Wildfire Management and Recovery on Tribal Lands Complicated by Policy Inequities
Last September, when lightning storms ignited the KNP Complex and Windy fires deep in the Sierra Nevada's giant sequoia forests, state and federal agencies rushed to suppress the flames.
Air tankers made countless (and sometimes unannounced, undocumented, and unreported) fire retardant and water drop trips, even for individual trees, followed by bulldozers clearing fuel breaks. Ground crews raked pine needles and wrapped national treasures like the General Sherman sequoia with fire-resistant foil.
Across an invisible border between the Sequoia National Forest and the Tule River Tribe of California's reservation, an equally urgent response was mounted, but with far fewer resources. Tribal firefighters scrambled for water, ladders and other equipment as they battled blazes threatening sequoia and redwood groves regarded as extended family relations.
"These trees have seen a lot of history — they hold our knowledge. They watch over us. It's our job to protect them," explained Carlos DeSoto, a tribal water technician who helped fight the fires.
Ancient sequoias are increasingly threatened by fires exacerbated by climate change. This summer, firefighters fought to protect sequoia trees in Yosemite's Mariposa Grove from the Washburn Fire. The 2021 Windy Fire raised the total giant sequoia loss to over 10,000, almost one-fifth of the world population.
While sequoias evolved to withstand low level fires — and even require flames to germinate — the Windy, KNP Complex and Washburn fires were characterized by extreme flames sparking fires high enough in the canopy to leap from one tree crown to another, gutting the trees.
Lacking long-range pumps and hoses to extinguish crown fires in the sequoias, tribal firefighters searched for alternative ways to put out flames hundreds of feet up in the tree tops.
"The local branch of the USFS [United States Forest Service] gave us one of their battalion chiefs. They had additional crews, but didn't send them to us, because they were prioritizing the Sequoia National Forest," noted Zane Santos, the tribe's fire management officer. Two 20-person USFS hand crews joined tribal firefighters the second day of the fire.
Richard "Quntan" Garcia, a Fire Captain from the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians assisting with the wildfire response, described frantically scrounging for vintage brass nozzles that could emit high-pressure streams of water at local antique stores after being denied the temporary use of an idle fire engine to douse a crown fire. (Instead, the vehicle was kept on stand-by.)
"It was a sure thing versus a gamble," he recounted. "But we saved the tree. It's still standing. That's the reward."
It wasn't just lack of resources that led to tragic loss of trees, plants and wildlife on the 19,325 acres of Tule River tribal lands. Lack of proactive inclusion and tribal consultation in fire management by collaborating agencies, from preventative prescribed burns to mapping sacred sites, exacerbated the damage.
These latest wildfire events have amplified repeated calls for increased tribal participation, funding and decision-making power at every stage of fire response; especially as the Tule River Tribe — and other tribes with forest lands — contend with extended drought, massive fish kills, insufficient support to shore up fire-damaged hills and concerns about another potentially dangerous wildfire season.
Protecting Cultural Sites Before and After Wildfires
The Tule River Tribe occupies an 84-square-mile reservation in the Sierra foothills in Tulare county, the third-largest tribal landholding in California (the Yurok Reservation is the largest, followed by the Hoopa Valley Reservation in Humboldt County, both in Northern California). Driving through the hardest hit burn zone in the northeast corner of the tribe's reservation in December, much of the forest had been reduced to moonscapes: acre after acre of charred trees surrounded by barren ground covered with ash and fire retardant. Giant sequoia trunks were split through the middle; some of the trees were still smoldering.
Of firefighting operations during the Windy Fire, Santos explained, "Their [priority] number six was our number one."
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) uses Fire Management Action Points (or M.A.P.s) to help guide its operations. These define conditions that, when reached, would modify an existing approach or trigger new actions during a wildfire. In the heat and chaos of an extreme wildfire, Action Points determine when firefighters are sent to focus on, for instance, protecting a residential area or initiating a back burn.
"CAL FIRE's fire management priorities are based on life and property — but given the Windy Fire's location, there weren't any homes threatened," said Santos. "For us, it was the headwaters of the Tule River, the giant sequoias, the redwood trees, the cultural sites and all the plants and animals we consider culturally important."
Incorporating tribal leadership in fire management could direct decisions about what to protect from fire, what to allow to burn, and which trees and resources to avoid when clearing breaks or applying retardant to stop the fire's spread. During the 2017 Pier Fire — a three-month wildfire that burned 36,556 acres, including a substantial portion of the Tule River Reservation — tribal firefighters witnessed containment operations by other agencies that resulted in what they deemed to be higher-than-necessary tree losses.
"Our cultural sites, our plants and animals are just as important as structures," asserted Kerri Vera, the tribe's Department of Environmental Protection director. "Cultural sites should be automatic avoidance zones [for fire retardants and tree clearing] — but for the last two fires on our reservation, that wasn't the case."
Federal laws such as the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 call for interagency collaboration to protect cultural sites, and CAL FIRE is legally mandated to protect archaeological, historical, and tribal cultural resources. Still, during the Windy Fire, proactive protection of the Tule River Tribe's cultural resources was largely absent from incident management decisions.
Cultural sites should be automatic avoidance zones — but for the last two fires on our reservation, that wasn't the case.Kerri Vera, Director of the Department of Environmental Protection, Tule River Tribe of California
"After discussing things with us during some of the Windy Fire incident calls, they changed some of their priorities," Santos confirmed. But inadequate mapping ahead of time meant that culturally significant species – sequoias and redwoods – and cultural sites were lost.
"Either the maps were never created, or they were not communicated to CAL FIRE and USFS personnel," said Theo McConnell, a consulting cultural resources specialist. "If there were blanks on our maps, there are probably blanks on other maps in Indian country, too."
Federally-established reservations encompass only small portions of tribes' historical territories — so for most tribes, historical cultural sites are located not only on the reservation but also in neighboring state and national forests. For the Tule River Tribe, many of their ancestral village sites and traditional gathering, fishing and hunting territories are contained within adjacent Sequoia National Forest lands.
"There's no buy-in to our culture [by state and federal agencies]," noted tribal councilmember Harold Santos. "And the more decisions trickle down, the less information is shared, and the fewer people who know us." When hundreds of firefighters are sent to a site where they lack awareness of the area's history, and when work crews don't contain any tribal members, this can translate to cultural tragedies like dozer operators destroying petroglyph sites.
"When we say cultural resources, we aren't just talking about archaeological sites. We're talking about all the places and beings that we, Indigenous people, have relationships with, and work to protect: from the smallest bug in the ground to the stars in the sky.
"We are concerned not only about the trees, but about every creature whose life is connected to those trees, because our very existence depends on them," said Garcia.
The Impact of Fire Retardant on Critical Water Sources
The Windy Fire and the KNP Complex fires ignited in steep, remote canyons inside Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The extreme topography and the sheer number of simultaneous lightning-caused wildfires prompted the USFS and CAL FIRE to rely heavily on airplane drops of fire retardant — a known environmental hazard for people and wildlife.
Retardants can effectively suppress a fire when time is of the essence or where it is too difficult or dangerous to bring in manpower. But runoff from retardants, as with fertilizers, contains high concentrations of nutrients that cause eutrophication — sudden algal blooms — in affected waterways. These algal blooms, when they produce poisonous cyanotoxins, can cause a range of health issues for humans and animals, from rashes, dizziness and nausea to liver and kidney damage.
Funding to identify red flags ... would go a long way towards ensuring this kind of thing doesn't happen on other reservations.Theo McConnell, cultural resources specialist consulting with the Tule River Tribe of California
Although standard USFS practice employs retardant exclusion zones around ecologically sensitive areas, the first 12 days of aerial retardant drops on the Windy Fire zone weren't recorded. The tribe therefore has incomplete documentation of where to test their exposed water ways for retardant chemicals.
This is especially concerning, as 75% of the tribe's drinking water comes from tributaries of the South Fork of the Tule River.
"Now that the fire has been contained, we're focusing on the unrecorded fire retardant drops that are affecting our watershed," explained former tribal chairman, William Garfield, linking the algal blooms to toxins showing up in plants, fish, and animals consumed by the tribe.
"Funding to identify red flags, through a national review of Indian country property, would go a long way towards ensuring this kind of thing doesn't happen on other reservations," observed McConnell.
"If we were more proactive, you wouldn't have [tribes] saying, ‘Wait a minute, you just poisoned our drinking water,' because pilots would see those flagged areas, and realize, ‘Oh, we can't drop retardant here.'"
The Consequences of Insufficient Prescribed Burns
While the foil wrapped around the General Sherman and the Four Guardsman is credited with helping save the world's largest giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, agency personnel also acknowledge a 2019 prescribed fire and vegetation removal for dramatically reducing the fire's intensity when it reached the trees. In the Mariposa Grove, a 50-year history of prescribed fire is credited with slowing the Washburn Fire's velocity and severity, protecting old-growth sequoias and making firefighters' jobs easier.
For over 20 years, the Tule River Tribe has advocated for resources to conduct prescribed burns to protect the reservation's forests. Intentionally set, controlled fires can remove vegetation that would fuel more intense fires, support beneficial plants and animal species and promote healthy watersheds. In 2000, when the neighboring forest was declared a national monument, tribe members traveled to Washington to ask Congress to support the creation of a fire break buffer zone along the border of their lands.
At present, despite the recent passage of new laws that remove liability risks for California tribes setting prescribed burns, and the dramatic increase in support for prescribed burns and Indigenous fire ecology expertise, current levels of state and federal agency prescribed burns and tribal cultural burns are too low to make a significant impact on millions of acres left untended for over a century. The Tule River Tribe has only been able to complete burns on a small portion of their lands.
"Because I'm a weaver, I always said, we need to prune those trees," said Carrie Franco, a Tule River tribal elder with firefighting experience. "Before the fire, I wasn't happy with our forest. They left it all brushy — it was a tinder box waiting to happen. You know why our round dance house was saved? Because me and my kids cleaned around it. We rake it, we clean it, we use it."
Inequitable Sharing of Decisions and Resources Hampers Fire Response on Tribal Lands
While the Tule River Tribe maintains both a firefighting wheelhouse and a wildlands fire department, the intensity and scope of a catastrophic wildfire like the Windy Fire requires immediate infusions of additional personnel and equipment. According to then-Chairman Garfield, funding and resources for firefighting work are woefully inadequate.
The same goes for post-fire funding for repairs. During rainy seasons and winter months following the fires, the tribe struggled to rebuild key structures and bolster eroded hills to prevent debris flow. "We got shorted," said Former Chairman Garfield. So far, out of $2.1 million recommended by the Burn Area Emergency Response (BAER, a Bureau of Indian Affairs field evaluation team that surveyed the reservation after the Windy Fire), only $180,000 has been distributed for repairs for the winter, noted Former Chairman Garfield. "Whereas according to the BAER report, other agencies are set to receive up to $75 million."
"The Sequoia National Forest and members of the Tule River Tribal Council have established regular meetings to maintain and strengthen coordination, collaboration, and training efforts. We have a long-standing, mutually beneficial partnership and look forward to continuing our partnership to include pre-season fire meetings and interagency fire training," affirmed Sequoia National Forest Fire Chief Joe Gonzales.
After witnessing a series of catastrophic fires impacting the reservation, tribal elders feel too many fire prevention needs remain unmet. "I'm very upset with things: Why don't we have a hotshot crew? Why don't we have a dozer crew? Why don't we have a helitack crew? Where are our water tenders? We have 58,000 acres, redwood forests, giant sequoias, and nobody's prepped on tule reeds [an important traditional basketry material]," remarked Franco.
Delegation of authority needs to include tribes and tribal concerns.William Garfield, former chairman, Tule River Tribe of California
Tribes want to see proactive actions and funding, rather than largely reactive responses. Proactive measures include more resources for prescribed burns and consistent involvement of tribal staff on briefings, unified command teams and incident management calls where critical decisions on resource allocations — such as where hotshot crews will be deployed — are made.
"Delegation of authority needs to include tribes and tribal concerns," stated Former Chairman Garfield. "They need to set this up before the wildfires come through. Instead, while I'm listening in on these incident management calls, they're arguing about which agency is going to pay for what."
Tribal firefighters dealing with the aftermath of the Windy Fire emphasized that during an active fire, everyone from the pilots doing the airdrops to the bulldozer operators cutting fire breaks should be following previously created maps and agreed-upon field protocols that delineate red flag areas on reservations: tribal watersheds, hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds, and other culturally significant sites.
"When we have tribal members on incident management teams or on bulldozers, they aren't going to mess things up," noted Zane Santos. "They'll stop if they see a cultural site, call us, and check in before they do anything."
Despite the multiple challenges during the Windy Fire, there were instances when tribal priorities were respected, leading to protection of invaluable cultural resources. In one example, at a critical juncture during the Windy Fire, a tribal member on a USFS fire crew directed fire mitigation measures around the Redwood Corral, a key tribal cultural gathering area.
In another instance, when tribal cultural specialists were granted permission to survey post-burn areas within the Sequoia National Forest, they found a hidden treasure. An intense burn from the Windy Fire had removed thick vegetative cover, revealing a traditional Yokut village site, one that current generations had never seen before.
"Seeing that site was like winning the lottery," stated tribal member Carly Gomez, during a tour of the burned area.
She and other tribal leaders have vowed to turn the devastation of the Windy Fire into more positive outcomes for this generation and every generation to follow.
