Good Fire Returns to the Santa Cruz Mountains

The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band's ancestors used purposeful, small-scale fire across California's Central Coast for centuries before Spanish mission-era colonization severed that relationship. Through its Cultural Burning Program, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust now partners with Cal Fire, State Parks, and conservation landowners to plan and light cultural burns, while training tribal crew members to Wildland Firefighter Type 2 certification. In October 2016, the Trust helped lead a prescribed fire at San Vicente Redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains, the first burn of its size in the area in roughly 200 years, and has since carried out additional cultural burns, including one on the historic Nyland Property for the first time in over 250 years.