Wildfires Are Good?

When naturalists like John Muir first entered the Yosemite Valley of California in the 19th century, they marveled at the beauty of what they believed to be a pristine wilderness untouched by human hands. The truth is that the rich diversity and stunning landscapes of places like Yosemite and other natural environments in the United States were intentionally cultivated by Native Americans for thousands of years. And their greatest tool was fire.

“Fire was a constant companion, a kind of universal catalyst and technology,” says Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University, author and fire historian.

Yosemite itself was routinely burned to clear underbrush, open pasture lands, provide nutrient-rich forage for deer, and to support the growth of woodland food crops to feed and sustain what was once a large and thriving indigenous population.

“If you look at the early photographs of Yosemite and you see the great big majestic stands of oaks, you would be led to believe that those are natural,” says Frank Kanawha Lake, a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, wildland firefighter and Karuk descendent.

“But those trees are a legacy of indigenous acorn management. Those are tribal orchards that were managed for thousands of years for acorn production and for the geophytes or ‘Indian potatoes’ that grow beneath them.”

Seasonal Wildfires vs. Cultural Burning

The hugely destructive seasonal wildfires that consume millions of acres of forest across the Western United States every year are mostly triggered when lightning strikes a stand of trees that’s dangerously dry from late-summer heat or drought.

While those types of natural fires have always existed, indigenous people have also practiced what’s known as “cultural burning,” the intentional lighting of smaller, controlled fires to provide a desired cultural service, such as promoting the health of vegetation and animals that provide food, clothing, ceremonial items and more.

“[Cultural burning] links back to the tribal philosophy of fire as medicine,” says Lake. “When you prescribe it, you’re getting the right dose to maintain the abundance of productivity of all ecosystem services to support the ecology in your culture.”

Examples of Native American cultural burning can be found across the American landscape. In the Appalachian forests of the Eastern United States, the dominance of oak and chestnut trees was the product of targeted burning that resulted in vigorous resprouting of the desired nut crops. The iconic tall grass prairies of the Midwest were also likely cleared and maintained by indigenous burning as pastureland for herd animals

Native Americans Used Fire to Protect and Cultivate Land | History.com 

With all these wildfires raging in the western United States allegedly and the mass media scaring the shit out of people about it, what about how Native Americans using wildfires for a lot of good? That article mentions how Colonialists came in and outlawed the use of wildfires after learning the Native Americans has good uses for them. So that tells me wildfires did serve a purpose, if it worked for indigenous tribes yet somehow the invading European Colonists found out about this and ended it. Now the mass media makes wildfires this horrific fear porn story. I question how much the wildfires are going on and how bad the wildfires are. If Native Americans needed wildfires to live then why the fuck is the media making it out to be doom and gloom? That's not right and it's keeping people ignorant of the use of fire.