TERA and our partners are working together to return EcoCultural Stewardship and EcoCultural Fire to the landscape in Lake County.
Here’s what you need to know:
Who is TERA?
The Tribal EcoRestoration Alliance (TERA) is a community-based intertribal nonprofit organization that works to revitalize ecology, economy, and culture through Indigenous-led stewardship. Through partnership, we are working together towards a vision of healing our land and communities.
Who does TERA partner with?
TERA partners with Tribes, CalFire and other state agencies, US Forest Service, municipal and local fire agencies, the County of Lake, the Lake County Resource Conservation District, community-based organizations, universities, and the Lake Prescribed Burn Association (Lake PBA), among others. Our collaborations are what make our work special.
What is EcoCultural Stewardship?
EcoCultural Stewardship is the practice of tending a landscape in a way that is ecologically restorative while also building reciprocal relationship between people and the land, where we tend plants and animals that are culturally significant as materials for Native culture, including foods, medicine, tools, clothes, and ceremony. For many land-based peoples around the world, ecology and culture are not two separate things, but our English language is limited in the way we articulate cultural relationships as emerging from the land.
What is EcoCultural Fire?
Why use EcoCultural Fire?
EcoCultural Fire is low to moderate intensity fire lit intentionally to support the health of the land, and is a central component of EcoCultural Stewardship in California. Native Californians (and Indigenous peoples throughout the world) have always used fire to caretake the landscape, from keeping meadows open and the underbrush at bay, to burning basketry and native food and medicine plants to create stronger and healthier materials. These cultural burning practices were forced to a violent halt during colonization, and subsequent fire suppression policies enacted by state and federal governments. In recent years, prescribed fire and cultural burning have been returning to the forefront of land management practices in California’s fire adapted landscapes.
Most of California's ecosystems are fire-adapted and need fire to be healthy. When relatively small areas are burned under optimal conditions, the effects of fire on the land, plants, and animals are positive rather than negative. Areas that have been intentionally burned have fewer hazardous fuels and are much more resilient in the face of wildfire, enhancing public and firefighter safety. There are many benefits to fire when it is put on the land in the right way.
How is EcoCultural Fire different from a wildfire?
EcoCultural fire is started intentionally by people who possess the knowledge and skills to safely manage the fire and utilize fire to benefit the land. EcoCultural fire practitioners carefully choose the conditions under which they burn to prioritize safety for burn participants and the wider community as well as ensure that the burn will achieve the desired effects on the landscape. Although EcoCultural fire can take place in any season when conditions are favorable, the majority of EcoCultural burning in our area takes place in the fall, winter, and spring, when temperatures are not too hot, vegetation is not too dry, and winds are not too strong. By contrast, wildfires are usually started by accident, and large catastrophic wildfires tend to take place during extreme weather conditions which lead to extreme fire behavior.