"Prescribed fires, or intentionally lit fires, help lessen fire's destruction. Natural flames sparked by lightning and intentional blazes lit by Indigenous peoples have historically helped clean up excess vegetation that now serves as fuel for the wildfires that regularly threaten people's homes and lives across the West..."
"In the mid-to-late 1800s, the US outlawed Indigenous burning practices and started suppressing wildfires, resulting in a massive buildup of flammable brush and trees. That combined with the dry, hot conditions caused by the climate crisis has left much of the country at a dangerously high risk of devastating wildfires..."
"Scientists and land managers say millions more acres of prescribed burns are necessary to keep the country from burning out of control. But the scale of the task doesn't match that of the labor force, whose focus is often extinguishing fires, not starting them..."
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