When the Flicker Returned: Healing Through Fire in Magalia
BCFSC completes a 60-acre prescribed burn on PUSD land in Magalia, marking a milestone in trauma-informed community engagement and ecological restoration within the Camp Fire burn scar.
The BCFSC's final prescribed burn of the 2025 season marked a major milestone in a project more than five years in the making. In collaboration with Terra Fuego and the Paradise Unified School District, BCFSC successfully completed a 60-acre broadcast burn on PUSD land just off Skyway in Magalia. Located in a densely populated area within -- or immediately adjacent to -- the Camp Fire burn scar, this unit serves a largely underserved community still recovering from catastrophic loss. This effort reduces hazardous fuels, promotes native plant regeneration, and enhances habitat complexity -- strengthening the forest's ability to withstand drought, pests, and climate stress.
Leading up to the burn, crews removed excess biomass, masticated larger fuels, and partnered with the Berry Creek Rancheria Tribe to hand cut and pile material around key trees. But the work extended far beyond the forest floor. BCFSC and collaborative partners undertook extensive behind-the-scenes community engagement to ensure a trauma-informed approach: advocating at city council meetings, taking school district employees out to the burn unit, embedding ourselves in the community, and providing significant boots-on-the-ground notice to all local residents. This careful preparation honored the community's lived experience and helped build trust in fire as a healing tool.
Together, these actions represent a critical step toward restoring a healthier, more fire-adapted landscape and building lasting wildfire resilience for the community. And nature responded in kind -- just days after the burn, the Berry Creek Rancheria's sacred bird, the Flicker, returned to the site, frolicking in the ash. This moment of renewal underscored the deep connection between cultural and ecological restoration.
We view fire not as an enemy to be eliminated, but as a dynamic, synergistic process that must be respected and carefully partnered with. Our projects emphasize prescribed fire, thinning, and biomass removal -- treatments that support native plant regeneration, the protection of mature trees, and a reduced chance of catastrophic wildfire.
We also understand that ecological resilience can't be separated from cultural resilience. Our work is based in relationships -- with Tribal collaborators, with the WUI community, and with nature. By being inclusive of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in our wildfire prevention projects, we respect practices that precede modern suppression and lead us toward a more equitable, reciprocal relationship with fire and the people who have stewarded these lands since time immemorial.
This project is managed by the Butte County Fire Safe Council with burning implemented by Terra Fuego and made possible through funding from CAL FIRE's WUI Wide Forest Health Program as part of the California Climate Investments Program.