Hankins has done research into the indigenous practices before Europeans settled in the area.
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 would be appropriate. And Hankins says that they would take a hand in the process of ecosystem management when the timing seemed right. So, some places, like I said, would, would burn relatively frequently. People would see that, oh, the health of the grass is declining. We need to burn, or we're getting too much litter accumulation and on the forest floor. With this policy in place, people were limited in being able to burn because there were really strict penalties applied to people who, who set fires. But now we are seeing the folly of fire suppression in big basin and elsewhere. I talked to Portia Halbert, the chief environmental scientist for Big Basin State Park. She was there when the fire took off.