AZ Wallow Fire ravages USFS managed forest but NOT Apache forest tinyurl/l37rhk3 #TransferPublicLands @AmericanLandsCn On Memorial Day weekend in 2011, an unattended campfire in Bear Wallow Wilderness sparked a small brush fire that quickly turned into a holocaust, burning through 538,000 acres and destroying 32 homes in the process. It cost taxpayers more than $79 million to suppress. The Wallow fire was the largest fire in Arizona history, with almost 6,000 people evacuated during the weeks it burned. The San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation, just to the west of where the fire started, was hardly touched. Therein lies a story that American Indians can take pride in and U.S. firefighters and their cash-strapped agencies, entering what is expected to be one of the worst fire seasons in U.S. history, can learn much from. When the reservation was established in southeastern Arizona in 1872, it was known as Hells Forty Acres due to the regions unforgiving heat. Almost 140 years later, though, it was one of the few patches of forest in the region that the flames skipped. It was not magic that saved it, but years of preparation. Following a very long tradition, Brad Peak, a Chickasaw, is an expert at removing incendiary brush from forested areas on the Kullihoma Grounds near Ada, Okla. Here hes moving ahead of a controlled burn that he set in March. Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Tribes have been minimizing the chances of wildfires on tribal lands for centuries, adhering to traditional seasonal fire prevention systems of doing prescribed burns, removing hazardous fuels and thinning forests. The practices helped clear the sightlines on hunting grounds and protected the timber for heat, fuel and trading. The approach is part of an extensive collection of generational knowledge used to manage forests and wildfires described as traditional fire knowledge. The Apache response to the Wallow fire was a dramatic example of the effectiveness of Indian forest thinning, according to a 2013 report commissioned by the federal government.
Posted on: Mon, 19 May 2014 18:15:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015