扑灭山火是愚蠢的做法吗？｜科学60秒

听，这是是野火过后的红杉林之声。它寂静异常，除了人走在其中的脚步声。萨拉·古德温（Sarah Goodwin）：“这些声音是我们在2021年春天录制的。”

九个月前，一场毁灭性的大火席卷了美国加利福尼亚州的大盆地红杉州立公园（Big Basin Redwood State Park）。红杉树被尽数烧焦，但大部分都活了下来。那些让森林生机勃勃的其他生命却都消失了。

听，这一片寂静之林……[穿行公园的脚步声]

夏末和秋季一直是加州的火灾频发季，但在最近，火灾季变得更长了。雪上加霜的是，这里无法抗拒被气候变化所裹挟。对美国西部来说，2022年又是干旱的一年，这意味着在冬季降雨到来之前，仍有火灾发生的风险。

直到大约一百年前，加利福尼亚州的森林经常发生火灾，当时在整个西部，以保护的名义出现了一种新的对应方式：灭火。因为火是不好的，是一种要不惜一切代价避免的破坏性力量。

但对数千年气候历史的研究表明，大火一直是这片土地的一部分。我们在古老的红杉树年轮中看到了火，它让这些森林保持健康、充满活力，殖民之前居住在这些森林中的土著人民似乎很自然地理解了这一点。

“从土著文化的角度来看，我们考虑的是火灾发生的频率和对这些景观的管理照料。”研究火、自然和人类交集的科学家唐·汉金斯（Don Hankins）说，他同时也是平原米沃克人（Plains Miwok，加利福尼亚印第安人）。

汉金斯：“加利福尼亚州灭火的历史在很早就形成了，至少在西班牙人早期定居西海岸时就开始了。加州的首批政策限制了土著人民可以使用火的范围，这些政策最初来自1793年左右西班牙裔加利福尼亚州州长禁止土著人民使用火的声明，也就是说，是从圣巴巴拉修道院（Mission Santa Barbara）向外推广的。”

在欧洲人定居至此之前，汉金斯已经对土著习俗进行了研究：“奥龙尼（Ohlone）人本该一直生活在这片土地上，利用来自不同生态系统的这些不同的资源，从湿地到草原，再到不同的橡树林和针叶林等等，他们每个人都有自己的时间表，在合适的时候点起火……[查看全文]

Shannon Behrman: This is scientific American’s 60-second science. I’m Shannon Behrman.

Sarah Goodwin: and I’m Sarah Goodwin.

[Sound of Big Basin]

Behrman: You’re listening to the sound of a redwood forest after a wildfire. It’s eerily quiet—save for the sound of our own footsteps.

Goodwin: We recorded those sounds in the spring of 2021. That was nine months after a devastating fire swept through California’s Big Basin Redwood State Park.

Behrman: The flames left the redwood trees charred but still mostly alive. The rest of the life that usually animates the forest was gone. You can hear it… in the silence. [Sound of footsteps walking through the park]

There’s always been a fire season in California in the late summer and fall. But recently it’s gotten longer. And worse. Much worse. There’s no denying climate change here.

Behrman: 2022 has been another year of drought for the American west and that means that, until the winter rains come in force, there’s still a risk for fire.

Goodwin: California forests burned frequently until about a hundred years ago when across the west, a new approach to fire emerged in the name of conservation: suppression.

As in fire was bad — a destructive force to be avoided at all costs.

Goodwin: But research into thousands of years of climate history has shown that fire has always been a part of this landscape. We see it in the tree rings of the ancient redwoods. Fire keeps these forests healthy and vibrant. The native peoples who lived in these forests before colonization seemed to understand this intuitively.

Don Hankins: From an indigenous cultural perspective, we think about, you know, the frequencies of fire and the stewardship of those landscapes.

Goodwin: Don Hankins is a scientist who studies the intersection of fire, nature, and people. He’s also a member of the plains Miwok tribe.

Hankins: The history of the removal of fire from California is at least coastal landscapes began pretty early on with early Spanish settlement. When we think about some of the first policies within the state, that limited the extent of where indigenous people could engage with fire, that policy initially came out around 1793 from a proclamation from the Spanish governor of California that forbid indigenous people from using fire. And so, you know, that spread from mission Santa Barbara outward.

Goodwin: Hankins has done research into the indigenous practices before Europeans settled in the area.

Hankins: Ohlone peoples in, in this region, would've been living in this landscape and using these different resources from the different ecosystems that are there from the wetlands to the grasslands, to the different oak forest and conifer forest and so forth, they each have their own timeframes for when fire...[full transcript]