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Video shows prescribed burn, not attempt to create evidence of climate change | Fact check

Isabella Fertel   Paste BN

The claim: Post implies US government is intentionally starting fires to create evidence of climate change

An Aug. 21 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) features a video of a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee on a boat using a torch to burn vegetation. 

“Real climate change caught on camera,” reads the caption of the post. 

Some social media users took the post as evidence that the U.S. government is setting fires in order to manufacture evidence of climate change.

“Pretending to help while they are the problem,” reads one comment. 

The post garnered more than 90 likes in a week. Another version of the post continues to circulate on X.  

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Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim here is wrong. The footage in the video was released by government authorities and shows fire management staff executing a prescribed burn operation in the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge.

Video shows prescribed burn operation to maintain wildlife refuge  

The video in the post shows firefighters working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to execute a prescribed burn at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, Marilyn Kitchell, a spokesperson for the service, told Paste BN. 

The wildlife refuge posted the video on Facebook in February, crediting the Fish and Wildlife Service for the footage. The caption of that video states the prescribed burn operation was a strategy “to promote healthy habitat conditions for wildlife” and diminish “the chance of catastrophic wildfires.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service also shared the footage on X several days later.

Fact check: Helicopter setting fire to trees was slowing wildfire, not setting one

Fire management staff regularly conduct prescribed and controlled burns throughout the wildlife refuge and document the burn operations on social media. 

Regular prescribed burns promote “healthy wetland habitat conditions for wildlife by returning nutrients to the marsh, stimulating new plant growth and thinning out standing dead material under conditions that can be controlled,” Kitchell said in an email. 

These kinds of controlled fires also diminish the risk of “catastrophic wildfires” by removing vegetation and other dry materials that could be fuel for a wildfire, she said. 

The kinds of prescribed burns shown in the video are considered “low-intensity, slow-moving burns, which allow wildlife to flee the area or burrow until the flames pass over them,” Kitchell told Paste BN. “Further, prescribed burns are often conducted in the dormant season – winter – outside of the breeding or nesting season and when many species have either migrated south for the winter or gone into hibernation.”  

Controlled burns and other fire mitigation techniques have become frequent subjects of misinformation on social media. Paste BN has debunked similar claims regarding footage of firefighters using controlled or prescribed burns in California and Canada. 

Paste BN reached out to the Facebook user who shared the video for comment but did not receive an immediate response. 

Reuters also debunked this claim.

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