Update on People, Fire, and Pines

People, Fire, and Pines in the Border Lakes Region of North America was one of the first CfAS-sponsored and funded projects. From its inception in 2017, the collaboration of scientists, managers, and traditional knowledge experts has grown from a small initiative to combine scientific research on fire history with oral history and tribal heritage into a restorative justice movement. The CfAS working group has gone beyond demonstrating indigenous fire knowledge as critical to maintaining healthy forests to the reintroduction of fire by tribal experts and the co-management of particular forests by tribal and government agencies. In addition to many scientific papers, the project has been the subject of public articles and presentations (see, for example, here, here, and here). The groups work has also been the highlighted in a recent The Waters we Swim in podcast, Fire, blueberries and treaty rights. As their work for CfAS wraps up, the group has received another, larger, Sea Grant to continue collaborative synthetic efforts in support of environmental justice.