Projects
Our Fire Program seeks to support the ancestral right of fire use and management of the Yurok People. Utilizing cultural burns we enhance food and basketry materials such as hazel sticks and tan oak acorns. Cultural burns are also critical in improving wildlife habitat such as improving prairie systems and stimulating ungulate forage. In a fire adapted landscape overall forest health requires fire at the right place and the right time. Cultural burns also support a healthy river system and mitigate risks imposed by climate change. Through our efforts we emphasize community safety as we engage wildfire protection to life and property.
Family Burning
In an effort to support good local fire, CFMC works with individual families and property owners to prepare their land for burning. This also offers opportunity to continue cultural tradition where families and children can be involved with burning. This helps protect Yurok TEK within all generations. Please get in touch if you are interested in getting involved with this program
TREX
The Training Exchange (TREX) program has been utilized across the country and throughout the world to bring together fire practitioners to learn and burn together. TREX is a unique opportunity for new and seasoned fire practitioners to share their passions and knowledge while managing natural resources with intentional use of fire. CFMC hosts a twice annual TREX in Yurok Territory focusing on sharing Yurok culture and conducting cultural burns.
If you are interested in joining us for our Spring or Fall TREX, please look to our announcements page here.
Fuels Reduction & Defensible Space
Our Prescribed Fire and Fuels Reduction Crew is actively mitigating risk to lives and property throughout the Yurok Reservation vegetation management and manual fuels reduction. The crew is hard at work year round protecting homes of local residents by creating defensible space as well as improving access and egress routes throughout the community by creating a fuelbreak along key roadways.
Cooperative Burning
Burning together as community members and neighbors has always been a part of cultural fire. Our cooperative burns allow for our communities and lands to benefit from different groups, tribes, agencies and organizations to work together to bring good fire back to the land.
CFMC partners with other local fire agencies to conduct prescribed fires throughout the region. We are actively continuing to build local fire capacity in the Klamath and Trinity watersheds.
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Native Plant Study & Education Program
The Cultural Fire Management Council initiated the Plants Program in order to better understand and track the effects of cultural burns on plant communities and culturally important plant species. The program is designed as a long term monitoring project guided by cultural values and the management goals of Yurok people.
The Plants Program engages several practices toward this goal:
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Photo Documentation of Burn Sites
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Pre and Post Burn Surveys
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Data Interpretation for Community
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Mapping Plant Communities, Cultural Resources, Invasive Plants, Native Seed Sources, etc.
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Tracking Burn Conditions
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Collecting Native Seed Stock
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Sowing and Reseeding Burn Units
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Connecting and Involving Kids
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...and More!
Aspiring Fire Lighters Workshops
CFMC supports fire sovereignty and has partnered with Tribes in the region to offer quality training in creating a prescribed burn organization and conducting successful controlled burns. We love to share what we have learned as an organization, and hope to stimulate more good fire and cultural sovereignty.
