Comment by ortusdux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ortusdux | Hacker News Reader

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This is a rather jaded take. The article covers the overlap of two newsworthy things:

#1 - To the best of our knowledge, the forests of the region were actively managed via fire for thousands of years. This changed a few hundred years ago, and the result is the unprecedented fires we have been experiencing. The government is reacting by greatly increasing funding for prescribed burns which, to the best of our knowledge, is the best solution at this time.

#2 - The state is bound by federal treaties with the sovereign nations that reside within its borders. The bounds of these treaties are hotly contested. The sovereign nations believe that the treaties grant them the right to the lifestyle they historically had. The federal government wants to curtail activities they believe, if unchecked, might cause lasting negative effects. One of the rights these sovereign nations had restricted were controlled burns, which they call cultural burns. These rights are being slowly returned now that the state and feds view controlled burns in a more positive light.

There is a 3rd indirect element to this article, which is that it is trying to address an audience that has been affected by years of the Smokey the Bear 'all fire is bad' mentality.

You should reread the article. I'm pretty sure you brought along the baggage you are complaining about.

Please make your substantive points without swipes, such as you crossed into at the end. Your comment would be fine without that bit (and maybe the beginning bit as well, though that wasn't so bad).

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The messaging around managed fires by indigenous peoples is a smart narrative for California.

You will not persuade hardcore preservationists in California by listing out the economic/quality of life benefits of controlled burns. They (and I am generalizing) have a deep passion for returning nature to its natural state.

The key to changing preservationists minds is not to say "there are many benefits to controlled burns (for humans)" but rather, "the state we are creating in forests without burns is not natural."

This is exactly what is happening. People have been arguing for controlled burns for decades, and they're finally making headway now that that they have a relatively bulletproof argument: these fires are a newer development since humans settled this land, the original settlers had a tested and proven method for dealing with them, so let's go back to doing that.

> They (and I am generalizing) have a deep passion for returning nature to its natural state.

"Natural state" is a term with a debatable definition. Is it:

* how it was when the Native Americans lived on it and did whatever they did

* how it was when there are no humans around at all

And these aren't even necessarily the only definitions, or a binary choice (it could be a spectrum/tunable).

Oh it gets worse than that: we're in an interglacial period right now, coming out of an ice age.

When the Bering Strait ice bridge formed and the descendants of native peoples migrated down through the American continent, California was not a dry desert. It was probably covered by lush forests and wetlands with a much lower sea level than today so there's literally no way to return it to that "natural state"

With the Kelp highway hypothesis [1], humans were here for most of that transition so really there's a whole list of "natural states" to pick from (that we largely can't return to)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastal_migration_(Americas)#K...

You're looking for rationality in an irrational position. These "preservationists" are really just environmental Catholics. Underneath the environmental rhetoric, they've internalized a version of original sin and desire to submit themselves to punishment for said sin. To suggest modern solutions and forward progress would be to suggest that the sinners could erase the original sin by sinning more.

To convince them to take action you have to validate their self-imposed guilt with images of reverting to noble savages clapping hands and playing pan-flutes around a fire while the animals sway in time to the music.

There was a time I would have said these people need education, now I'll settle for using their guilt to herd them in the correct direction.

One could argue that anything that ever happens is natural, since humans are part of nature.

History of fire lookouts. https://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/r1/recreation/?cid=fsp5_03080.... What caused the wildfires of 1910 https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb54447...

...just because it is interesting.

Well technically, controlled burns aren't natural either.

Right, but people were engaged in burning since the glaciers retreated. So there's no possible pre-burning ecology to return to since the glaciers are LONG gone and the mega-fauna all died. So we can have either unpredictable, large-scale burns or we can have predictable controlled burns that the ecosystem had adapted to for the better part of 15k years.

There is also the fact that the natural state includes letting lightning induced fires burn out.

People have been pointing out the folly of not allowing regular burns for decades, no idea why it is only now getting traction with this weird take. It's not like the divide between those who wanted controlled burns and those who didn't was racial.

> They (and I am generalizing) have a deep passion for returning nature to its natural state.

Which is what's happening.

Its natural state includes devastating wildfires every so often when lightning touches off dry undergrowth that hasn't been cleared away for years.

> To the best of our knowledge, the forests of the region were actively managed via fire for thousands of years.

"Native Americans" arrived here about 30,000 years ago. For all the time prior to that forests were actively managed by controlled burns conducted by nature.

The idea that they somehow had some advanced knowledge that Europeans lacked has no scientific basis, they simply didn't have the modern technology to stop a fire started by lightning.

> they simply didn't have the modern technology to stop a fire started by lightning.

Or as much fixed and immobile infrastructure that would be endangered by fire-- if there is nothing you care about nearby, why not set a fire to aid in hunting or to clear out plants you can't eat in favor of ones you can?

Just because they intentionally set fires that doesn't itself make it environmentally good-- it's an extraordinarily racist view that the indigenous people weren't capable of environmental destruction just because they were less effective at it than industrial civilizations. The noble savage protector of the land is a racist fantasy of people raised on a diet of Disney movies, not reality.

Right. For some reason people have figured out that “noble savage” is racism, but there’s a bit of latency when it comes to “ignoble white man” flavor of racism.

>forests were actively managed by controlled burns conducted by nature.

This is, by definition, not a controlled burn.

It is, just controlled in a larger macro sense than what humans are capable of.

What they knew was that it was easier to hunt and forage in forests after fire had removed the underbrush. They knew that they would be back next year chasing dear, so they decided to light a fire on the way out to make it easier. No advanced knowledge needed. As time went on, the practice became a ritual.

The cynical take usually wins. The public as a whole is ignorant of history, couldn’t care less about indigenous people, and is keenly worried about any sort of threat.

The first time the controlled burn goes out of control the initiative will be back to square one.

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