secwépemc community members, government representatives about their experiences during the 2017 fire season, and particularly about the joint recovery — the work between governments, between First Nations and the province, on how to actually recover that fire landscape.
Adam Huggins 31:44
What fascinated me the most was that she wrote that report during the 2021 wildfires, which struck just as the region was still recovering from the Elephant Hill fire.
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 31:55
I hadn't lived through evacuations, and I hadn't lived through a fire season like that. I think 2021 really changed things for a lot of people, but changed things for me and how I kind of see the importance of this work. And I can really understand why it's so important for so many of the communities I work with to have their stories heard.
Adam Huggins 32:13
Of course, we taped this interview before so many people would live through the same trauma in 2023.
Mendel Skulski 32:18
Right... it's a really grim kind of deja vu.
Adam Huggins 32:22
But back in 2021, as she was trapped in her house, locked down not by COVID, but by ash falling from the sky, Sarah felt a bit helpless. She couldn't contribute to the firefighting on the frontlines, or help coordinating evacuations. But what she could do was write, and share the stories that had been shared with her.
Mendel Skulski 32:42
Yeah, something we can relate to.
Adam Huggins 32:45
And the question at the heart of those stories is, I think, the same question about recovery that you and I have been asking.
Mendel Skulski 32:53
What happens after the smoke clears?
Sarah Dickson-Hoyle 32:58
Everyone in the city goes "We have clear skies, amazing. We can enjoy the rest of summer." But for everyone who's actually out here living in these landscapes that have burned, that's really when the challenges begin. You know, what do we do after the fire? The media attention is gone, on the whole. But how do we begin to, not just rebuild homes or get back into our communities, but what do we do with this burnt landscape?
Adam Huggins 33:22
And while I can't really summarize the whole report here, what I can do is take you a little bit farther up the Thompson River to Skeetchestn — where some of the key voices in the report are leading the recovery and restoration efforts in their territory. And in 2021, when Sarah was writing that report, they were being evacuated for the second time in four years.
Adam Huggins 33:47
After the break.
Mendel Skulski 33:54
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Mendel Skulski 34:05
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Mendel Skulski 34:44
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Mendel Skulski 35:19
That's futureecologies.net/join
Mendel Skulski 35:24
Okay, thanks. And back to the show.
Adam Huggins 35:33
I'm Adam.
Mendel Skulski 35:33
Mendel.
Adam Huggins 35:34
This is Future Ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 35:35
The fourth installment in our On Fire series, which is of indeterminate length, kind of like our increasingly unpredictable fire seasons.
Adam Huggins 35:47
And at this point, in this particular episode, I'm heading from the 2017 Elephant Hill fire footprint over to the 2021 Sparks Lake fire footprint, near Skeetchestn Indian Band. And Sarah Dickson-Hoyle has brought me here to meet Sam Draney, from Skeetchestn Natural Resources. And the minute we roll up to the offices, Sam packs us into her truck, and I also forgot to ask Sam to introduce herself.
Mendel Skulski 36:14
That's strikee two!
Adam Huggins 36:15
In my defense, she had literally the cutest puppy ever curled up in her backseat.
Sam Draney 36:20
She's got so many dog breeds in her, I just call her a designer rez mutt.
Mendel Skulski 36:27
All right, all right. That gets a pass. By the way, did you tape all of your interviews in moving vehicles?
Adam Huggins 36:35
It was just that kind of day. Sorry, Mendel. Anyway, the first thing that Sam does is to give me a bit of a lay of the land.
Sam Draney 36:43
So we have the Tremont fire over here. Sparks Lake fire here. And then the remainder of Elephant Hill to the North of us. So when you're sitting in my house, you can actually see all three burns zones. We kind of have just one side of us left that isn't burnt yet.
Mendel Skulski 37:03
Three burns?
Adam Huggins 37:04
Yeah, Skeetchestn is pretty much surrounded. Elephant Hill was basically the largest fire in the south of the province in 2017. And then Sparks Lake actually was the largest fire in the province in 2021, with the Tremont fire not far behind. And there's Skeetchestn Indian Band right in the middle. But once Sam got us oriented, we could do what I was actually there for which was chatting plants.
Mendel Skulski 37:28
Hah! You two must have been peas in a pod.
Adam Huggins 37:31
I was having a great time. Sam told me about all of these medicinal plants that could be found on the territory.
Sam Draney 37:38
I harvested Arnica from the Tremont fire last year. So I did a salve with that Arnica, and I had an older Arnica salve. And I actually got to try them out against each other on people. And the Arnica salve that I got the fire, you could feel instantly. The moment you put it on, there was just like this huge release in your muscles.
Adam Huggins 38:00
It was immediately clear that she's very knowledgeable and passionate about plant medicines.
Sam Draney 38:05
So we have 165 plants that we can prove are significant to the community.
Adam Huggins 38:12
And you might notice that she said "prove" there, because part of Sam's job is surveying whole landscapes for these culturally significant species and features to documents Secwépemc use, both in the past and in the present. And if that isn't cool enough, she also gets to occasionally stop that work and start harvesting.
Sam Draney 38:34
If I identify something harvestable there, I'm allowed to keep my crew there and harvest for the community. And that's always the way at least I think and the way I taught my crew to think is we're not harvesting for ourselves. We're harvesting for our community and we're providing to as many of the community members as possible. If it's something they can touch, hold and feel or if it's information. So they go out and practice that with their own family.
Adam Huggins 39:03
And she shared with me that it isn't just the plant medicines that are coming back stronger after the fires. But also species that were totally unfamiliar.
Sam Draney 39:13
After Elephant Hill. There was plants I'd never seen before... just being out and I felt like I'd covered a lot of land, I knew all the plants and all of a sudden it was like... golden corydalis, I think it was, came back and none of us knew what it was. We sat there for a lunch break and there was a bet going on – who could ID the planet first? I don't remember who won the bet. I don't think it was me, 'cause I think I was the one that bought the six pack.
Mendel Skulski 39:44
I'm sure I would have lost that bet too. What's golden corydalis?
Adam Huggins 39:50
It's a pretty little wild flower that likes disturbance. So it often shows up for the first year or two after a big fire. And Sam also started to see way more Tiger Lily and even Soapberry which is an important traditional medicine.
Sam Draney 40:04
But I just can't get over the taste. It is not something I can get used of. I've used it to do cleanses. But you aren't going to catch me drinking it every day like my kyé7e. No, it tastes like soap.
Mendel Skulski 40:21
I actually really like the taste of Soapberry...
Adam Huggins 40:23
You and Sam's kyé7e! And Sam told me it wasn't just plants that were returning.
Sam Draney 40:31
Everyone's noticed a huge increase in wolf in our territory, which puts a huge pressure on moose and deer and other wildlife
Mendel Skulski 40:41
Wolves? From the fires?
Adam Huggins 40:44
Yeah, fire makes landscapes much easier for predators to traverse and hunt in.
Mendel Skulski 40:50
I guess I'd never really thought about it.
Adam Huggins 40:52
And Mendel, there were also of course, the mushrooms.
Sam Draney 40:57
Of course, the mushroom rush after the fires, like none of us have ever been exposed to that, really. So that was really interesting to get out and get to harvest those. Because like to us that was something completely new. We're like "what is this gross thing? That looks weird coming out of the ground?"
Mendel Skulski 41:21
Yeah, she's, uh, she's gotta be talking about morels, right?
Adam Huggins 41:25
Yeah, you got it.
Mendel Skulski 41:26
Yeah, looks gross. tastes great. Just don't eat them raw.
Adam Huggins 41:31
Duly noted.
Mendel Skulski 41:32
Yeah. Okay, so how did the regeneration at Sparks Lake compare to Elephant Hill?
Adam Huggins 41:38
Other than being somewhat fresher? I mean, Sam's dealing with a lot of what we saw over at Elephant Hill, and down in Cache Creek.
Sam Draney 41:47
My backyard is the creek. So right down in my back door, and the creek is within 100 metres of my house. Since the wildfires, I have had to insure the house because of flooding. I've lived here for 32 years straight. This is the highest water I've seen. Things were more predictable before the fires. Now rainstorm happens, we're all on high alert. Is there going to be a mudslide? Road washing out? Are we going to flood? You just... you don't know. Like, I lost a large chunk of land on my side of the creek. And it happened in a day. So we're losing huge amounts of land, just having like huge amounts of erosion happening on our water bodies.
Mendel Skulski 42:37
So flooding and erosion
Adam Huggins 42:40
And other impacts too. Like, cows.
Sam Draney 42:44
I would like them held off the fires a bit longer. I've nothing against cows, I love them. But I think they spread weeds. I think they damage the super fragile plant community that's coming back. They over graze. The fences are burnt down, so we have minimal ways to control where they're at. Our water is all exposed. Cows made wallows in water, causing more erosion. Cows overuse trails again, causing erosion. But I don't see a way for us to keep the cattle off.
Mendel Skulski 43:28
Right... more of the same.
Adam Huggins 43:30
Yep. And linear features like roads,
Sam Draney 43:33
The amount of roads we have in our territory is a big issue.
Adam Huggins 43:37
And fire guards.
Sam Draney 43:39
I think most of them have been rehabbed now. That happens pretty fast after the fire. They'll go and rip up the guards see can't drive down them again.
Adam Huggins 43:43
But even just putting in the fire guards had unintended consequences.
Sam Draney 43:56
The one thing that really got to us is right here is our community potato patch – uh, Indian Potato... Spring Beauty.
Mendel Skulski 44:05
What's an Indian Potato?
Adam Huggins 44:07
It's kind of a nutty tuber from a wildflower that you might know as spring beauty.
Mendel Skulski 44:13
Ah. I don't... but thank you.
Adam Huggins 44:18
I was just giving you the benefit of the doubt there.
Mendel Skulski 44:19
Yeah.
Adam Huggins 44:20
Anyway, Sam and her team had set up test plots to study how different variables and treatments impact the growth and yields of those Indian potatoes.
Mendel Skulski 44:29
Hey cool!
Adam Huggins 44:29
But the province accidentally built a fire garden right over one of the community potato patches.
Mendel Skulski 44:35
Huh... less cool.
Adam Huggins 44:37
It sounded to me as though while relations had definitely been improving between Skeetchestn and the other various institutions of colonial government since the Elephant Hill fire, there were still lots of sore points and a pretty big power imbalance. For example, there was enormous pressure in the immediate aftermath of the fires to salvage the remaining harvestable timber as quickly as possible.
Adam Huggins 45:02
You remember the three great goals of the recovery effort that I mentioned?
Mendel Skulski 45:05
Yep, there was range recovery, like building fences to keep the cattle contained.... Fire Guard rehabilitation, and... did we even get to number three?
Adam Huggins 45:17
No, I was I was saving it. Goal number three was salvage logging.
Sam Draney 45:25
We had to go from wildfires to "Now we got to log it." And for me, that was a lot to handle because I just had to watch my childhood burn down. In the last five years, I got to watch basically all my childhood picking spots with my kyé7e go up in flames.
Adam Huggins 45:46
So after all of that, logging what little was left was a pretty tough pill to swallow.
Sam Draney 45:53
There's still some sore spots, but I guess it's just part of the machine, you have to get out and harvest this while it's still harvestable and it doesn't just fall to the ground. Oh, the roses are really good up here too. Wow
Adam Huggins 46:12
I was also really distracted by the roses.
Mendel Skulski 46:14
Plant people... Let's stay on track. Salvage logging?
Adam Huggins 46:19
Is pretty controversial. Even up there, in the interior, with a variety of arguments for and against – from the economical to the ecological, on both sides actually. When you consider rural livelihoods, the potential for beetle outbreaks, the risk of deadfall injury, it's not a clear cut decision.
Mendel Skulski 46:40
Ughh.
Adam Huggins 46:40
Except when it ends up being a clear cut decision. Luckily, Sam was able to give some input into the process, offering some guidelines so that at least some of the potential damage could be mitigated.
Sam Draney 46:53
So we created guidelines for the companies to follow in their logging. And one of those was you can only log black timber. The one thing I used against logging red timber, although might be dead and not coming back, is that the plant community underneath was coming back in the first year in the form of morels – that's where they wanted to grow – or, you know, other plants we've seen little Soapberry bushes coming back. Some lilies, a lot of fireweed, of course.
Mendel Skulski 47:28
Black timber is like, completely burned up?
Adam Huggins 47:31
Yep, those are the matchsticks
Mendel Skulski 47:33
Okay, so, red timber is only like partly combusted?
Adam Huggins 47:38
It's mostly still dead. But there are red needles on the trees, and the bark often isn't completely blackened. It's a real balancing act between interests.
Mendel Skulski 47:48
It sounds like it. And I think this might be the moment to point out that Lori, and a bunch of other folks that we talked to, wanted to make sure that we mentioned that it's not just fires and roads and cows that have contributed to the flooding.
Adam Huggins 48:03
Right.
Mendel Skulski 48:04
It's also industrial forestry, perhaps primarily industrial forestry.
Lori Daniels 48:11
There is no doubt that harvesting and industrial forestry across the landscape is also contributing to make these landscapes less resilient to the impacts of atmospheric rivers and the types of flooding that we experienced.
Mendel Skulski 48:23
In 2021, even in areas that hadn't just burned, there were still massive floods. And we can say that those were exacerbated by forestry. Practically speaking, clear cuts aren't really that different from intense burns, and BC is in a league of its own when it comes to clear cut logging.
Lori Daniels 48:42
Our industrial forest management has been designed for many decades now to try to sustain timber yield on the timber har– We call it the timber harvesting land base. You know, we are trying to sustain timber yield and optimize the economic benefits from that part of British Columbia, that we have designated or delegated to be for production of timber.
Mendel Skulski 49:05
And this is all accelerated over the previous decades of a different kind of salvage harvesting, that was following the climate-driven mountain pine beetle outbreaks. The logic of salvaging beetle-killed stands is pretty similar to the logic for salvaging those burned stands.
Lori Daniels 49:23
And in doing so we've really simplified our forests. We have simplified age structures. We've simplified the biological legacies that are left behind after a clear cut harvesting versus natural disturbances. We have focused on fast growing species like Lodgepole Pine in the interior of British Columbia. We've created monocultures.
Mendel Skulski 49:47
Lori says a big part of this is the widespread practice of replanting only the saleable species and suppressing everything else, including the industry's ongoing use of glyphosate
Adam Huggins 50:01
Otherwise known as Roundup.
Mendel Skulski 50:03
Yeah, herbicide – sprayed or brushed onto those fire resistant but less commercially valuable trees
Adam Huggins 50:11
Like, Aspen and Birch.
Lori Daniels 50:14
Yeah, it's an unfortunate practice. We're still kind of entrenched in this perspective that broadleaf trees, you know, that their only contribution to an ecosystem is to compete with conifers that are the timber producers, and that they need to be eradicated so that we can optimize the growth of the conifers.
Mendel Skulski 50:33
It's a feedback loop. Simplified forests are more susceptible to fires and pest outbreaks, which then creates an imperative to salvage those stands, leading to more damage and more simplified forests.
Adam Huggins 50:48
Those monocultural, coniferous stands certainly contributed to the size, and the spread, and the intensity of all three of the fires that we've been discussing. But that's another area where Skeetchestn is asserting itself, because the big replanting effort is still ongoing.
Sam Draney 51:05
So under that we asked for a mixed tree stand to be replanted, so like don't just plant all Pine. That happened a lot in the past. So we asked for like a mix of Pine, Spruce, Douglas Fir, and even deciduous – we've asked for near water and less of the coniferous to be planted right up to the water. So the deciduous are given a chance. And if there was a natural patch of deciduous coming back there are spacing away from that to give it a chance to grow.
Adam Huggins 51:34
They've also been pushing for a more selective harvest,
Sam Draney 51:37
We do ask for that. This would still be Douglas fir. So I'd asked for 50% of the stand to be left up or, you know, some upright structures. So there is still protection for animals, shelter, and woody debris will fall, adding back to the earth. But, you know, economics and safety usually wins. Those are two words I hate because they're always the top two reasons for anything to happen, usually.
Adam Huggins 52:11
I happen to dislike the words economics and safety for this same reason.
Mendel Skulski 52:17
... that could sound bad taken out of context. But uh, maybe you mean that economics and safety aren't bad words. but the problem is that they take exclusive priority over community and ecological health.
Adam Huggins 52:35
Yeah, what you said.
Mendel Skulski 52:37
But it's interesting that Sam is using the word ask here, ask who?
Adam Huggins 52:43
Well, at a basic level, the Skeetchestn reserve is surrounded by mostly burnt out Crown Land that is part of both range and timber tenure systems. And while all of that land is the Secwépemc territory, it's still the BC government and the business interests calling the shots at the end of the day. So Skeetchestn is still in the position of having to ask.
Sam Draney 53:08
That's where I feel like that's our power. We don't come in demanding. although it might come off that way. It's a strong ask, a strong suggestion, a strong "you should probably do this". But you know, we still get thrown back kind of science and stuff like that, or they have to do it this way. Because it's been done that way.
Adam Huggins 53:33
Whether it's economics or safety, science or tradition, they can all just sound like justifications sometimes for the status quo.
Mendel Skulski 53:42
Right.
Adam Huggins 53:42
As far as I can tell. While there is a general consensus on an overall improvement in working relationships in the region, since the mega fires, it's still hit and miss at an individual level. And a lot depends on personal relationships and trust. Because the colonial structures and power imbalances are still very real.
Sam Draney 54:04
I won't lie I do not have relationships with BC Wildfire. I had a pretty hard go with them on mainly Tremont. Sparks Lake, they were very respectable. We went across the river to Tremont – completely different story. I ended my working relationship with them there. I've yet to really rebuild that with them.
Adam Huggins 54:27
And even at Elephant Hill, things got off to a pretty bad start.
Sam Draney 54:32
We weren't invited on to elephant hill at the start of it. We just went out and we were doing our own territorial patrol. We were doing our own reporting system on the fire because we didn't feel like we were getting the right information and up to date information from BC Wildfire.
Adam Huggins 54:49
And that is how Sam Draney became a fire watcher.
Mendel Skulski 54:54
What is a fire watcher?
Adam Huggins 54:58
Well, starting out, actually, she says she was a fire bug.
Sam Draney 55:03
We've always been fire bugs in Skeetchestn. A lot of it when I was younger was more just getting to sit back and watch the older people do it. But then I eventually grew up and I got my own burn rake. And that's all we usually use. It's just a steel rake and scoop up some weeds, dry weeds with that light it on fire, and you kind of just walk along and start stuff on fire in a planned way. And I hear that from a lot of people that like burning was something that we've always done from young age, and it wasn't something scary where you... of course you have to be safe, but you know, that the kids were still involved.
Adam Huggins 55:46
Unsurprisingly, these fire bug activities can be another area of friction with the province, especially on lands beyond the boundaries of the reserve.
Sam Draney 55:55
And that's the thing that I think holds a lot of us back and holds back the cultural burning, is that we have to jump through all of these hoops. And a lot of us, you know, we don't know how to fill out the government forms or do burn plans. But we understand fire, and we understand its connection into the circle. And without that we're starting to lose our culture.
Mendel Skulski 56:23
She was talking about controlled burns, right?
Adam Huggins 56:26
Cultural burns. Yeah. And we're gonna come back to that. But it was Elephant Hill that made her a fire watcher.
Sam Draney 56:35
I've always said I'm not a firefighter. I'm a fire watcher. It's not in me to put out a wildfire. I have a really strong spiritual connection to it. And I believe that it's out there cleaning up everything we've messed up. Oh, there's the Arnica down here. Wow that's really good. Beautiful. Still harvestable. That's really great stuff to harvest. It's better looking than the stuff I got.
Mendel Skulski 57:04
You plant people, you're hopeless. Okay, so again, what is a fire watcher?
Adam Huggins 57:12
Well, I think it's a great example of a concept that was introduced to me by Ron and Marianne Ignace, called "Walking on Two Legs".
Mendel Skulski 57:22
Okay, your answers just keep raising more questions. Who are Ron and Marianne?
Adam Huggins 57:28
Remember the couple with the academic meet-cute from the very beginning of the episode?
Mendel Skulski 57:32
Oh, the one who was cursed.
Adam Huggins 57:35
Yep, that's Marianne. She and Ron are at the heart of a cultural and ecological revitalization that's happening at Skeetchestn, and elsewhere as well. It involves the fire bugs and the fire watchers, and learning how to walk on two legs together.
Adam Huggins 57:52
We're going to dig deeper into all of that, next time – in part five of our series On Fire.
Mendel Skulski 58:43
This episode of Future Ecologies was produced and hosted by Adam Huggins and me, Mendel Skulski. With the voices of Lori Daniels, Sarah Dickson-Hoyle, and Sam Draney, plus Marianne and Ron Ignace. And with music by Thumbug, Any-Angled Light, and Sunfish Moon Light.
Mendel Skulski 59:06
We want to send a big thank you to Lux Meteora for the cover artwork, and to Daniel Pierce for speaking with us on background. You can find links, citations and a transcript for this episode, plus photos from Adams road trip to Cache Creek and Skeetchestn, all at futureecologies.net
Mendel Skulski 59:28
And, as always, this independent ad-free podcast was made possible with the support of our amazing community on Patreon. To get early episode releases, bonus behind the scenes content, and access to our Discord server, join us at patreon.com/futureecologies.
Mendel Skulski 59:48
'til next time thanks for listening and stay safe