#6 The following is a fun blog from The Fire Restoration Group: firerestorationgroup.org/living-with-fire-blog.

A Conversation with Prometheus -- Accepting the Gift of Fire

March 22, 2021

Most cultures on the planet have at their roots, a story regarding how they acquired the gift of fire. Native Americans hold a variety of cultural narratives of how fire was brought to “the people” and it often includes a trickster figure, like coyote, who steals fire from some more powerful being and gives it to humans to help us stay warm, cook food, heat metal and to use prescribed burns for resource management. 

In western culture Prometheus is our guy. In early Greek mythology, Prometheus, a titan warrior, was busy doing battle with the gods on Mt. Olympus and it was not going well. He and his brother decided to switch sides and were spared (briefly) but shortly after Prometheus (the Forethinker) saw the plight of humans (no fire for heat or cooking food) and decided to steal fire from Zeus and give it to the humans to ease their plight. This really ticked off the God of Olympus, and Prometheus paid dearly for his act of human kindness. I have often wondered what the forward-thinking god of fire and science would think of us today as we are burning California to the ground by not respecting the gift of fire that he paid so dearly to give us? Then to my great surprise, I was able to meet up with him in a recent dream and here is what I remember of the conversation:

Craig: Wow, hello Prometheus you look in surprisingly good shape considering what you have been through with that eagle eating your liver each day only to be reborn the next morning to go through it again—that Zeus was a bad dude. 

Prometheus: Yes, that was tough but not near as painful as watching from the clouds as you humans ignore science and the productive uses of fire that can make your world healthy and resilient. 

I mean I had to endure your European ancestors floating across the ocean in wooden boats arriving in what you call North America and immediately starting a ruckus with the native people who had been successfully living here and using fire for 20,000 years! And it kept getting worse until your plundering pioneer relatives got to California, one of my favorite vacation spots when I am not battling ignorance and grumpy gods. The location you call California is one of the most naturally flammable landscapes on Earth—I just love the place—back in early1800s Native Americans with the help of my distant cousin, Thor, using lightning bursts, applied fire to over 4.5 million acres per year. What a place and talk about biodiversity! Now look at it! What is a matter with you people? 

Craig: Well, it is a long story.

Prometheus: That is ok, I got nothing but time. How did you people create such a mess? 

Craig: I guess it all started a couple of thousand years ago after some folks moved away from hunting and gathering (and extensive fire use) and became more settled and practiced agriculture. 

There was this book called the Bible that meant well but it had this one section that instructed us to rule over the earth and tame all the critters (Genesis 1:28). We have been battling nature ever since and not really taking care of the land that sustains us. 

Prometheus: Holy Smokes! That is not going to go well, I can tell you. 

Craig: And it has only gotten worse over time.

Prometheus: Tell me about it! Remember, I live in the sky and it is so polluted with wildfire smoke I can hardly keep track of you people anymore. 

Craig: Sorry, but there are a lot of people who are trying to do something about restoring fire so would you give us a break, especially in California! 

Prometheus: So, what can I do to help?

Craig: Well, we are big fans of this thing called science you created but we are struggling with our politicians and others who do not understand that it is past time to restore the land and stop thinking only about what we can take from nature. It is a “taker culture” problem that looks at the Earth as a never-ending storeroom of goodies to raid. 

Prometheus: Money and politicians, I remember them from my days on Mt. Olympus.

Prometheus: So, break it down for me but be quick, I only have a couple thousand years to listen, but I am “down with you” as they say, and I want to help. 

Craig: OK, well first our fire scientists have been publishing a suite of research papers for over 30 years telling anyone who reads them that we need to significantly expand science-based fire restoration in California, or we will be in big trouble. 

Prometheus: Will be? Didn’t you just burn down a place called Paradise? I mean I occasionally listen to the radio waves up here (except Fox News) and it seems that climate change and wildfire talk is everywhere. Don’t people understand how serious this is for California? 

Craig: Yes, many do but you, more than most gods, should know how hard it is to change a culture that has misunderstood the landscape they live in for so long. Firefighting is big business, and we have 40 million people living here, so it’s hard to spend the up-front restoration money we need to get “good fire” back on these landscapes. Politicians, like gods everywhere, are good at fixing damage but not great when it comes to preventing it.

Prometheus: I feel your pain! 

Craig: Here is what else we need:

1. A permanent fire restoration workforce, scaled up to fit the problem, well paid, and respected with a lifetime career path committed to restoring fire-associated landscapes and maintaining them with fire. 

2. Mandate, and publicly account for, the application of the best available science in landscape fire restoration. 

3. Understand and accept that we cannot simply log our way out of this mess. 

Prometheus butts in: What’s logging got to do with it?

Craig:  That is where we cut down the vast majority (85%) of the large, old, fire-resilient trees over the last 170 years and created over-stocked forests of highly flammable smaller trees due to fire exclusion. And then we fought fire wherever it showed up, even when it is doing good work! 

Many conservation folks support mechanical treatments (cutting the right trees, for the right reasons, in the right places) but so far, we lack the support for removing and getting some value for the smaller material. The “powers that be” so far have failed to accurately account for all the human costs, resource damage, and fire suppression funds we “burn through” every year. 

Prometheus: Sounds like Pandora’s Box! That is why scientists and not politicians should be in the lead role for solving this mess. Fire has become an increasingly tough negotiator, and it sounds like policy makers still are not listening, but I digress... 

Craig: 4. Significantly expand the Federal authority and use of wildfire managed for multiple resource benefits where appropriate and accept a wider range of outcomes than we might be comfortable with until we create enough resilient acres. Currently, we make a huge deal about an accidental prescribed fire escape (which is exceedingly rare) yet we encourage managing unplanned wildfires with rapid Go-No Go decisions and a fair amount of risk. It seems like our fire-suppression culture continues to resist and punish prescribed fire at the scale we need it. 

Prometheus: I fought the same fight on Mt. Olympus but eventually we won, and the people claimed fire and used it for good. I thought we made sure that the gods finally saw the value of restoring the gift of fire. Hum? 

5. Create Collaborative Prescribed Fire Teams (in a “One California Vision”) to manage large-landscape, longer duration burns with the ability to order up appropriate levels of logistical support for the duration. Eliminate barriers to broader resource sharing pre-fire, during burns and post-fire monitoring, and support more shared learning. 

6. Amend the Federal and California Clean Air Acts to mandate collaborative burning and engagement with Air Quality Regulators to protect public health while significantly expanding prescribed fire use. Make the science-based fire regime levels of emissions the established benchmark for regulation which recognizes fire’s role in resilience and lowered smoke emissions in California. 

7. Recognize Native American cultural uses of fire throughout California and get out of their way. We can learn a lot from understanding their relationship with the land and their traditional relationship with fire. 

Prometheus: Since your ancestors behaved so badly starting in the late 1780s and especially during the gold rush, maybe the current Governor could do more than apologize for a century of genocide! Like how about a generation of free college or trade school tuition? And selective hiring and support for permanent Native American fire restoration crews to maintain the health and resilience of these landscapes that your ancestors made such a mess of?

Craig:  I could not have said it better myself! 

8. Create a “gross negligence” liability standard in California like in SB 332 (Dodd) and provide burn bosses and landowners with protection when doing public purpose burning. 

9. Expand burn incentives and limit costs and social stigmas and harm to careers resulting from fire escapes when done according to sound science and the best practices in burn planning and implementation. Public concerns and social pressure should be aimed at the broader risks of not burning in California. 

10. Burn at the landscape scale. Prioritize 100,000 acre or larger projects and follow up with a maintenance schedule which can be utilized as the Prescribed Fire Training ground and part of a California Wildfire Training Center program. 

Prometheus: So how do you think climate change will impact the disturbance regimes I hear about that have been so seriously disrupted? Can you even achieve resilience under these conditions?

Craig: It is best to think of resilience as the ability of a landscape to accept disturbance and still generally retain its important component parts and functions. Disturbance brings change but the landscape’s integrity is still recognizable. 

California is one of five or six of the most naturally fire prone landscapes on Earth, and that is a good thing. Fire and precipitation are two of the most important natural processes that define the California landscape: its vegetation types, its co-benefits (gifts), its beauty and its resilience.

Prometheus: Backing up a bit...take a moment to ponder how lucky you humans are to live on a planet that offers such gifts and think about how respectful you should be as beneficiaries of those gifts. Cultures through time have embraced different paths regarding the Earth’s gifts. Respectful nurturing or pillage and plunder have been the two primary modes of human engagement. 

It has always been science-based ecological restoration or “drill baby drill” and “free-market” non-sense over-ruling common sense, as far back as Olympus!  Ignoring the gifts some of us nearly died for to help you humans out is going to get ugly. Mother Nature and I agree that you are about at the end of your stay if you do not shape up. Fire restoration where appropriate and ecological restoration in general should be the primary natural resource goal for this century. 

Craig: I swear to god (no wait, strike that) I swear to you Prometheus, and to all the forward-thinkers who have spoken to us though time, we are going to do better. 

But we will always need your help.

# The End #

Photo: Issy Bailey@bailey-i