Photo by Ken Meinhart
Summary
In this second part of our two-episode series, On Fire, we look at ways to move our civilization forward – without continuing to deny the role of fire in our landscapes. We discuss how prescribed burns are currently conducted, radical new (and old) perspectives on land management policy, and practical techniques for everyone in fire country to protect their homes, their communities, and their forests.
Click here for a transcription of this episode
Shownotes
This episode features, in order of appearance: Bill Tripp, Deputy Director of Ecocultural Revitalization with the Karuk Tribe’s Department of Natural Resources; and Erik Ohlsen, Executive Director of the Permaculture Skills Center, and Founder of Permaculture Artistans. Erik is also the author of a number of books, including the children’s book The Forest of Fire.
Special thanks to Jose Isordia, Erica Terence, Ilana Fonariov, and Kirsty Johnstone Munroe Cameron.
Our theme song this episode was produced by Forever and Ouri. Other music for this episode was produced by Ben Hamilton, NCTRNM, Cat Can Do, and Sunfish Moon Light.
This season of Future Ecologies is supported in part by the Vancouver Foundation. Learn more at https://vancouverfoundationsmallarts.ca/.
A lot of research goes into each episode of Future Ecologies, including great journalism from a variety of media outlets, and we like to cite our sources:
Diver, S. (2016). Co-management as a Catalyst: Pathways to Post-colonial Forestry in the Klamath Basin, California. Human Ecology 44: 533-546.
Long, J. W., Goode, R. W., Gutteriez, R. J., Lackey, J. L., and M. K. Anderson. (2017). Managing California Black Oak for Tribal Ecocultural Restoration. Journal of Forestry 115(5): 426-434..
Ohlsen, E. (2015, September 14). Raging Wildfires in California: Destruction Through Mismanagement (Part 1). Resilience. Retrieved from resilience.org
Ohlsen, E. (2015, September 23). Raging Wildfires in California: Destruction Through Mismanagement (Part 2): Regenerative Disturbances and Building Bridges Across Cultural Divides. Resilience. Retrieved from resilience.org
Parker, L. (2016, August 4). Drones Shoot Fireballs to Help Control Wildfires. National Geographic. Retrieved from news.nationalgeographic.com
Tripp, B. (2018). Integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge and World Renewal Ceremonies into Fire Adaptation: An Indigenous Stewardship Model. Retrieved from fireadaptednetwork.org
Wirth, C. (2005). Fire Regime and Tree Diversity in Boreal Forests: Implications for the Carbon Cycle. Ecological Studies 176: 309-344.
This episode includes soundscape audio recorded by Andrzej Kozlowski. It also includes audio recorded by silencyo, MisterLockbridge, blukotek, Hyperionn, lttldude9, Spennnyyy, beskhu, Jaylew1987, ShannonAHonibal, InspectorJ (Rain, Moderate, A.wav), fkurz, JarredGibb, Reitanna Seishin, Kinoton, Coral Island Studios, lwdickens, and DCPoke, protected by Creative Commons attribution licenses, and accessed through the Freesound Project.
You can subscribe to and download Future Ecologies wherever you find podcasts - please share, rate, and review us. Our website is futureecologies.net. We’re also on Facebook, Instagram, iNaturalist, Soundcloud and Youtube. We’re an independent production, and you can support us on Patreon - our supporters have access to cool supporter-only mini-episodes and other perks.
Future Ecologies is recorded on the unceded territories of the Musqueam (xwməθkwəy̓əm) Squamish (Skwxwú7mesh), and Tsleil- Waututh (Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh) Nations - otherwise known as Vancouver, British Columbia.
Transcript
Mendel Skulski 00:00
Testing testing.
Adam Huggins 00:01
That looked like it worked.
Mendel Skulski 00:02
Okay, cool.
Adam Huggins 00:03
All right. Fire: Part Two, our first sequel!
Mendel Skulski 00:07
Whoo!
Adam Huggins 00:08
Where we answer all of the burning questions that we left smoldering after the last episode. And we covered a lot of ground in that last episode, actually. So, how about a quick recap?
Mendel Skulski 00:21
You want me to like do this whole episode in five minutes?
Adam Huggins 00:24
Uh, less than that, preferably.
[Rhythmic kinetic ticking, followed by an energetic percussive beat starts in background]
Mendel Skulski 00:26
Geez. [laughs] Okay...umm. Well, we went over, like the history of fire on the Earth, and we realized that there wasn't actually any fire for most of the Earth's history, because there wasn't enough oxygen. And then, because there wasn't anything to burn, there weren't any land plants.
Adam Huggins 00:44
Check!
Mendel Skulski 00:44
Okay, uhm, so for a long time, there were fires, but no one was there to see them. So did they really happen?
Adam Huggins 00:52
We definitely did not ask that question.
Mendel Skulski 00:53
Hah! Well, anyways, after the ice ages, in North America at least, there weren't a lot of fires because it was still wet and cold and the megafauna they were eating all the fuel.
Adam Huggins 01:06
And we know this how?
Mendel Skulski 01:07
Because some canny scientists have been studying fungal spores from mammoth poo.
Adam Huggins 01:11
Check.
Mendel Skulski 01:12
Okay! So suddenly all the megafauna went extinct (humans). There were lots of fires again, and now the ecosystems, they don't actually function that well without fire because they're all adapted. They've all evolved to live in a world where, where fires come through every few years. And so, the Indigenous people knew this, and they used fire to manage their ecosystems and do all sorts of other cool and useful things like grow berries.
Adam Huggins 01:39
Check.
Mendel Skulski 01:39
But when Europeans arrived, they were not down with all the burning, and they tried to put a stop to it. You might say they sucked all the air out of the room. [quiet chuckling] So anyways, here we are today and we have big cities and podcasts like this one and lots of ecosystems that haven't been burned in a really long time. And that kind of fuel build up is causing catastrophic wildfires when they do happen.
Adam Huggins 02:07
Check.
Mendel Skulski 02:09
And then, ahhhhh we finally zoomed in on Gary Oak ecosystems. And these are prevalent through British Columbia and along the Pacific West Coast. And we looked at some efforts that people are running to actually return controlled burns to these ecosystems. They're advancing, but it's going slowly. Saying that your government wants to burn the island that you live on, it may not go over so well. So it's a bit contentious. And it sounds like a lot more work needs to be done to facilitate true collaboration between the Coast Salish people and the government. Understatement of the decade? You decide.
[Percussion ends with a ball ring, background music ends]
Mendel Skulski 02:49
So, how'd I do?
Adam Huggins 02:49
You did really great! You clocked in well under five minutes.
Mendel Skulski 02:54
It strikes me that we didn't actually talk that much about a few things. I feel like we skipped a lot of the details though.
Adam Huggins 03:01
Like what details?
Mendel Skulski 03:02
Well, like, you know, how do plants and animals actually respond to fire? What does it mean when we say fire-adapted? Or like, if we do say, somehow that collectively, returning fire to the land is a good thing? How are we going to do that? How do we? How do we really go about that? It's not really a one size fits all kind of scenario.
Adam Huggins 03:25
Those are good questions. Somebody should, you know, make a podcast episode that answers those questions.
Mendel Skulski 03:36
Wait, where's the theme music?
Adam Huggins 03:38
Well, I was thinking that since you're so full of questions, maybe I could take the backseat on this one.
Mendel Skulski 03:44
Oh, man, I get to drive? Uh okay! Can I play whatever music I want?
Adam Huggins 03:48
Oh, I'm already regretting this.
[Heavy bass electronic music comes in place of theme song] Falling by Forever (prod. Ouri)
Introduction Voiceover 03:52
Broadcasting from Vancouver British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. This is future ecologies, where your hosts, Adam Huggins and Mendel Skulski explore the future of human habitation on planet Earth through ecology, design, and sound.
[Vocal melody introduced into the electronic music, lyrics include “can you feel the heat?” music ends]
Adam Huggins 04:36
Definitely not my usual style, but I kind of liked it.
Mendel Skulski 04:39
Yeah, I thought it was pretty hot.
Adam Huggins 04:41
So, where do we start?
Mendel Skulski 04:43
Remember last episode, you wanted to talk about plant adaptation and I cut you off?
Adam Huggins 04:48
Yep, yeah, I'm still a little sore about that.
Mendel Skulski 04:51
I think that's exactly where we should kick off this episode. Since we can't start managing for fire in our own backyards without first understanding that each plant has its own unique relationship to fire.
[Background modulated synthesizer sounds]
Adam Huggins 05:04
Plants, like all living things, evolved to suit their environment, and that environment was defined in part, by fire. Different frequencies and intensities favored different strategies.
Mendel Skulski 05:16
So with respect to fire, we can split up plant strategies into five buckets. Resistors, resprouters, avoiders, invaders and evaders. Resistors are things like Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine. Plants whose thick, corky bark allows them to survive frequent, low intensity burns. These trees just do their best to buckle down and ride out the flames.
Adam Huggins 05:42
Resprouters are plants like Aspen and some Manzanitas. These species can store a whole bunch of energy in their root systems and then send up fresh shoots after a fire has burned the entire trunk and canopy. They survive underground and return quickly after intense burns.
Mendel Skulski 05:57
Avoiders just don't want to meet a fire, like ever. These are plants that prefer it wet and cold and don't mind the shade. You only really find them in places where fires are rare. You'd recognize them as Western Red cedars, Sitka spruce, and Western hemlock.
Adam Huggins 06:12
Invaders take advantage of all the newly available light, space and nutrients provided by a high intensity fire. The aptly named Fireweed uses the wind to spread its many tiny seeds to claim first dibs on a burnt landscape
Mendel Skulski 06:26
And evaders, restart themselves after a fire. Lodgepole pine cones can only release their seeds after the heat of a burn. This lifecycle dependence on burning, is called pyriscence.
[Background soundscape fades out]
Adam Huggins 06:41
By the way, these categories are not formal or official or anything like that. They're just our way of simplifying the complexity of having all of these different strategies interacting across the landscape, determining how often wildfires occur and how intense they are. This complexity is one of the reasons why it took eight years to prepare for the controlled burn on Tumbo Island we talked about in the last episode.
Mendel Skulski 07:03
And that's just the plants. Animals, insects and fungi also have diverse responses to fire. The complexity of these relationships across time and space can be staggering, which is why controlled burns have always been the practice of expert knowledge holders. As much as we would love to see that knowledge reach the community scale. We just can't advise you to go out tomorrow and set your local woods or grasslands on fire.
Adam Huggins 07:28
Right. We would never do that. That would be irresponsible, with a capital I, as in ignition source..
[Sound of a match being struck and lit]
Adam Huggins 07:40
or investigation..
[Sound of footsteps on stairs..]
Adam Huggins 07:42
..or incarceration.
Media Clip 07:44
[unspecified media clip] "Authorities believe this man ignited the destructive fire, now charged with arson".
Mendel Skulski 07:52
Caution can't be overstated when the risks are so huge. For the relatively few prescribed burns that are taking place in these modern times, foresters prepare extensively. They wait and monitor for optimal conditions so that the surface fires they set don't become the crown fires they're trying to prevent. When the forest parcel is ready and the conditions are right, a person called a Burn boss assembles their crew of fire starters. Armed with diesel drip torches, the perimeter is set aflame. And if everything goes well, this whole process is actually pretty uneventful.
Adam Huggins 08:26
Although I think Burn boss is the most amazing job title. It says it all.
Mendel Skulski 08:30
Definitely. Although it's not always so hands on with just drip torches. Have you ever heard of dragon eggs?
Adam Huggins 08:37
Dragon eggs are one stage in the reproductive cycle of dragons.
Mendel Skulski 08:43
[chuckling]
Adam Huggins 08:45
I presume that female dragons lay them and then juvenile dragons hatch out of them?
Mendel Skulski 08:55
Well, I am not going to say you're wrong, but in the context of prescribed burns, dragon eggs are like ping pong balls filled with a chemical accelerant, like potassium permanganate. And they're used to start fires in the places which Burn bosses and their crew can't safely access. So they're dropped on the forest or grasslands from above and right before they're released, they're injected with something like glycol, which means that they can act like a time delay fuse. They hit the ground and a short while later they start burning and they burn really hot and for a really long time.
[Egg hatching sound followed by tiny animal cry]
Adam Huggins 09:11
[chuckles] So cool.
Mendel Skulski 09:34
Right?!
Adam Huggins 09:35
So wait, um you said that they are dropped over the forest? What drops them, is it dragons?
Mendel Skulski 09:43
Typically you would use a helicopter but those things are silly expensive to run. The crew, the fuel, the machines themselves. So these days, some people are actually experimenting with using drones which can be remote controlled or they can fly a pre-programmed path so that you can take dragon eggs out into the woods. Fewer at a time, but much more economically.
Adam Huggins 10:09
You hear that kiddos? Get the right training and you could be a Burn boss, who uses drones to deploy dragon eggs, in order to regenerate ecosystems and save lives. What are you waiting for?
Mendel Skulski 10:20
Hey, hold up their hotshot, don't forget how we just laid out how complex ecosystems and species are in their response to fire.
Adam Huggins 10:28
I got a little carried away maybe. But we do need to burn. So how do we go about that?
Mendel Skulski 10:34
Well, since all this complexity can overwhelm the average human, it helps to simplify things a bit.
Adam Huggins 10:41
Simplify how? And don't say..!
Mendel Skulski 10:44
We'll get to that...
Adam Huggins 10:44
-aw man.
Mendel Skulski 10:46
...after the break.
[Drum machine break]
Mendel Skulski 11:01
So let's say you're trying to design a program for prescribed burns where you live; there's so much to consider. On the human side, who might be affected, where the structures are, what they're made out of and all the adverse effects from smoke. On the wild side, there's climate, weather patterns, fuel loads, and the dizzying diversity of individual species and ecosystem responses to fire.
Adam Huggins 11:23
Right. And no one wants to get it wrong. It's no wonder we've just thrown up our hands and allowed chance events like lightning or a cigarette butt to make the decision for us.
Mendel Skulski 11:34
But we're seeing the consequences of that and they're not good.
Adam Huggins 11:39
That's an understatement.
Mendel Skulski 11:40
So we need to find coherent strategies, ones that are specifically tailored to place and ones that aren't impossibly complicated. So we're actually going to venture down to one of your favorite places, Adam.
Adam Huggins 11:54
Oh, are we going to the Klamath?
Mendel Skulski 11:55
You're going to the Klamath. I'm actually… pretty busy.
Adam Huggins 12:00
I'm gonna act sad for a minute. But I can hardly contain my excitement.
Mendel Skulski 12:05
Get outta here!
[Ominous dramatic slow string music]
Adam Huggins 12:13
So we're headed to a remote corner of Northern California, not far from Wiyot territory, which we visited in our second episode. This is the inland part of Humboldt County. It's a rugged, mountainous region, spectacularly biodiverse, especially the plants. This is where the Coastal rain forest Flora of the Pacific Northwest collides headfirst into the droughty California Flora, and creates something completely distinct. They call this meeting place, The Klamath knot, and in the center of the knot is the territory of the Karuk tribe. The Karuk have a long history in the region, as well as a more recent history of genocide and displacement, not unlike the Wiyot. Also like the Wiyot, they've made a remarkable comeback and are on the cutting edge of fire management here on the west coast.
Mendel Skulski 13:02
Which is why you went down in the first place.
Adam Huggins 13:04
Right. Because the other thing about the Klamath knot, it's insanely flammable. All of the towns here are basically just on Little River bars in the river valleys and they are surrounded by endless seas of coniferous forest. There are major fires in the region every year, and having spent a summer out on the river, I can say that during close calls with the wildfire, you really do feel the heat. The Karuk of course, have known this for a long time.
Bill Tripp 13:31
Well, I mean, there's, there's a lot to that. And it's more than just how fire was managed, you know, it really comes down to a whole, you know, knowledge practice and belief system that was once very prevalent in this area. It really ties to everyday life rather than just a compartmentalized subject matter like you end up with today.
Mendel Skulski 14:02
So who's that?
Adam Huggins 14:03
That's Bill Tripp, Deputy Director of Eco-cultural revitalization at the Karuk tribe's Department of Natural Resources. For the Karuk, fire has always been a way of life.
Bill Tripp 14:14
You know, in Karuk culture it's both sacred and utilitarian. So, you know, it's utilized in many different ways, from the smoke carrying a prayer when you're making your medicine or, when you're, you know, lighting your ceremonial fires as part of our world renewal ceremonies. Or even right down to cooking the foods that we're able to collect; the quality and abundance of them is because of how you use fire.
Adam Huggins 14:49
Bill and the Karuk have been working for decades with state and federal agencies to return controlled burning to their territory. But that work has been hampered in the past, by high agency turnover rates and the somewhat reductionist approach of western science.
Bill Tripp 15:03
A lot of times the western science approach is a reductionist approach and it separates things and narrows them down to finite bits of information, whereas the traditional ecological knowledge is more about interconnected relationships among everything. They really do complement each other if they're integrated properly.
Mendel Skulski 15:28
So, what are they doing? What are the Karuk up to?
Adam Huggins 15:30
Well, they've helped create this thing called the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership, which, in addition to having a really spiffy website that we'll link to, is developing a long term collaborative and comprehensive plan to widely reintroduce controlled burning to the region. It's really forward thinking not just reactionary, and they've embraced complexity.
Bill Tripp 15:53
We don't do single species management, and start to move away from that single species management concept that has been brought to us around, you know, the timber economy and endangered species that keep popping up- and are going to continue to keep popping up.
Adam Huggins 16:10
But even as they've acknowledged that single species management can be a dead end, they've also found an ingenious way to simplify and target their management, just like you said.
Bill Tripp 16:18
We're actually bringing in this focal species concept and so we selected just initially a set of five focal species to look at, realizing that if we jumped right into every species we find in our regalia or our diet, [chuckles] then that will get pretty complex really, really fast. And so we looked for some, you know, that rose to the surface through examination of some of our world renewal ceremonies, and our creation stories.
Mendel Skulski 16:22
This idea of focal species makes a lot of sense as a way of trying to consider the full impact of our actions as humans, but you know, still trying to see the forest for the trees.
Adam Huggins 17:04
Totally.
Mendel Skulski 17:05
So who made the cut?
Bill Tripp 17:06
You know, immediately the Pacific giant salamander came up. You know, it's what do all the parties at the table have in common? Well we have water. So one of those things we all have in common and then in Karuk culture the Pacific giant salamander is revered as sacred and is known as the water purifier and it even has its own prayer in our world renewal ceremonies about how water works.
Adam Huggins 17:29
In addition to its cultural significance. The giant salamander is also a proxy for areas that shouldn't be burned.
Mendel Skulski 17:35
Right, like areas populated by the avoiders we talked about earlier.
Adam Huggins 17:39
Exactly.
Mendel Skulski 17:40
So what's next?
Adam Huggins 17:41
The spotted owl.
[Sound of an owl cry, and gentle pulsing string music fades in]
Bill Tripp 17:43
We ended up identifying the spotted owl as one. That species doesn't necessarily have even a name in Karuk culture, you know and it made sense that since forest service and you know, even us, in regulation, if we want to do anything out there, we have to consider that species because it's, you know, it needs saving. It has a purpose and it has a role out there in the woods. And so it's just, we've never in history had to even pay attention to its existence because everything we did always already assured its survival.
Mendel Skulski 18:26
It's interesting that even though the logging industry and the Karuk might not agree on most things, it sounds like they both feel like the spotted owl has a pretty outsized impact on forest management decisions.
Adam Huggins 18:38
Definitely. And so they named another animal that covers a lot of the same habitats as the spotted owl, and then some.
Bill Tripp 18:45
Pacific Fisher is the one that would represent spotted owl habitat in our ceremonial regalia. And it would not only represent that spotted owl habitat, but it would- because where spotted owls nest and roost is the same kind of place where Pacific fishers would den; and their foraging habitat is similar. They also use additional habitats and so they require more diversity and they have a larger range. And so it really makes sense that you know, instead of just focusing on 'okay, we're gonna have these two owls survive by looking at this one and a half mile circle.' You know, it makes more sense to say, well, let's look at this 25 square miles, and lets do what's going to work for the fisher and then let’s see how the owls behave.
Mendel Skulski 19:39
Hmm. So what he's saying is that the owls are not what they seem.
Adam Huggins 19:43
[Laughs] Exactly. Now, despite its name, the Pacific fisher doesn't actually eat a lot of fish. It's a mustelid, which makes it a relative of weasels and martens and minx and its diet ranges from small mammals to berries, nuts and even mushrooms.
Mendel Skulski 20:02
Wait, what do you mean, even mushrooms?
Adam Huggins 20:05
Cruising right past that. The Pacific fisher and spotted owl need a variety of habitats to support their nesting denning and foraging. So you need a combination of resistors invaders, evaders and resprouters to support them. They're known for depending on old growth, which is definitely resistor and avoider territory, but they do need open areas with plants like huckleberry to forage in.
Mendel Skulski 20:28
How is that?
Adam Huggins 20:29
Well, it turns out that a well thinned huckleberry patch that's easy to pick in is exactly the type preferred by rodent hunters.
Mendel Skulski 20:35
It's almost as if these ecosystems coevolved with a human influence...or something? What's next on the list?
Bill Tripp 20:44
We chose the elk because that also created a connection to the open space and particularly some of the open space near the creeks, to show that we needed to have a diversity of openings and dense patches. In Karuk culture not only was elk a significant food source, but it is also a species that we use to carry fire. So the elkhorn itself is what males would pack fire in. There's a little elkhorn purse that's made where you can take a little piece out of it and carve it out and you can put some stuff in there, along with the coal and then you can seal it, put the piece back on, and wrap it up in leather and then that coal will smolder in there. There's just enough air comes in from the little pores where it's cut off and on the inside of the elkhorn, to keep it smoldering for hours and hours. I mean you can pack fire all day, just with a little coal and an elkhorn.
Mendel Skulski 21:57
You can also do that with perennial polypores, just FYI.
Adam Huggins 22:00
What's a perennial polypore?
Mendel Skulski 22:02
Perennial polypores are those big woody shelf like mushrooms that you see growing on trees. They grow bigger year after year and because they burn so slowly and at such low temperatures, you can put an ember inside of one and carry it around with you from camp to camp, knowing that you'll have fire as soon as you arrive.
Adam Huggins 22:22
Okay. So for Karuk men, the elkhorn has a similar function.
Bill Tripp 22:26
So you pack it out to those places where you use fire and you'd start a fire and then you take another coal and repack your elkhorn and go to your next spot.
Mendel Skulski 22:33
And that's all without any chemical accelerants, like diesel.
Bill Tripp 22:36
[chuckles] Yeah, exactly. Getting away from spreading diesel all over a mountain, probably a good thing to start moving towards.
Adam Huggins 22:45
Especially when there just so happens to be an alternative that literally, grows on trees.
Bill Tripp 22:50
Even black pitch, which used to be one of the most prized forms of money in Karuk culture. It almost acts like a drip torch in itself, it burns really clean and it'll drip little flames.
Adam Huggins 23:04
Black pitch, that is from sugar pines. But of course, there's a wrinkle.
Bill Tripp 23:09
But it takes, you know, probably five 600 years or longer to make sure you get an adequate amount of sugar pine to sustain population and the process.
Mendel Skulski 23:20
Pretty far from the instant gratification I think we're all used to.
Bill Tripp 23:23
These systems evolved with people. And in those roles, I mean, you wouldn't see that type of vegetation characteristic on the landscape if people weren't out there, specifically culturing these spots to have multiple generations of sugar pines so you would always have black pitch. That's that's a long game right there [laughs].
Adam Huggins 23:47
And that's the timescale you need to think on to provide habitat for elk. They thrive in open meadow environments created in the wake of landscape scale fires, eating all the foliage of the resprouters invaders and evaders.
Bill Tripp 24:00
Four dimensional thought is critical because if you don't factor in time, you know, and these things are all on longer timescales than people.
Adam Huggins 24:10
Which brings us to the fifth focal species.
Bill Tripp 24:12
We knew we needed to have a plant. And so we picked willow because it's a basket material, and it is very important in healing ceremonies.
Mendel Skulski 24:27
What species of willow did they use?
Adam Huggins 24:29
That's exactly what I asked.
Bill Tripp 24:31
People wanted to throw the scientific name down for willow, I said no, our focal species is willow- we're not- there's different species have different uses, it's just like, we're looking at willow.
Adam Huggins 24:42
That's what I get for my fixation on Latin names, anyway.
Bill Tripp 24:46
But when it comes to the creation stories of coyote stealing fire, you know, that story ultimately led to fire being passed on to frog who took it underwater and spat it out into the roots of the willow. And then coyote taught people how to pull fire out of the willow which was used as a bow drill.
Adam Huggins 25:09
Bow drill being a natural fire starting technique.
Bill Tripp 25:12
Willows are where you pull fire back out.
Adam Huggins 25:14
Willows are classic resprouters, if you cut them back or burn them, they grow long straight shoots that are perfect for basketry, try it sometime.
Mendel Skulski 25:23
Not...not burning, though; use pruners.
[Background string music becomes a bit louder]
Adam Huggins 25:27
Right.
Bill Tripp 25:27
And they also stabilize that riparian area, which then also harbors the river mussel which is what women use to carry fire in. So it's- it all ties back around and this first five focal species were built around those human connections to bringing about a reemergence of these relationships.
Adam Huggins 25:53
And as you can hear, the Karuk and their collaborators are well on their way towards that reemergence. But it's been a long, hard road and the state has been there every step of the way.
Bill Tripp 26:04
Yeah, well, I mean that's that way with everything, seems like somebody's saying you can't do something all the time but people have lived here for a long time and people don't just give up their value systems all that easily. You know, the fact of the matter is a lot of our tribal families wouldn't have survived this past hundred years without continuing to hunt and fish and gather and live off of what that relationship with the land means. And so, we just have been missing a critical piece, a couple critical pieces at scale really; one, being fire.
[String music intensifies, then fades]
Mendel Skulski 26:55
This perspective on land management is so much more like a tapestry than a policy, it feels meaningful, it feels like something you can connect with.
Adam Huggins 27:08
Absolutely. And Bill sums it up by saying, rather than thinking about ecosystem services that benefit humans, we should prioritize human services that benefit ecosystems. It's a reframing of our role and responsibility that says 'we're part of this thing', and we can thrive together.
Mendel Skulski 27:27
And eat lots of berries.
Adam Huggins 27:30
Bill's in it for the long game, and we're in it for the berries.
Mendel Skulski 27:33
And the mushrooms.
Adam Huggins 27:34
Right, can't...forget the mushrooms. Anyway, so I gotta say that was a really nice trip and, while I was at it, I got some material for a whole other mini-series that we can work on later on. Coming back around to fire though, I feel like we have a pretty solid perspective now on how you might design an adaptive fire program. But most people don't live way out in the mountains.
Mendel Skulski 27:59
Yup. And most of us don't live on a small, flammable Island in southwestern British Columbia, either.
Adam Huggins 28:05
I mean, I do.
Mendel Skulski 28:07
I think we firmly established that you are not a whole lot like most people. So, for the vast majority of us living in urban and suburban areas where prescribed burns might be socially or physically impossible, what can we do?
Adam Huggins 28:23
You're going to answer that right?
Mendel Skulski 28:25
I will, after the break.
[Brief pause]
Erik Ohlsen 28:30
You can't ever stop the fire. There's never- there's nothing we will ever be able to do to keep the fires from coming, and to realize that and understand that, is to then design our communities in such a way that embrace fire in our lives rather than fight against it, rather than try to resist it.
Adam Huggins 28:50
So who's that?
Mendel Skulski 28:51
That's Erik Ohlsen.
Erik Ohlsen 28:52
I'm Erick Ohlsen. I'm the director of the Permaculture Skills Center and the founder of Permaculture Artisans, which is a landscape design contracting firm.
Adam Huggins 29:02
Six episodes in and we've finally hit the P word.
Mendel Skulski 29:05
If you're listening to this podcast, chances are you've already heard of permaculture, but, just in case:
Erik Ohlsen 29:12
So permaculture is a design science which focuses on integrating the needs of people with the needs of the ecosystem. So we look at, you know, how do we build our communities, our homes, our farms, our cities in such a way that actually regenerate ecologies, that catch and store and clean water, that build soil, that enhance habitat; and do it in such a way that is really based on how nature works. And that's really the premise for all the work I do, whether I call it permaculture or not, is to approach a project or a business or a campaign with the kinds of principles and relationship patterns that we might find in a forest, or you might find in a watershed; symbiotic relationships, high energy efficiency. So these are some of the principles that we find in permaculture that become sort of the foundation for how we design our systems.
Mendel Skulski 30:13
So Adam, remember the last time your home state went up in flames?
Adam Huggins 30:17
My home state is constantly in flames. It's actually kind of hard to remember a time when some part of California wasn't on fire. But you're talking about last October, right?
Erik Ohlsen 30:27
October 8th, five in the morning, you know, we're sleeping. My wife and I and kids we're all asleep, the landline rings- which is kind of rare because we pretty much use our cell phones these days. And so we think, 'oh, who's calling at five in the morning? Maybe it's an East Coast telemarketer. We don't pick it up. And I remember thinking, well, if it rings again, then that is going to cause concern. So of course a few minutes later, rings again. So we pick up the phone, it's my sister, she lives in Santa Rosa with her family. And she says, "Santa Rosa is on fire, we are leaving, we're packing up, we're evacuating right now we're heading to your house". And we lived about 15 minutes west of Santa Rosa. So that's what we woke up to and we thought, my first thought was, 'I don't believe it. I mean, Santa Rosa is on fire this the city I grew up in!'. It's a heavily urban area and my sister lives pretty much in the town area, so I'm thinking 'how are they even threatened? I mean, I went to bed, there was no fire last night, how could Santa Rosa be on fire this morning?' Well, of course we check out the news and boom, Santa Rosa is on fire, multiple fires coming from different directions all closing in on downtown Santa Rosa. So we were totally shocked. The fact that in a few hours’ time, a fire of that scale, could get so out of control in an urban area, was not something that we were prepared for or that we even really thought could happen. And I think it's being naive honestly, to think that way, because if you look to history, and if you talk to the native people in the community, they can tell you that these fires are always going to be here. There's a guarantee that the fires are going to be here. And so we really got to have our eyes opened. So my sister and her family, they evacuate to, to our home. I go outside, and it's completely smoky. Even just walking around- and again, I'm 15 miles away from the fire-even walking around on my property. There's burned books, there's burned leaves, there's burned material all over our property all over this ridge out here in West Sonoma County. There's just huge ash falling from the sky. And the more that we started to learn about what actually took place in the night, the more we heard about the stories of people that were trapped, or that barely got out, or the urban communities that got hit in the middle of the night, we realized that this is what felt like an unprecedented event..
Media Clip 33:03
[unspecified media clip fades in] ...like this and you got to see this to believe this.
Adam Huggins 33:19
I remember this really well, even though I wasn't there. Nobody thought a city like Santa Rosa could experience a fire like this. Although in hindsight, it's not that surprising. Just over a year earlier, Fort McMurray in Northern Alberta experienced a similar fire.
Mendel Skulski 33:35
Yeah. But the geographic context was totally different. If we're thinking like an ecologist, we have to think about all the different conditions that set the stage for this fire to occur. Erik unravels the climatic events that precipitated such a huge firestorm.
Erik Ohlsen 33:51
So we were in an extended drought, three or four years, and then last winter 2016/17 winter, we had an amazing wet year. So we have these three years of drought. Then we have a above normal, wet year. And what happened was everything grew super fast. When we talk about fires we talk about, you know what we call fuel load, right, and that's undergrowth in the forest or it's thatch in the grassland, it's the stuff that the fire is going to burn. So we had an incredible rapid increase of all this fuel load because all these plants have been waiting for that water and they pushed up and then we get into October. Obviously, it's the end of summer. Living in this environment, we don't have any rain, generally between May and October. So that dry time of year, everything dries out, the hills turn brown and the final condition that set this all off was an inland wind.
[Dramatic electric guitar, wind sounds]
Erik Ohlsen 34:53
Wappo which is a native tribe in Napa County. They actually have a word for this particular wind, and this is the fire wind. And it was that night, I remember the night, October 8th going to bed that night and feeling the wind gusts. And it's a warm gust, it's like a blow dryer. Down in Southern California they might call the it the Santa Ana's, up here they might call it the Diablo winds. The Native community have had words for this wind that go back thousands and thousands of years and that was the wind that picked up that night on October 8th, which had gusts up to 80 miles an hour. And so what that inland wind does is it brings warm air from the interior valley and blows the opposite direction from what we're used to with storms or, our you know, prevailing winds. All these aspects coming together, the rain year after drought, the timing of October the end of summer, along with these fire winds really have created the conditions for not only a fire to start, but for a fire to literally explode into a firestorm.
Mendel Skulski 36:01
Even the so called Tubbs fire wasn't new at all. What was unprecedented is how closely we built ourselves into those fire zones, without a complete understanding of the cycles of the landscape.
Erik Ohlsen 36:12
The speed at which that fire blew out of the mountains onto the plain- see, people didn't think that the fire could blow out onto the Santa Rosa plain, just like a big wetland area. You think, oh the fire is gonna stay in the mountains and the hills and like how is it jumping across the freeway into these urban communities? So all that feels unprecedented. But the truth is, is when I speak with some of the Native folks that are here, I've learned that the Pomo have been observing that same exact fire in the same exact location for 10,000 years.
Adam Huggins 36:49
That's wild. Okay, but wait,
[Dramatic electric guitar background stops]
Adam Huggins 36:54
We've got to consider climate change, right? I mean, isn't climate change the driving factor in why we're seeing catastrophic wildfires like this?
Erik Ohlsen 37:02
Well, yes, absolutely. I am total agreement that climate change is exacerbating the situation. But to say that climate change is the cause of these fires, you know, or even the cause of the catastrophe, is in my mind to ignore the fact that these fires aren't because of climate change, these fires are because this is how the land renews itself. So if we get too focused on climate change, and we don't actually take the time to speak to the Indigenous people and learn about the past history, I'm afraid that we're going to get sucked into that bigger climate change talk rather than actually look at every site specifically, and learn the story of that site.
Adam Huggins 37:47
Right. That's critical, isn't it?
Mendel Skulski 37:49
What's critical?
Adam Huggins 37:50
Well, that healing the land needs to be handled in a local context. Ridge by ridge, valley by valley. Every place has its own unique features and history.
Mendel Skulski 37:59
Oh, yeah. But realistically, in our political state right now, the intricacies of local fire management is the last thing on our elected leaders' minds. They're too busy putting out fires.
Adam Huggins 38:12
Both literal and figurative.
Mendel Skulski 38:14
Or honestly, starting them, to create a long term plan like the Karuk have.
Adam Huggins 38:18
So what's the solution for urban and suburbanites that live in a fire zone?
Erik Ohlsen 38:23
If we can be in agreement that these fires are going to be here no matter what we do, then we start to look at how do we reduce or avoid catastrophe? Because we know fire will be here, but we don't have to have the catastrophe on the level that we're experiencing; where whole ridge tops are completely incinerated, where whole communities are burned to ash. We don't need to have that level of catastrophe, because if we can understand the dynamics of fire and we can understand the ecological processes that are taking place that set up conditions for a catastrophic fire, then we do have places to intervene, to create a scenario where these fires are more regenerative than they are destructive.
Mendel Skulski 39:05
I think this makes so much sense. And it's such a beautiful idea to take this thing that that puts us all at such risk, and instead see a way that we can use it to benefit everybody.
Erik Ohlsen 39:17
So one of the things that we can do is to actually start reintroducing management techniques for forest and grassland that help reduce those fuel loads. And by helping reduce those fuel loads, we are reducing the risk of high level catastrophe when fire does come.
Mendel Skulski 39:36
And Erik has some great ideas for how to do that, which we'll get to. But there's one more factor that complicates matters in places where most of the land isn't owned by the government, but rather by private citizens.
[Slow, sad acoustic guitar]
Erik Ohlsen 39:51
And the other challenge that we have, that is fundamental to the conversation, is this scenario that we find ourselves in with private property ownership. Because how do you even enter into a community and provide the kind of management that say a forest needs or a grassland needs, if you can never have any access to that. And what the fires have really taught us in October, is that the whole community has to be involved in the management of the bio region. And if we all choose different management techniques for all of our little privately owned parcels, some of us might be managing the land in a way that responds well to fire and some of us might be exacerbating the fuel load and catastrophe situation.
Adam Huggins 40:39
That's definitely one of the major downsides of a society where the only qualification for being able to manage land, is owning it. So, hopefully everybody gets their neighbours to listen to this episode and rate and review and subscribe.
Mendel Skulski 40:54
Consider it your civic duty.
Adam Huggins 40:56
But if prescribed burning is just for specialists, what tools are there for everybody in the community to get involved with all that fuel load?
Erik Ohlsen 41:04
When we think about all this material that we call fuel load, we're really just talking about carbonaceous material. We're talking about trees and plants and grass and all of this is representative of carbon, minerals and nutrients. And in the era of climate change that we're in now, fire, of course, sends all that carbon up into the atmosphere. So while fire is an important tool for us to use in managing our landscapes through prescribed burns, and while fire is something we can't avoid in our lives living in these communities, we can be smart at the appropriate scale in the appropriate situation, in actually getting some of this material back into the ground. And I like to think about the soil as a carbon battery; all of this woody debris and all this material could actually go back into the soil and charge that soil up with carbon and feed the microorganisms, whether it's fungi or bacteria in those soil communities, which in turn will build the immunity up of those forests and grasslands to reduce disease and have a, you know, healthier, more regenerative ecosystem.
Mendel Skulski 42:18
I love this concept. It's so straightforward. And in the true spirit of permaculture, you can stack functions, getting all sorts of parallel benefits, just by rearranging the things that were already there.
Erik Ohlsen 42:31
So first off, if we're managing our landscapes with carbon sequestration in mind, and say we're doing forest thinning, or we're working on our hundred foot defensible space around our house, and we have to cut some trees down or prune some trees and we end up with all this material; this material can build our soils. One solution is to turn it into mulch, so we might chip it or chop it up in some way. Now what's so cool about that is you actually get multiple functions out of that, you stack functions, which is a principle we use in permaculture where one element provides multiple functions. So if I chip up the eucalyptus branches that I harvested on my land, then I've created mulch and that mulch actually keeps moisture in the ground, which then reduces my water use and my irrigation use.
Adam Huggins 43:25
Mulch, what can't it do?
Mendel Skulski 43:28
[chuckles]
Erik Ohlsen 43:29
So that's one solution. Another one, and one that we often find in these second and third generation forests, where logging roads create erosion issues. So, often you'll go into these areas and there's huge erosion gullies due to bad design roads or culverts or whatnot. And of course, erosion is disastrous to our waterways, to our aquatic species in our creeks and our rivers because it pushes all that sediment down there. So a really great solution- this is one of my favorite things to do- is when we go into a forest site and we're managing the fuel load in that forest, and we're using all of our sustainable forestry techniques, where we're leaving multiple generations, we're just taking out mainly the dead and dying stuff. We take all that material, and we use it in a variety of different erosion control processes. So one of them is to literally take this material and pack these gullies. So you have these big erosion slumps where, you know, it looks like a big tear in the landscape. By taking this material and making sure the first material you place in that gully has contact with the ground, you're able to start wicking water up into that, and that's really important in order for this material to decompose. But as you pack that gully, what's going to happen is the next time you have a rain event and you have a lot of water coming into this gully- because that's generally what's causing this erosion is very high velocity water. So as soon as that water enters that gully and hits, all that brush, it slows the water down. And by slowing the water down, any sediment that's inside that water is going to deposit into that gully. And we've actually seen gullies completely cover themselves up as if they were never there by this approach of packing it thick with brush, and after a few years, it sediments itself as you catch all that material, and slow all that water down.
Adam Huggins 45:26
Very elegant. Give me some more of these good ideas.
Erik Ohlsen 45:29
Another one is by actually doing check dams. So this is where we take this brush material, and rather than packing the gully, we're actually building these dams with the brush across the gully itself. So the water's coming down a channel, it hits this brush, check dam and the thing is, these are permeable dams. So water can seep through so we're not holding the water back, we're still allowing the water to pass through but again, we take the velocity out of the water and by taking the velocity of the water water, the water is able to deposit sediment behind the brush check dam. So these are two very easy ways to utilize this brush material in erosion control solutions that you can do right there. You can do both your fire prevention, fuel load management and like I said, often these forests already have erosion issues so you can harvest your erosion control material right out of the forest, and then pack those gullies, build those check dams, and now you are reducing catastrophe of fire, you're protecting the watershed, and you're building soil by getting all that material down.
[Background music fades out]
Adam Huggins 46:38
So I really like this, but it seems pretty labor intensive. Isn't permaculture all about not having to work so hard?
Mendel Skulski 46:47
I mean, it's not, not work. But, it's actually not that bad. And it's not supposed to be the entire forest.
[Slow rhythmic cello pulses in background]
Erik Ohlsen 46:57
We're talking about 600 million trees in California and thousands and thousands of acres of forest. And so obviously, these techniques are not necessarily scalable to the scale that we need to be looking at our forests. And that's where other tools like fire do come into play. But, what I find as a professional ecological designer- and I visit a lot of people's properties, I work with a lot of clients, I assess their lands and give them advice- I find that a lot of folks have the opportunity to implement some of these more water conserving carbon sequestering techniques in relation to fuel load management, because they only have a five acre forest or we're only looking at an acre around a house. So these are smaller scale areas that each one counts, you know, even if it's a small area, it still matters because the more that we all take responsibility for our landscapes in a positive way, we're going to reduce these catastrophes.
Mendel Skulski 47:59
And if you have the neighbours, this could be a great way to get to know them.
Adam Huggins 48:03
Yeah, it's definitely something I'm starting to think about living here on Galiano Island. It's just choked with brush and debris and it could really use some clearing. And there's tons of potential for carbon sequestration but, it's mostly private land. So it is going to come down to that community scale organization. So I guess if there's one upside to these enormous record breaking fires, it's that they're a real chance to start fresh and try some of these ideas. We can't just keep rebuilding, acting the same and expect things to be different next summer.
Mendel Skulski 48:37
Well, I mean, we can and so far, that's exactly what we're doing.
[Background string music comes forward for short musical interlude]
Adam Huggins 48:55
So, do you wanna know what I'm thinking?
Mendel Skulski 48:57
Sure.
Adam Huggins 48:59
I'm imagining what we might call a combustible community. Combustible, not in the sense that it's going to burn down every time a major fire comes through; that's most of our communities, but rather combustible in the sense that fire is part of the fabric of everyday life. Whether our cultural context is more informed by tradition and ceremony as Bill's is, or Western science and permaculture, like Erik, we can put that context to work in our lives. I picture neighborhoods where, of course each house is surrounded by defensible space and built to resist fire, sure, but also where parents and kids practice miniature controlled burns on say, the grassy margins between the sidewalk and the road or those little traffic islands. And once or twice a year, the whole community comes together to clear brush from overcrowded forests and uses it to stop erosion and build soil and eventually, where careful, controlled burns happen every few years.
Mendel Skulski 50:01
While we're at it, can we also imagine that we've solved climate change, smashed capitalism and totally transformed our society?
Adam Huggins 50:09
Sure, why not?
Mendel Skulski 50:11
You want to know what I'm thinking?
Adam Huggins 50:13
Yes Mendel, I want to know what you're thinking.
[Background string music fades out]
Mendel Skulski 50:16
I'm thinking, I should drive this thing more often.
[Heavy bass electronic theme song returns, plays in background until the end of dialogue]
Adam Huggins 50:23
So, if you live in fire country, start talking with your neighbours about organizing a safe, prescribed burn.
Mendel Skulski 50:30
You might even want to go deeper. Study to become a burn boss, or whatever you'd like to call it. We're gonna need more of you.
Adam Huggins 50:37
In the meantime, clear those tree ladders, pack your gullies with brush and mulch.
Mendel Skulski 50:41
And don't forget, to feel...the heat.
[Background music vocals sing 'feel the heat']
Adam Huggins 50:53
You have been falling madly in love with Future Ecologies. I'm Adam Huggins.
Mendel Skulski 50:58
And I'm Mendel Skulski.
Adam Huggins 50:59
And this was the second part of a two part series on fire. If you didn't hear the first one, it's great, you should go back and listen to it.
Mendel Skulski 51:06
In this episode you heard Bill Tripp, and Erik Ohlsen.
Adam Huggins 51:10
This has been an independent production of Future Ecologies. Our first season is supported in part by the Vancouver Foundation. If you'd like to help us make the show, you can support us on Patreon. To say thanks, we're releasing exclusive mini episodes every other week. To get in on the action, head to patreon.com/future ecologies.
Mendel Skulski 51:30
You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and iNaturalist. The handle is always Future Ecologies.
Adam Huggins 51:37
Special thanks to Jose Isordia, Kirsty Johnstone Munroe Cameron, Ilana Fonariov and Erica Terence.
Mendel Skulski 51:44
Our theme song this episode was produced by Forever and Ouri. Other music in this episode was produced by Ben Hamilton, Cat Can Do, NCTRMN and Sunfish Moon Light. You can find a full list of musical credits, show notes and links on our website: futurecologies.net.
Adam Huggins 52:02
Thanks for listening. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. [Hey can you turn it up?]
[Music gets louder, bass turns up, lyrics sing]
Bill Tripp 53:37
Due to regulatory issues...not necessarily... um [robot electronic sound]
Adam Huggins 53:45
That's super cute [laughs].
Bill Tripp 53:47
What's that?
Adam Huggins 53:48
[laughs] I would not answer the phone if I had that ringtone I'd just let it go.
Bill Tripp 53:56
I don't do much time on the phone. It hardly ever rings actually. Um, I prefer it that way [laughs].
Transcription by https://otter.ai and edited by Maya Lune Gauvin