For a decade, a northern California program has built prescribed fire capacity informed by Indigenous tradition

Since 2014, the Klamath Prescribed Fire Training Exchange – or KTREX – has been building capacity for burning in the ancestral territory of the Karuk Indigenous people. Organizers say it's a promising model for putting more beneficial fire on the ground amid the wildfire crisis.

Like a number of Indigenous peoples, the Karuk have an extraordinarily long tradition of burning on their lands near the Klamath River. Recent research concluded the Karuk may have historically set nearly 7,000 fires annually on a roughly 650,000-acre swath of their homeland that burned some 15% of that acreage every year.

Last month, in the mountains overlooking Orleans, Calif., a team of burners – overseen by a Karuk tribal member – started laying down strips of flame with their drip torches after a brief ceremony. The burns will create buffers to protect the community from wildfires.

But Greg Moon, a member of the nearby Hoopa Valley Tribe and the Karuk Tribe's fire management officer, said regular burning also supports plant and animal species that the tribe depends on for sustenance, basketry and ceremonial clothing.

"If you think about the regalia that the local tribes use here, it's all from the land, it's all from the animals," he said. "I look at that regalia as kind of a roadmap or a blueprint of how we manage the land, because if we don't have the correct landscape for those animals or for those plants or for whatever – even right down to the string that holds everything together – those are plants. And so if we don't have those things, then we are not a healthy tribe and we're not going to have a healthy ceremony."

The regular trainings have also steadily built local capacity, he said, meaning they're now at the point where they can organize burns as a community in collaboration with partners.

"This one is over 100 acres on very tough land," he said of this year's first burn. "And it's around structures, and so that tells you that we've gained the trust of the community to burn around their property. We've gained the ability and certifications and experience to pull this type of burn off on our own, and that we have the capacity, equipment and expertise to do it."

He said the Karuk Tribe "is really leading the way in Indian country" when it comes to conducting collaborative burns with partners, including the Forest Service and nonprofits. And it's a model he said could be used elsewhere.

"We need partnerships with the people around us," he said. "And so I think that's starting to happen, and I see it growing."