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Overview
Overview
The Clear Lake region is heavily impacted by extreme wildfires. Fuel loads have accumulated to high levels throughout the region due to decades of fire suppression from prevalent land-management practices. This has led to an increase in large, catastrophic wildfires that have devastated ecosystems as well as local communities. In order to prevent these disasters, it’s important to understand how these land management practices came into place, inspire students to get involved, and learn from Tribal and community members about bringing good fire back to the land.
Fire has impacted students in different ways, and it’s important to start by recognizing the multitude of relationships students have to fire. Acknowledging the variety of associations will help to then guide them towards the concept of good fire. Students will see examples of good fire and learn about its benefits to the land. Students will learn about the policy of fire suppression, and how encouraging the return of cultural burns to the Clear Lake region contributes to supporting Tribal sovereignty. Analyzing fire data builds the connection between increasing fuels as a contributing factor to increasing fire frequency. Identifying their own skills will help students determine the roles they can each play within their communities, and the importance of each role contributing to the whole – be that through contributing to participatory science projects or other avenues. Finally, students will work together in developing a list of interview questions they can ask a guest speaker to bring further insight to the topic as well as the guest speaker’s own career path.
Objectives
Objectives
Explore the ways people use fire.
Identify a forest management practice and how it helps prevent destructive fires.
Know the three components necessary for a fire (oxygen, fuel, heat source) and list examples of each.
Understand different ways of taking action/making change.
Identify local actions from community examples.
Create questions to ask career area experts.
Learn and practice how to conduct an informational interview before meeting with invited guests.
Analyze and interpret wildfire data for trends.
Use data to inform the ways we can mitigate impacts of wildfire.
Activities
Activities
Examine relationships with fire and its importance in our ecosystem
How policies shape land management practices
Use data to understand when wildfires are hazardous
Find a role for advocacy within the community
Brainstorm questions for a group guest speaker
Educator Background
Educator Background
Despite the destruction of large-scale fires seen in the last decade, the region is a fire-adapted ecosystem. For millennia, indigenous people applied low-severity fire in order to tend to the many plant communities that sustained them. The Clear Lake region, and much of California, has co-evolved with fire, requiring it to help native seeds germinate, eliminate pathogens and pests, clear out smaller trees and shrubs to access more sunlight and nutrients, and reduce the amount of decomposing matter and fuels for bigger fires. Lake County typically saw low-severity fires every 0–35 years as well as mixed-severity fires every 35-100 years (Lake County Living with Wildfire). The first meeting of the California Legislature in 1850 outlawed intentionally setting large fires, as part of a racist act directed against Native Americans. What follows is a century and a half of state-sanctioned fire suppression practices that all but removed fire from the landscape. Today, climate change has exacerbated conditions, with longer droughts killing trees and adding more fuel, and hot, dry, long summers extending the period for fires to occur. Perspectives are shifting, and more land managers are seeing the importance of forest thinning and prescribed burns. Tribes and organizations like the Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance (TERA) are working to bring back good fire to the Clear Lake region. These fires are not only to reduce fuels, but aim to holistically restore indigenous lifeways by caring for traditional resources. While barriers to more widespread prescribed burns remain, agencies are recognizing the need and are working with community-led organizations to bring education and resources to care for the land with fire. Use the list of local resources to learn more about restoring good fire in the Clear Lake watershed.
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