Earth Protect Blog

By Gillian Flaccus and Nathan Howard

© The New York Times Co.

PORTLAND, ORE. » Karuk tribal citizen Troy Hockaday Sr. watched helplessly last fall as a raging wildfire leveled the homes of five of his family members, swallowed acres of forest where his people hunt deer, elk and black bear and killed a longtime friend.

Now, less than a year later, the tribal councilman is watching in horror as flames encroach on the parched lands of other Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest that are struggling to preserve traditional hunting and fishing practices amid historic drought. At least two tribes have declared states of emergency amid the devastation.

After last year’s Slater fire near Happy Camp, Calif., “We got spread out all over the place,” said Hockaday, who said about 200 homes, including many belonging to Karuk citizens, were burned. “Some people have already sold their property and given up. But the tribe as a whole, we’re trying to build ourselves back and be strong.”

“It’s hard to watch the devastation of what a fire can do nowadays. It’s just crazy — and we just started July,” he added.

Blazes in Oregon, California, and Washington state were among nearly 70 active wildfires that have destroyed homes and burned through about 1,562 square miles in a dozen mostly Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves have swept the region, making wildfires harder to fight.

Climate change has made the American West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center moved the Pacific Northwest region up to the highest alert level Wednesday — rare for this time of year — as dry, gusty winds were expected in parts of Oregon and new fires popped up.

In California, a fire was expanding rapidly Wednesday in the Feather River Canyon, about 10 miles from Paradise, the foothill town largely destroyed by a 2018 wildfire that killed 85 people. State fire officials said the new blaze, which erupted late Tuesday afternoon, covered 1.8 square miles. There was zero containment of the Dixie fire and two tiny Butte County communities were warned to be ready to evacuate.

The largest fire in the U.S. on Wednesday was burning in southern Oregon, to the northeast of the wildfire that ravaged Hockaday’s tribal community less than a year ago. The lightning- caused Bootleg fire was encroaching on the traditional territory of the Klamath Tribes, which still have treaty rights to hunt and fish on the land, and sending huge, churning plumes of smoke into the sky visible for miles.

The blaze, which has burned an area larger than New York City, has destroyed about 20 homes, and 2,000 more are under evacuation. But much of it was burning in remote areas of the Fremont-Winema National Forest. On Wednesday, the fire was 5% contained.

But even when the flames don’t enter densely populated areas, the impact of the increasingly intense fires around the West is felt directly by Native American tribes, who have managed the land for millennia.