In most cases, fire is highly destructive, jeopardizing homes, businesses, and wildlife species, as recently underscored by the Los Angeles-area and Carolina fires.
However, in some cases, the controlled use of fire — or prescribed burns — can be beneficial for restoring habitats and bringing back endangered or threatened species.
SFGate reported that the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in Woodside, California, is seeing a "fairly threatened" plant species — the Western bewildering bushmallow — make a resurgence following controlled burns in the area.
This type of burning is a practice that the local Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, along with other Native Tribes, engaged in for centuries. But tribal burns were long prohibited by the California state government, according to NPR, as the state sought to erase Indigenous culture.
As the need for wildfire prevention forces the state to distinguish between bad fires and "good ones," the latter is now making a steady return.
The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe guided the strategic burn that took place in the preserve area in March of 2024.
"Burn boss" Phil Dye and scientist Sheena Sidhu oversaw the prescribed burn while tribal Chairwoman Charlene Nijmeh led the burn prayers in the Chochenyo language (an Ohlone language), according to SFGate.
After about half a year, scientists noticed that many native chaparral plants (short, hardy shrubs) were beginning to resurface — the Western bewildering bushmallow being one of them.
Ancestral tribal knowledge about how to support ecosystems includes regularly burning the land to enable growth, such as that of the Western bewildering bushmallow plant, the seeds of which rely on heat for reproduction. The practice of fire suppression in the area, among other reasons, led to the plant becoming moderately threatened.
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Definitely 👍 The success of this joint-effort burn in 2024, evidenced by the return of a locally threatened species, has made clear the importance of taking a multi-tool approach to land management. Other initiatives are similarly blending knowledge and resources in this way to more effectively protect the planet we call home.
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Partnership with the Waimiri-Atroari people in the Amazon led to a network of highway bridges for primates at risk of being struck by vehicles. And Native communities and the federal government are working together to restore buffalo populations throughout the United States.
A Stanford news report said of the preserve's intentional burn: "The bushmallow gives us a glimpse of what is to come as we bring back the traditional reciprocal relationship between humans and the rest of the local flora and fauna with whom we share the land."
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