Friendly fire: When burning becomes a resource management tool Chris Hardie Executive director
Let's take a trip back in time -- more than 300 years ago -- before the days of European settlement in Wisconsin.
Native Americans lived here but the state had virtually no agriculture and was covered in virgin prairie and great forests. It was a true wilderness. This was certainly the case in Black River Country.
But approximately once every 1 to 3 years fires swept through the state's great grasslands -- sometimes caused by Native Americans and sometimes by lightning strikes. And going back eons even the hardwood forests burned every 500 to 1,000 years.
The fires were all part of the natural cycle of Mother Nature, creating a disturbance that changed the composition and vegetation of the landscape. Deep-rooted prairie grasses emerged and thrived when shallow-rooted brush was cleared by fire. It was an ecosystem where fire played a major role on the landscape.
Enter the Europeans and the clearing of lands for agriculture and the cutting of the forests. Fires still played a role but as fire prevention and fire suppression became more of a science, the natural, uncontrolled fires that shaped the ecosystems became a vestige of the past.
Today ecologists and wildlife managers better understand the important role that fire plays in land management. It has become part of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources management practices, as well as other environmental groups. Many are members of the Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council. And the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point offers a wildland fire science program.
Between March and May each year the DNR conducts prescribed burns throughout the state. The burns are used to improve wildlife habitat, control invasive plant species, restore and maintain native plant communities and reduce wildfire potential.
The wet spring in some parts of the state has made burning this year a challenge, but recently forest and wildlife managers undertook a prescribed burn in the Black River State Forest. The burn was conducted in the Dike 17 Wildlife Area, a 3,100-acre property made up of brush, grassland flowages. Dike 17 is a beautiful area that was built in the 1940s with Works Project Administration labor. It is home to many birds, plant life and various animals -- including the recently reintroduced elk.
Scott Roepke, DNR wildlife biologist, was part of the burn crew. Roepke said managers like to burn at least every five years but that this particular area had not been burned since 2008.
A prescribed burn is planned and executed very carefully. Weather, humidity and wind conditions have to be right. Each fire has a burn boss who supervises the crew. A meeting is held to go over all of the details of the burn, which is planned for each unique property.
The water and roads through Dike 17 were used as fire breaks and earth-moving equipment was used to create additional perimeter. The fire is carefully set taking into account the terrain, amount of fuel and the wind, keeping the safety of the crew in mind. The fire is lit with drip torches that use a combination of diesel and gas.
On this day a crew of 10 -- including local wildlife and forestry staff from both the state and the county -- oversees the fire. Despite the wet conditions and green conditions, several hours later the burn wrapped up with about half of the 300-acre unit blackened -- a percentage that satisfied Roepke. "The burn went better than expected," he said. An aerial survey followed to get more precise results.
With warmer weather finally here, it won't take long before the scorched earth greens up. A measure of success would certainly be a sighting of a sharp-tailed grouse, which used to be in the Dike 17 area but hasn't been seen for a few years, Roepke said. The sharp-tailed prefers native prairie and open savannah.
Perhaps the sharp-tailed will be the local version of the phoenix that arises from the ashes.
Got any questions or suggestions for the chamber? Please contact me at [email protected] or call me at 715-284-4658.
Sincerely,
Chris HardieExecutive DirectorBlack River Area Chamber of Commercewww.blackrivercountry.net