Good fire returns to Leavey Ranch at cultural burn demonstration

Flame traveled from a cedar board to a small pile of sticks at Leavey Ranch, where Sebastian Castillo showed young people how to make an ember the traditional way and carry it into a cultural burn. The demonstration, part of Blue Lake Rancheria’s fourth annual Cultural Fire Symposium, turned a working ranch in Blue Lake into a classroom for the people now pushing tribal fire practice back into everyday wildfire strategy.

Blue Lake Rancheria said the symposium was held June 16-17, 2026, and was designed to advance cultural fire stewardship, strengthen community resilience and build collaboration among tribal nations, fire practitioners, researchers and community members. At Leavey Ranch, the lesson was hands-on and intergenerational: Castillo, a specialist in fire and ethnobotany, rubbed a stick against a cedar board until soaproot caught, then young participants, some working with fire this way for the first time, took turns moving the flame to the burn area under flame-resistant gear and prayers.

The site carried its own history. Blue Lake Rancheria said Leavey Ranch is a 240-acre property adjacent to tribal lands, and the land had not burned for 150 years until it was transferred to the tribe last year. The ranch was purchased in 1912 by Michael Leavey as part of a dairy operation, then passed through family and foundation stewardship before Blue Lake Rancheria became its steward. The tribe says it plans to keep Leavey Ranch as a working cattle ranch while folding it into its food sovereignty program.

That shift matters because California fire policy is changing around tribal burning, not just admiring it. Under SB 310, which took effect Jan. 1, 2025, local air districts can enter written agreements with federally recognized California Native American tribes to allow cultural burning in ancestral territories without the standard prescribed-burn permitting and administrative requirements. CAL FIRE says liability coverage remains one of the main barriers to expanding beneficial fire, even though escape rates and losses are very low, and the state has created a Prescribed Fire Liability Fund Pilot Program to help support prescribed fire and cultural burning.

For Humboldt County, the stakes go beyond one ranch or one ceremony. The Cultural Fire Management Council says its work is meant to support healthier ecosystems, long-term fire protection and traditional hunting and gathering on Yurok lands. Blue Lake Rancheria frames the same work around sovereignty, heritage, resilience and a healthier economy and environment, a sign that the people shaping fire policy here are increasingly the people whose lands and histories were sidelined when these burns disappeared.