I recall reading the same thing, however I do recall that they were East coast native Indians, that cleared oak tree forests as a hunting grounds, so completelly unrelated to the problem in California. The story was about native land rights and if such looking after their hunting grounds can be seen as claims on property rights, which Indians did not knew as a concept, so it is a moot point anyway. The issues that plague CA seems to be chaos in organization level - from what I have read these wildfires are happening in the year, that did had moderate drought(compared to others), so I would look suspiciously in this with the mind, that if politicians are blaming climate, then it is a sign that they are absolutelly responsible for what they have not done and promised to people. But I do not own a house there and I have not voted for these people and I absolutelly would not hang them in the chimney of my house.

PS Also, there are many opportunists, that were burning their houses to receive insurance or compensations, so not all of those houses were burned by wildfires. It all looks ugly, regadless from what angle you look, because if there is no responsibility - even from the ones that have taken upon resposibility, then catastrophe is expected - sooner than later.

Yosemite NP, especially the iconic valley, looked vastly different when the Europeans first arrived in the nineteenth century. It was sparsely forested and had lots of meadows. After a 150 years of no controlled burns, it's a dense forest down there. It turns out the native peoples were managing the forest, after all.

The national park service does controlled burns in Yosemite and has for a couple decades at this point. You can argue they don't do enough but they're limited by bureaucracy, safe conditions, and manpower rather than willingness.

National parks are a small percentage of California’s land area. Does the state do controlled burns outside of the national parks? If not, national parks doing controlled burns do not do very much.

Yes they do. It's a completely different set of government agencies with different policies though.

Newsweek suggests that they do not do enough of it:

https://www.newsweek.com/controlled-burns-california-forest-...

That article focuses on the federal side, but this article by Ars Technica appears to include the state side:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/why-isnt-california-...

I thought that the idea that they did not understand property rights was a misconception. The different tribes had their own territories, and they clearly had an idea of the territory belonging to one or another. This is also why people negotiating with them for land would use underhanded negotiating tactics such as getting their leaders drunk for the negotiations so that they would agree to absurd deals. If they did not understand property rights, there would have been no point to doing that.

> East coast native Indians

This is false. Fire was unambiguously part of the practice of native Californians.

> opportunists

What is this slander.

We had a lot of rain the last couple of years (before 2024), which got us out of severe drought for several years back into "moderate". 2024 has been QUITE dry, relatively speaking, but because of the previous years of a LOT of rain, it's only back to moderate drought status, AFAICT.

The years with lots of rain caused MUCH extra plant growth, and anyone who's been here a while expected several bad fires during our fire season in 2024 as the first "dry" year after a "wet" year. The fact that it's only been 1 major one and a few minor ones has actually been a bit of a surprise.

I recall seeing a documentary on TV about this. Indigenous Americans were behind the effort to resurrect the practice.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/fire/indigenous-fire-practices-...

> The truth is that the rich diversity and stunning landscapes of places like Yosemite and other natural environments in the United States were intentionally cultivated by Native Americans for thousands of years. And their greatest tool was fire.

https://www.history.com/news/native-american-wildfires