‘The fire moved around it’: success story in Oregon fuels calls for prescribed burns

Oregon's Bootleg fire has offered new evidence that Indigenous techniques can change how megafires behave

The Bootleg fire stampeded through southern Oregon so fiercely that it spit up thunderclouds. But when the flames approached the Sycan Marsh Preserve, a 30,000-acre wetland thick with ponderosa pines, something incredible happened.

The flames weakened and the fire slowed down, allowing firefighters to move in and steer the blaze away from a critical research station.