Chapter Three - Good Fire management
A Crown Fire is where the fire moves up from the forest floor into the branches of the trees and burns though the tops of the trees. A Crown Fire
is unstoppable until it runs out of fuel or reaches a very wide obstacle like a ocean. It can throw embers miles ahead, starting up spot fires that add to the devastation ahead of the fire.
Crown Fires are caused by extreme unnatural buildups of forest debris where light fires have been suppressed by man in light fire ecosystems. However, some forests naturally harbor catastrophic fire type trees that thrive on catastrophic fire. Nobody should be building homes in catastrophic fire type environments because its just a matter of time before these forests burn to the ground. If the catastrophic environment is unnatural, being caused by fire suppression, then very carefully the debris is removed and the forest thinned back to a natural light fire ecosystem. Homes can be built in light fire ecosystems if the prescribed fires are managed properly, and fire defensive zones are created around the homes.
is unstoppable until it runs out of fuel or reaches a very wide obstacle like a ocean. It can throw embers miles ahead, starting up spot fires that add to the devastation ahead of the fire.
Crown Fires are caused by extreme unnatural buildups of forest debris where light fires have been suppressed by man in light fire ecosystems. However, some forests naturally harbor catastrophic fire type trees that thrive on catastrophic fire. Nobody should be building homes in catastrophic fire type environments because its just a matter of time before these forests burn to the ground. If the catastrophic environment is unnatural, being caused by fire suppression, then very carefully the debris is removed and the forest thinned back to a natural light fire ecosystem. Homes can be built in light fire ecosystems if the prescribed fires are managed properly, and fire defensive zones are created around the homes.
A Head Fire is a fire that travels with the wind in a fiery wave and is used in controlled burns to clear brush from the forest floor along with the debris accumulated in the recent past. Great care must be used because a head fire can turn into a Crown Fire, or hurt the crowns of the trees. In this case there is only going to be some scorched needles in the crowns unless the fire gets hotter.
It looks like the other side of the road has had more recent periodic fire and the brush should never have been allowed to build up the way it has on the left side of the road. Homes can be built in light fire environments such as this one, but obviously the fires should be more frequent and the debris buildup less.
It looks like the other side of the road has had more recent periodic fire and the brush should never have been allowed to build up the way it has on the left side of the road. Homes can be built in light fire environments such as this one, but obviously the fires should be more frequent and the debris buildup less.
A Back Fire is a fire backing into the wind. In this picture a line of fire has been laid, and on the right is cool Back Fire and on the left the Head Fire is building. This forest while rather thick, has been burned frequently as you can see by the lack of debris on the forest floor. A Back Fire is a cool fire burning slowly into the wind, but a change of wind direction can turn it into a Head Fire very quickly. However because the Back Fire is slowly backing into the wind it stays longer than the head fire and so exposes fire for a longer duration in the low area it burns through. There are many other kinds of fires that you will find me talking about in this book including Spot Fires, Peat Fires, etc. but these three are the most important types I will discuss.
THE BASICS OF GOOD FIRE MANAGEMENT
PRACTICE
The ability to use fire as tool for management of light fire ecosystems is as much an art as a science
and needs plenty of hands on experience. Some of the basics can be taught in the classroom, but much actual field work for students should be supervised by experienced fire management experts. Nothing can really compare to working as an apprentice to an experienced fire manager for years, or even decades. Managing fire is not something that one can BS their way through because much like the stock market or learning to drive, if you don’t know what you are doing, you are going to face disaster sooner or later.
There are so many variables to consider when doing prescribed fire, and many of these factors are
changing constantly like wind speed and direction, fuel loads and moisture. These factors can cause
a light fire to suddenly rage out of control in a few minutes time and turn into a destructive wildfire. There is a step by step process to using fire that starts with a detailed survey of a property, and ends long after the fire has burned through the forest or grassland.
Is the Tract Safe to Burn?
The first thing to do in checking out a potential tract for a controlled burn is to determine if the fire can be easily controlled without too much expense or risk. No point in going further if the fire is going to be difficult to control, unless one has the resources at ones disposal to do it. A good fire manager understands his or her personal limitations and resources as applied to the tract of land to be burned. This rule should apply equally to the backyard burner whose expertise is limited, and whose resources may be nothing more than a rake, a spade and a water hose. This is true for larger projects as well, even for large organizational fire management teams with broad expertise and plenty of heavy equipment.
The safest place to burn is where there are wide natural or manmade unburnable obstacles to fire adjoining the property like plowed farm land, rivers, lakes, highways and property already burned this season. It even helps a lot when one or two sides are protected in this manner because one can adjust how the fire is used to make maximum benefit from such obstacles. For instance, conditions permitting, one can burn away from the weaker fire lines that one has made to contain the fire, and toward the natural obstacles.
Another important thing is to study the flammability of surrounding properties and the existence of buildings on or on other properties. It takes careful care and planning to ensure that no matter what happens, even if the fire gets out of control on the tract, it’s not going to burn down somebody’s house or barn, on or outside of the property. Fire under the right conditions can throw sparks high into the air and long distances to come down next to a house or barn in dry tinder.
When I was a boy we rarely had to worry about where our smoke went even when it drifted across roads, but now it’s a different story. Because of EPA regulations and legal concerns, we often have to put signs up on the road or highway telling people to watch out for smoke. It seems like many city people just don’t have enough sense to slow down when the visibility is obscured on the road be it fog, smoke or a mixture of both, so we are required to remind them.
As if there are not enough problems with controlled burning, now we have to try to burn away from the highway, and folks burning large tracts have to be careful not to have the smoke drift over cities else they will be fined by the EPA. Also because of local regulations involved and fire permits, safer late
afternoon burning and night burning are becoming ever more difficult, and this earlier in the day burning also can cause heat damage where really light fire is needed.
In the Southeastern United States and in some other regions as well, fires go out late at night because of the dew. In burning in the late afternoon in the Southeastern United States we know that the
fire will be slowing down all evening. If the fire should get away or get too intense being started in the morning, it can do a lot more damage before it is contained by the evening dew.
PRACTICE
The ability to use fire as tool for management of light fire ecosystems is as much an art as a science
and needs plenty of hands on experience. Some of the basics can be taught in the classroom, but much actual field work for students should be supervised by experienced fire management experts. Nothing can really compare to working as an apprentice to an experienced fire manager for years, or even decades. Managing fire is not something that one can BS their way through because much like the stock market or learning to drive, if you don’t know what you are doing, you are going to face disaster sooner or later.
There are so many variables to consider when doing prescribed fire, and many of these factors are
changing constantly like wind speed and direction, fuel loads and moisture. These factors can cause
a light fire to suddenly rage out of control in a few minutes time and turn into a destructive wildfire. There is a step by step process to using fire that starts with a detailed survey of a property, and ends long after the fire has burned through the forest or grassland.
Is the Tract Safe to Burn?
The first thing to do in checking out a potential tract for a controlled burn is to determine if the fire can be easily controlled without too much expense or risk. No point in going further if the fire is going to be difficult to control, unless one has the resources at ones disposal to do it. A good fire manager understands his or her personal limitations and resources as applied to the tract of land to be burned. This rule should apply equally to the backyard burner whose expertise is limited, and whose resources may be nothing more than a rake, a spade and a water hose. This is true for larger projects as well, even for large organizational fire management teams with broad expertise and plenty of heavy equipment.
The safest place to burn is where there are wide natural or manmade unburnable obstacles to fire adjoining the property like plowed farm land, rivers, lakes, highways and property already burned this season. It even helps a lot when one or two sides are protected in this manner because one can adjust how the fire is used to make maximum benefit from such obstacles. For instance, conditions permitting, one can burn away from the weaker fire lines that one has made to contain the fire, and toward the natural obstacles.
Another important thing is to study the flammability of surrounding properties and the existence of buildings on or on other properties. It takes careful care and planning to ensure that no matter what happens, even if the fire gets out of control on the tract, it’s not going to burn down somebody’s house or barn, on or outside of the property. Fire under the right conditions can throw sparks high into the air and long distances to come down next to a house or barn in dry tinder.
When I was a boy we rarely had to worry about where our smoke went even when it drifted across roads, but now it’s a different story. Because of EPA regulations and legal concerns, we often have to put signs up on the road or highway telling people to watch out for smoke. It seems like many city people just don’t have enough sense to slow down when the visibility is obscured on the road be it fog, smoke or a mixture of both, so we are required to remind them.
As if there are not enough problems with controlled burning, now we have to try to burn away from the highway, and folks burning large tracts have to be careful not to have the smoke drift over cities else they will be fined by the EPA. Also because of local regulations involved and fire permits, safer late
afternoon burning and night burning are becoming ever more difficult, and this earlier in the day burning also can cause heat damage where really light fire is needed.
In the Southeastern United States and in some other regions as well, fires go out late at night because of the dew. In burning in the late afternoon in the Southeastern United States we know that the
fire will be slowing down all evening. If the fire should get away or get too intense being started in the morning, it can do a lot more damage before it is contained by the evening dew.
Does the Tract Need Prescribed Fire?
Once we see that the tract of land can be safely burned then we can walk or drive over the property to see if it should or needs to be burned. The first thing that a good fire manager notices is fuel accumulation on the forest floor and up into the brush beneath the trees. The more fuel accumulation the more important it is to burn the property. In most cases if we don’t burn under controlled conditions, nature will sooner or later do it under uncontrolled conditions and with disastrous consequences! It’s not a case, if the property will burn, but who burns the property and when. :-)
The next thing one studies is the type of vegetation on the property to see if the ecosystem needs regular periodic fire to survive and flourish. In most parts of the world, except for some areas in cold climates and in some tropical landscapes, light fire ecosystems are predominate. However, there are always fire tender ecosystems surrounded by larger light fire ecosystems. For instance in some areas, holly, beach and magnolias, in the Southeast because of fire exclusion, have moved out of wet almost unburnable areas onto higher ground in the domain of fire species like pines and fire resistant hardwood and softwoods.
Decisions have to be made ahead of lighting the fire as to protection of these out of place sites, unless the overall goal is to restore the property as a fragmented ecosystem to within natural parameters. For instance, we might want to restore the uplands to fire resistant species like pines and grasses and leave the lowlands to fire tender species that naturally should be occurring there with no or very light fire. This can be a very tough call for any fire manager or land manager.
Such special treatment also involves extra resources needed to work against nature, rather than with nature, if we are to protect fire tender species on high ground. However, if one has a beautiful stand of large beautiful magnolias in an upland fire environment, it’s going to be tough not to protect them from fire, not only from the controlled fire but also from wildfire. It gets even tougher if one has a beautiful stand of large pines and Magnolias because if you don’t burn, the pines will eventually die out failing to reproduce.
If you do burn, you kill the magnolias unless you use very light fire just to get the fuel loads under control, maybe even having to rake around individual magnolia and beach trees. Fire management and land management work is going to be difficult for those who don’t like making decisions in favor of one ecosystem and against another. These types of people often manage by default because in not making a decision they favor not only catastrophic fire, but do great harm to natural light fire ecosystems.
It’s important to remember that a land manager is an artist painting on a living canvas that is changing all the time. The land manager makes decisions based on what he or she wants from the land or what the owner wants. The owner might want to create many diverse ecosystems on the property simulating nature, which might include growing timber for profit, opening up grassland, developing marsh ecosystems on the edges of wetlands for wildlife etc.
If the objective is to develop diversity, I always study the wetlands carefully to see if I can slam hot head fires (fire being driven by the wind) into the edges of wetlands to push back trees and brush to favor marsh, reeds, ferns and other wetland species that flourish in wetland savannas. Wetland savannas also provide habitat of many wildlife species that do not do well anyplace else. Problem is that in some areas like in the Southeastern United States wetland savannas have disappeared and turned into hardwood forest right up to and into the water because of infrequent fire.
I also take a good look at the wetlands themselves, streams, lakes and rivers on the property. Much of our plant and animal species in wetlands need fluctuating water levels and places like swamps need to be burned out in times of drought in order to remove the accumulating peat, else the swamp turns into lowland.
Of course this should only be done when the land around the swamp or lake edge has been burned in wetter times. If you don’t, peat fires can burn for months and creep under or through a fire line and set wildfires elsewhere. This is a serious problem in some places in North Florida USA even when burning the woods in dryer times. In places like this, one has to know even the characteristics of the soil upon which one is burning or plowing fire lanes. Dead material in the soil can burn under or through a plowed fire line like a fuse for weeks and end up on the other side of the fire line to start up a wildfire. Peat fires are also really difficult to extinguish, you may think they are put out but several days later they can start right back up again.
Once we see that the tract of land can be safely burned then we can walk or drive over the property to see if it should or needs to be burned. The first thing that a good fire manager notices is fuel accumulation on the forest floor and up into the brush beneath the trees. The more fuel accumulation the more important it is to burn the property. In most cases if we don’t burn under controlled conditions, nature will sooner or later do it under uncontrolled conditions and with disastrous consequences! It’s not a case, if the property will burn, but who burns the property and when. :-)
The next thing one studies is the type of vegetation on the property to see if the ecosystem needs regular periodic fire to survive and flourish. In most parts of the world, except for some areas in cold climates and in some tropical landscapes, light fire ecosystems are predominate. However, there are always fire tender ecosystems surrounded by larger light fire ecosystems. For instance in some areas, holly, beach and magnolias, in the Southeast because of fire exclusion, have moved out of wet almost unburnable areas onto higher ground in the domain of fire species like pines and fire resistant hardwood and softwoods.
Decisions have to be made ahead of lighting the fire as to protection of these out of place sites, unless the overall goal is to restore the property as a fragmented ecosystem to within natural parameters. For instance, we might want to restore the uplands to fire resistant species like pines and grasses and leave the lowlands to fire tender species that naturally should be occurring there with no or very light fire. This can be a very tough call for any fire manager or land manager.
Such special treatment also involves extra resources needed to work against nature, rather than with nature, if we are to protect fire tender species on high ground. However, if one has a beautiful stand of large beautiful magnolias in an upland fire environment, it’s going to be tough not to protect them from fire, not only from the controlled fire but also from wildfire. It gets even tougher if one has a beautiful stand of large pines and Magnolias because if you don’t burn, the pines will eventually die out failing to reproduce.
If you do burn, you kill the magnolias unless you use very light fire just to get the fuel loads under control, maybe even having to rake around individual magnolia and beach trees. Fire management and land management work is going to be difficult for those who don’t like making decisions in favor of one ecosystem and against another. These types of people often manage by default because in not making a decision they favor not only catastrophic fire, but do great harm to natural light fire ecosystems.
It’s important to remember that a land manager is an artist painting on a living canvas that is changing all the time. The land manager makes decisions based on what he or she wants from the land or what the owner wants. The owner might want to create many diverse ecosystems on the property simulating nature, which might include growing timber for profit, opening up grassland, developing marsh ecosystems on the edges of wetlands for wildlife etc.
If the objective is to develop diversity, I always study the wetlands carefully to see if I can slam hot head fires (fire being driven by the wind) into the edges of wetlands to push back trees and brush to favor marsh, reeds, ferns and other wetland species that flourish in wetland savannas. Wetland savannas also provide habitat of many wildlife species that do not do well anyplace else. Problem is that in some areas like in the Southeastern United States wetland savannas have disappeared and turned into hardwood forest right up to and into the water because of infrequent fire.
I also take a good look at the wetlands themselves, streams, lakes and rivers on the property. Much of our plant and animal species in wetlands need fluctuating water levels and places like swamps need to be burned out in times of drought in order to remove the accumulating peat, else the swamp turns into lowland.
Of course this should only be done when the land around the swamp or lake edge has been burned in wetter times. If you don’t, peat fires can burn for months and creep under or through a fire line and set wildfires elsewhere. This is a serious problem in some places in North Florida USA even when burning the woods in dryer times. In places like this, one has to know even the characteristics of the soil upon which one is burning or plowing fire lanes. Dead material in the soil can burn under or through a plowed fire line like a fuse for weeks and end up on the other side of the fire line to start up a wildfire. Peat fires are also really difficult to extinguish, you may think they are put out but several days later they can start right back up again.
Preparing Property for Controlled Burning
Once an evaluation of the property is made, it’s time to prepare the land for burning, by plowing or even mowing the fire lines. Usually fire lines are plowed to plow under burnable grass, leaves and needles in an area wide enough to contain the fire. Sometimes folks don’t want to plow up the ground so they mow a grassy road really close and then wet the road down using a sprayer just before burning.
If the area is a backyard no more than an acre or two, a fire line can be raked with a hand leaf rake or mowed close with a lawn mower. A water hose with extensions to reach around the whole backyard property can really get an inexperienced homeowner out of a lot of trouble. A water hose can really put out a lot of fire and wet down a fire line. It’s also good to cool down brush and leaf piles that start burning too hot, throwing sparks and burning
leaves off of the property. Care must be used to locate the hose where it does not catch on fire else it becomes useless, especially when needed the most. :-)
Large landowners, if they don’t have their own equipment, can contact the county forest service and for a reasonable fee they will plow the fire lines with a small dozer pulling a plow. If the fire line has never been plowed, this is a really good deal because the dozer has a blade in front that pushes small trees and brush out of the way making way for the line. Usually this first plow is with a sod buster blade that makes a deep trench that can easily erode from a lot of rain, so it’s best to have them go back over the line with a harrow to create a flat plowed surface that does not erode easily, especially on downhill
slopes.
The first order of business using the plow is to plow a good wide outside fire line all around the property to be burned as a last defense against fire getting out on the neighbor’s property. Then one goes about cutting the parcel up in smaller blocks taking advantage of natural or manmade firebreaks already on the property. So if we should have fire get out in one block we can still can hurry back to the main line set a backfire and stop the fire before the head fire jumps the mainline fire break and becomes a wildfire. If one has burned the property a lot and has a lot of experience, one may just use the main
firebreak, but it’s risky and it’s always good to have multiple lines of defense if one or two lines are breached.
Another reason for burning in blocks is that if the fire goes out at night it can still pick back up from a burning log or stump burning like a fuse, then race with the wind even days later, jump the fire line and turn into a wildfire. So it’s best to completely burn a block before going on to the next one. One also has to pay special attention to any dead trees that can catch fire, or even dead material in live trees that can blow sparks across the fire line starting a wildfire across the line. A dead tree when upright can burn for days and then fall across the line to burn to the other side like a fuse. The land manager may no longer be checking in the days after a fire. So we want to cut down dead trees before burning, or rake around them so they don’t catch fire.
Another thing to consider is that fire can burn over water in sedges and grasses driven by the wind to burn across a marsh or wetland to start a wildfire on the other side. It just takes years to understand all these complex variables and manage them properly when one uses prescribed fire. For native peoples it was no big deal, one just raked around the village and fences and then set fire to the woods and fields. This practice of open range burning even carried over into the 20th century in many places. Now the only place this is possible is on islands surrounded by water.
Within a block one may even plow additional fire lanes. For instance, if we want to slam a head fire into the edge of a wetland, we might set a fire line back from the wetland 50 yards to light a head fire off
of the line, so it has time to build up a wave of fire. Or we may simply note that when we burn we will light a head fire into the wetland and then let it back into other areas that we do not want to burn so hot.
This backing a fire into the wind is called a back fire and is usually low and quiet, slowly backing into the wind, unable to build up a wave as with a head fire. Of course the wind can shift and a back fire can turn into a raging head fire, so one always has to consider this possibility and have several fail safes set up just in case this happens. A good fire manager is always aware and on edge anticipating wind shifts, to stay ahead of the game, and not have to play catch-up and even have a fire get away.
So a good fire manager looks over the land studying the land carefully and decides ahead of the time where he or she is going to light fire throughout the block, once the fire is secure along the inside of the fire lines. One may want to burn through this little briar thicket with a head fire, but back the fire right next to it through some young tender pines etc. In this manner, a great amount of micro-diversity can be created even on a small piece of land, if it’s not just being burned on a government industrial scale for fire control, with little or no attention to ecological niches.
Once an evaluation of the property is made, it’s time to prepare the land for burning, by plowing or even mowing the fire lines. Usually fire lines are plowed to plow under burnable grass, leaves and needles in an area wide enough to contain the fire. Sometimes folks don’t want to plow up the ground so they mow a grassy road really close and then wet the road down using a sprayer just before burning.
If the area is a backyard no more than an acre or two, a fire line can be raked with a hand leaf rake or mowed close with a lawn mower. A water hose with extensions to reach around the whole backyard property can really get an inexperienced homeowner out of a lot of trouble. A water hose can really put out a lot of fire and wet down a fire line. It’s also good to cool down brush and leaf piles that start burning too hot, throwing sparks and burning
leaves off of the property. Care must be used to locate the hose where it does not catch on fire else it becomes useless, especially when needed the most. :-)
Large landowners, if they don’t have their own equipment, can contact the county forest service and for a reasonable fee they will plow the fire lines with a small dozer pulling a plow. If the fire line has never been plowed, this is a really good deal because the dozer has a blade in front that pushes small trees and brush out of the way making way for the line. Usually this first plow is with a sod buster blade that makes a deep trench that can easily erode from a lot of rain, so it’s best to have them go back over the line with a harrow to create a flat plowed surface that does not erode easily, especially on downhill
slopes.
The first order of business using the plow is to plow a good wide outside fire line all around the property to be burned as a last defense against fire getting out on the neighbor’s property. Then one goes about cutting the parcel up in smaller blocks taking advantage of natural or manmade firebreaks already on the property. So if we should have fire get out in one block we can still can hurry back to the main line set a backfire and stop the fire before the head fire jumps the mainline fire break and becomes a wildfire. If one has burned the property a lot and has a lot of experience, one may just use the main
firebreak, but it’s risky and it’s always good to have multiple lines of defense if one or two lines are breached.
Another reason for burning in blocks is that if the fire goes out at night it can still pick back up from a burning log or stump burning like a fuse, then race with the wind even days later, jump the fire line and turn into a wildfire. So it’s best to completely burn a block before going on to the next one. One also has to pay special attention to any dead trees that can catch fire, or even dead material in live trees that can blow sparks across the fire line starting a wildfire across the line. A dead tree when upright can burn for days and then fall across the line to burn to the other side like a fuse. The land manager may no longer be checking in the days after a fire. So we want to cut down dead trees before burning, or rake around them so they don’t catch fire.
Another thing to consider is that fire can burn over water in sedges and grasses driven by the wind to burn across a marsh or wetland to start a wildfire on the other side. It just takes years to understand all these complex variables and manage them properly when one uses prescribed fire. For native peoples it was no big deal, one just raked around the village and fences and then set fire to the woods and fields. This practice of open range burning even carried over into the 20th century in many places. Now the only place this is possible is on islands surrounded by water.
Within a block one may even plow additional fire lanes. For instance, if we want to slam a head fire into the edge of a wetland, we might set a fire line back from the wetland 50 yards to light a head fire off
of the line, so it has time to build up a wave of fire. Or we may simply note that when we burn we will light a head fire into the wetland and then let it back into other areas that we do not want to burn so hot.
This backing a fire into the wind is called a back fire and is usually low and quiet, slowly backing into the wind, unable to build up a wave as with a head fire. Of course the wind can shift and a back fire can turn into a raging head fire, so one always has to consider this possibility and have several fail safes set up just in case this happens. A good fire manager is always aware and on edge anticipating wind shifts, to stay ahead of the game, and not have to play catch-up and even have a fire get away.
So a good fire manager looks over the land studying the land carefully and decides ahead of the time where he or she is going to light fire throughout the block, once the fire is secure along the inside of the fire lines. One may want to burn through this little briar thicket with a head fire, but back the fire right next to it through some young tender pines etc. In this manner, a great amount of micro-diversity can be created even on a small piece of land, if it’s not just being burned on a government industrial scale for fire control, with little or no attention to ecological niches.
Lighting the Fire and Keeping it Under Control
In order to pick the right time to burn we keep a close eye on the weather as that makes a big difference as to how well and how hot the fire will burn. If we have a thirty year rough in Longleaf Pine, we may even burn several hours after a rain to take just one layer of debris off the top of the thirty year debris accumulation every year for several years. We also do this so that the dead bark falling around the base of the tree does not smolder and burn like a fuse girdling the base of the tree.
Normally in the pine lands of the Southeastern United States that are burned annually, we like to burn three for four days after a rain in winter after the needles and grasses have dried out sufficiently from the sun and from frosts. In Longleaf Pine wiregrass upland savannas, we may even burn the day after the rain because the dead debris is so flammable and we don’t want to unnecessarily scar the base of the trees or singe the needles up in the canopy. Longleaf Pine has evolved very flammable needles and thick insulating bark to burn out the competition.
Usually the second day after a front comes through with a rain there is a steady north wind, so we don’t have to worry so much about wind shifts that begin to happen on the third day after a front. Unless we really need to burn brush or oak leaves, we avoid burning when it gets really dry because with shifting winds and even high winds, the burning gets hazardous and very tricky even for a very experienced burner.
On pine land we also want to burn in winter when it’s cool and before the new needle buds sprout
new needles. In the South this is after the middle of December and before the first of April. Because the quail plantations in the area where I live rely on timber for some income and Bob White Quail production, the plantations burn after the quail season ends in late February and before the new buds on the pines sprout after April first.
March is also a good month to get down on brush that tends to choke up the drains making it difficult to hunt quail. Government burning on an industrial scale often ignores damage to trees and micro-habitats in an effort to just protect the forest from wildfire, as their fire managers are underfunded, the timing of burning is limited and also because most of their monies don’t come from timber or quality of habitat but from the taxpayer.
Often those that burn a plantation or a farm have lived on the land for most of their life even generations with intricate land management experience being handed down from parents to their children. This is very much the kind of intimate detailed contact and bonding to the land that we have seen from native peoples before colonization. A good plantation manager pays attention to single trees. He may even pick up a handful of moist dirt to throw on a burning fire scar so the scar does not get worse and multiple fires burn down the tree eventually.
Usually the final decision when to burn in made in the morning of the day to be burned when all conditions for an appropriate controlled burn are in place. On a large tract the equipment is cranked up and positioned, and on a small tract the landowner makes sure the water hose is connected and the rake and shovel out of the shed.
Particular attention is paid to wind direction and velocity. We usually go to the downwind fire line to light a spot fire on the inside of the fire line to begin. We light the backfire along the downwind fire line so that as it grows it makes a wider and wider line to stop the head fire later. If this is not done and a fire is lit off the upwind side of the line, the fire will travel as a wave of fire and burn through the tract and then jump over the downwind fire line.
So the upwind fire or head fire is lit only after all the downwind line has burned back far enough to be secure. When the spot fire is lit, we watch the smoke as it rises to give us indication of wind direction at higher levels and we also see how well the debris is burning. If the wind is not satisfactory or the debris too dry, we might even cancel burning that day. If everything looks okay, we light a small section of the backfire line and then watch again to see how the fire is behaving and so on.
Right now is when a fire manager is the most nervous trying to figure out how the fire is going to behave because no fire is the same as any other because of so many variables. As the fire manager moves along the line, he or she gains in confidence that the fire is behaving properly and with the downwind side of the tract protected by a wide backfire burned area, the manager can breathe easier. Its sort like driving a car or truck you have never driven before, but as one gains experience the car or truck sort of becomes easier to drive and one feels more comfortable.
The other thing is that even a backfire can throw a spark across the plowed fire line, so the manager is going back and forth through the smoke along the back line making sure no spark is thrown across to start a head fire on the other side. If a spark does get thrown to start a spot fire across the line, the manager knows that if not dealt with immediately with water or a rake, it will soon blaze out of control because now the fire can travel with the wind.
When the back line is secure, then the manager proceeds to light the fire using a rake or fire torch along more of the side lines toward the upwind side of the property. He or she proceeds depending on how hot the fire should be. The manager may proceed up one side into the wind with a diagonal fire that moves between cool and hot and only light the head fire on the upwind side as the day progresses. We know that when the debris begins to get damp the head fire will not get too hot as it races through the property with the wind.
It takes quite a bit of experience to work up the line into the wind keeping the fire at just the right intensity to do the job. The manager also knows that once he goes completely around the tract the fire will create its own wind and pull toward the center increasing the intensity of the fire. In pineland, I usually get to this point late in the evening after the sun has set and the fire will not burn good, unless the tract does get encircled. In addition, it’s much safer to burn now with all the fire pulling away from the fire lines and moving to the center of the parcel.
When I burned Birdsong, now Birdsong Nature Center, [87] as a young man I developed lots of experience with that piece of property. I could burn the whole outside line in one day in order to make the property secure. The next day I would travel about inside the property using different intensity of fires to develop unique micro habitats all across the property without having to worry about the fire getting away from me.
Detailed Ecosystem Burning
I guess a good example as any on how to burn a tract to develop diversity would be Birdsong Plantation owned by our family until it was donated and became a part of what is now Birdsong Nature Center. It was first opened up in the 1930s with much of the property cleared and put into improved cow pasture by my father with a little help from my mother. He did the burning with me as an apprentice, then turned the burning over to me alone for a few years in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then later to my mother.
By the 1960s Dad got out of the cow business and slowly let the fields revert back into simulated natural ecosystems, while continuing to experiment with fire. He used the place in support of his research on fire and if it worked on Birdsong, he would scale up the idea to be used on Greenwood Plantation that he managed at the time. Greenwood, about 10,000 acres, was composed of three main parcels to the west of and south of Thomasville, and it also included a smaller piece with a large lake and some very big bream that were delicious.
Like many plantation or farm boys, I grew up developing an intimate knowledge of the parcel of land I was raised and in the case of Birdsong it was 565 acres. By the time I could walk, I was riding on my father’s lap on the tractor as he managed and burned Birdsong religiously every single year.
It is important to understand a little of the history of a parcel of land before and during burning. For instance, from pieces of pottery, arrowheads and flint chips, one can see there were three Indian habitation sites on Birdsong both near seepage springs. Two springs are next to what is now the Big Bay Swamp and another next to the Big Pond. During slavery days a dam was built using a mule pan to hold water for a rice field below that was made very flat. Later my father used equipment to further raise the dam so the swamp grew in size to 65 acres. So we see historically that the contours of the land have been changed by man as well as a large increase in the amount of wetlands on our property.
What my father started doing while I was growing up was to slam hot fires into the marsh around the whole of the Big Bay Swamp in December before the rains came. This would burn out peat accumulations and keep the Button Bush under control. It allowed for open water and marsh and a diversity of marsh and marine life. The shallow water would soon be teeming with small fishes and invertebrates providing food for larger fishes and wildlife such as turtles, alligators, herons and ducks.
Below the Bay Dam and all around the rice field and back up to the Big Pond, my father showed me how to slam hot walls of fire into the edges of what was now a Black Gum shallow flat swamp. This fringe area between the fields and the old shallow rice field built up a wonderful ecosystem of reeds, sedges and trees in what we would call a wetland savanna. I even planted some pitcher plants in this area and they are still there today. The fires would really snap, crackle and pop when they reached this high fire type area. Over time, these hot fires cut into and pushed back the Black Gum and bay trees creating more savanna.
We would do the same thing around the other ponds that Dad had constructed around Birdsong. Some ponds were wet weather ponds and others held water year around. When we burned through the Bay Field Pond, a wet weather pond, this created an excellent habitat for frogs because fishes could not compete and live there. In dry years the pond would dry up. When I camped next to this pond in spring, the sound of the frogs was so loud one could hardly get to sleep. Usually there would be a small alligator in the pond feeding on the frogs and small turtles. When there was water in the pond in wet years, plenty of ducks and herons could be found feeding in this shallow pond. The endangered Wood Storks would come in when the pond got low before drying up. Large numbers of Wood Storks arrive when a pond is almost dry because their food is concentrated in a small area and easy to catch.
Another pond we called the Frog Pond would hold water year around, so I put catfish in it and when they overpopulated, I put bream and bass in the pond. Wood Ducks really liked this pond as well, and the Wood Storks, when the water got low in dry years. Around this pond we burned the productive marsh to keep back the trees in this niche. In later years, a leak developed in the dam and in dry years this pond now dries up in dry years.
A wetland is really ideal when it has a fluctuating water level and is burned. When the water is low, grasses and sedges grow on the dry bottom, and when they are flooded they provide food for wildlife.
A pond with a stagnant bottom does not have near the diversity in the water and around it that a pond where the water level changes during the year. So fire along with manipulation of water levels really increases the diversity of plant and animal species simulating natural processes in fragmented ecosystems and environmental niches on a parcel of land.
Now, as to the field and savannas on Birdsong, my father and I had our work cut out for us after he took the cattle off the land. We found that without a lot of grazers and just a few browsers like our Whitetail Deer it was difficult to keep our open land and we had to increase the intensity of the fire to compensate. Even this was not enough and over many years we slowly had to face the fact unless we were going to use equipment, as we did in some fields, that the open land was going to turn into upland
savanna.
Again this is where knowledge of history really helps because at one time not that long ago there were Eastern Buffalo and wolves, and ten thousand years ago mammoth and mastodon. I assume like the elephants in Africa, mammoth and mastodon were good at pushing down trees, clearing brush, and along with the buffalo allowed for very lush highly combustible fire type grasses to dominate like Tripsacum.
Dad had introduced bahia grass in the fields for the cattle, but when the cattle were off the fields the land began to revert to native grasses and sedges including Broom Sedge. I figure that over hundreds of years, if left alone, we could end up with the uplands returning to a Longleaf-Wiregrass fire ecosystem. It would be a typical fire savanna with high fire grasses like Tripsacum in the drains along with non-fire climax forest of hardwoods, beach and magnolia, along the creeks here in the Southeastern United States.
So without these other species of grazers and predators that the white man and the Indians before had wiped out over thousands of years, the overall ecosystem must have been quite different than now, even in areas where we have been simulating natural processes. We just have to do the best we can, but it would be interesting to bring in buffalo into this area and even elephants to see just how much effect these beasts have on fire ecosystems.
A little farther north there are experiments in the Eastern United States involving the reintroduction of elk and some interest in how elk along with fire could reshape man devastated ecosystems. As we have seen with wolves in Yellowstone even the reintroduction of just one species, wolves, has even led to geological changes because of the effect on elk populations and I assume buffalo populations as well.
We have a long way to go to understand the loss of many different species of animals and plants on forests, savannas, wetlands, and grasslands. Tripsacum was almost wiped out in the Southeast by cattle as it can’t take overgrazing and it’s not hard to visualize a mammoth or mastodon along with Saber Toothed Tigers wading through savannas of Tripsacum.
I was responsible for reseeding Tripsacum on Birdsong after my father got to experimenting with it on Tall Timbers Research Station. As a young man not even yet out of high school, I used to scuba dive working for Tall Timbers and FSU in local rivers in Florida to find the remains of these beasts no longer in our ecosystems most likely because of the hand of man.
So you see creating diverse ecosystems is an art as well as a science. We try to experiment to improve diversity of plant and animal species on land, but as can be seen it’s not easy, it takes a lot of knowledge and folk wisdom and one really needs this strong bond to the land that only really comes from growing up and living on the land one’s whole life.
In order to pick the right time to burn we keep a close eye on the weather as that makes a big difference as to how well and how hot the fire will burn. If we have a thirty year rough in Longleaf Pine, we may even burn several hours after a rain to take just one layer of debris off the top of the thirty year debris accumulation every year for several years. We also do this so that the dead bark falling around the base of the tree does not smolder and burn like a fuse girdling the base of the tree.
Normally in the pine lands of the Southeastern United States that are burned annually, we like to burn three for four days after a rain in winter after the needles and grasses have dried out sufficiently from the sun and from frosts. In Longleaf Pine wiregrass upland savannas, we may even burn the day after the rain because the dead debris is so flammable and we don’t want to unnecessarily scar the base of the trees or singe the needles up in the canopy. Longleaf Pine has evolved very flammable needles and thick insulating bark to burn out the competition.
Usually the second day after a front comes through with a rain there is a steady north wind, so we don’t have to worry so much about wind shifts that begin to happen on the third day after a front. Unless we really need to burn brush or oak leaves, we avoid burning when it gets really dry because with shifting winds and even high winds, the burning gets hazardous and very tricky even for a very experienced burner.
On pine land we also want to burn in winter when it’s cool and before the new needle buds sprout
new needles. In the South this is after the middle of December and before the first of April. Because the quail plantations in the area where I live rely on timber for some income and Bob White Quail production, the plantations burn after the quail season ends in late February and before the new buds on the pines sprout after April first.
March is also a good month to get down on brush that tends to choke up the drains making it difficult to hunt quail. Government burning on an industrial scale often ignores damage to trees and micro-habitats in an effort to just protect the forest from wildfire, as their fire managers are underfunded, the timing of burning is limited and also because most of their monies don’t come from timber or quality of habitat but from the taxpayer.
Often those that burn a plantation or a farm have lived on the land for most of their life even generations with intricate land management experience being handed down from parents to their children. This is very much the kind of intimate detailed contact and bonding to the land that we have seen from native peoples before colonization. A good plantation manager pays attention to single trees. He may even pick up a handful of moist dirt to throw on a burning fire scar so the scar does not get worse and multiple fires burn down the tree eventually.
Usually the final decision when to burn in made in the morning of the day to be burned when all conditions for an appropriate controlled burn are in place. On a large tract the equipment is cranked up and positioned, and on a small tract the landowner makes sure the water hose is connected and the rake and shovel out of the shed.
Particular attention is paid to wind direction and velocity. We usually go to the downwind fire line to light a spot fire on the inside of the fire line to begin. We light the backfire along the downwind fire line so that as it grows it makes a wider and wider line to stop the head fire later. If this is not done and a fire is lit off the upwind side of the line, the fire will travel as a wave of fire and burn through the tract and then jump over the downwind fire line.
So the upwind fire or head fire is lit only after all the downwind line has burned back far enough to be secure. When the spot fire is lit, we watch the smoke as it rises to give us indication of wind direction at higher levels and we also see how well the debris is burning. If the wind is not satisfactory or the debris too dry, we might even cancel burning that day. If everything looks okay, we light a small section of the backfire line and then watch again to see how the fire is behaving and so on.
Right now is when a fire manager is the most nervous trying to figure out how the fire is going to behave because no fire is the same as any other because of so many variables. As the fire manager moves along the line, he or she gains in confidence that the fire is behaving properly and with the downwind side of the tract protected by a wide backfire burned area, the manager can breathe easier. Its sort like driving a car or truck you have never driven before, but as one gains experience the car or truck sort of becomes easier to drive and one feels more comfortable.
The other thing is that even a backfire can throw a spark across the plowed fire line, so the manager is going back and forth through the smoke along the back line making sure no spark is thrown across to start a head fire on the other side. If a spark does get thrown to start a spot fire across the line, the manager knows that if not dealt with immediately with water or a rake, it will soon blaze out of control because now the fire can travel with the wind.
When the back line is secure, then the manager proceeds to light the fire using a rake or fire torch along more of the side lines toward the upwind side of the property. He or she proceeds depending on how hot the fire should be. The manager may proceed up one side into the wind with a diagonal fire that moves between cool and hot and only light the head fire on the upwind side as the day progresses. We know that when the debris begins to get damp the head fire will not get too hot as it races through the property with the wind.
It takes quite a bit of experience to work up the line into the wind keeping the fire at just the right intensity to do the job. The manager also knows that once he goes completely around the tract the fire will create its own wind and pull toward the center increasing the intensity of the fire. In pineland, I usually get to this point late in the evening after the sun has set and the fire will not burn good, unless the tract does get encircled. In addition, it’s much safer to burn now with all the fire pulling away from the fire lines and moving to the center of the parcel.
When I burned Birdsong, now Birdsong Nature Center, [87] as a young man I developed lots of experience with that piece of property. I could burn the whole outside line in one day in order to make the property secure. The next day I would travel about inside the property using different intensity of fires to develop unique micro habitats all across the property without having to worry about the fire getting away from me.
Detailed Ecosystem Burning
I guess a good example as any on how to burn a tract to develop diversity would be Birdsong Plantation owned by our family until it was donated and became a part of what is now Birdsong Nature Center. It was first opened up in the 1930s with much of the property cleared and put into improved cow pasture by my father with a little help from my mother. He did the burning with me as an apprentice, then turned the burning over to me alone for a few years in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then later to my mother.
By the 1960s Dad got out of the cow business and slowly let the fields revert back into simulated natural ecosystems, while continuing to experiment with fire. He used the place in support of his research on fire and if it worked on Birdsong, he would scale up the idea to be used on Greenwood Plantation that he managed at the time. Greenwood, about 10,000 acres, was composed of three main parcels to the west of and south of Thomasville, and it also included a smaller piece with a large lake and some very big bream that were delicious.
Like many plantation or farm boys, I grew up developing an intimate knowledge of the parcel of land I was raised and in the case of Birdsong it was 565 acres. By the time I could walk, I was riding on my father’s lap on the tractor as he managed and burned Birdsong religiously every single year.
It is important to understand a little of the history of a parcel of land before and during burning. For instance, from pieces of pottery, arrowheads and flint chips, one can see there were three Indian habitation sites on Birdsong both near seepage springs. Two springs are next to what is now the Big Bay Swamp and another next to the Big Pond. During slavery days a dam was built using a mule pan to hold water for a rice field below that was made very flat. Later my father used equipment to further raise the dam so the swamp grew in size to 65 acres. So we see historically that the contours of the land have been changed by man as well as a large increase in the amount of wetlands on our property.
What my father started doing while I was growing up was to slam hot fires into the marsh around the whole of the Big Bay Swamp in December before the rains came. This would burn out peat accumulations and keep the Button Bush under control. It allowed for open water and marsh and a diversity of marsh and marine life. The shallow water would soon be teeming with small fishes and invertebrates providing food for larger fishes and wildlife such as turtles, alligators, herons and ducks.
Below the Bay Dam and all around the rice field and back up to the Big Pond, my father showed me how to slam hot walls of fire into the edges of what was now a Black Gum shallow flat swamp. This fringe area between the fields and the old shallow rice field built up a wonderful ecosystem of reeds, sedges and trees in what we would call a wetland savanna. I even planted some pitcher plants in this area and they are still there today. The fires would really snap, crackle and pop when they reached this high fire type area. Over time, these hot fires cut into and pushed back the Black Gum and bay trees creating more savanna.
We would do the same thing around the other ponds that Dad had constructed around Birdsong. Some ponds were wet weather ponds and others held water year around. When we burned through the Bay Field Pond, a wet weather pond, this created an excellent habitat for frogs because fishes could not compete and live there. In dry years the pond would dry up. When I camped next to this pond in spring, the sound of the frogs was so loud one could hardly get to sleep. Usually there would be a small alligator in the pond feeding on the frogs and small turtles. When there was water in the pond in wet years, plenty of ducks and herons could be found feeding in this shallow pond. The endangered Wood Storks would come in when the pond got low before drying up. Large numbers of Wood Storks arrive when a pond is almost dry because their food is concentrated in a small area and easy to catch.
Another pond we called the Frog Pond would hold water year around, so I put catfish in it and when they overpopulated, I put bream and bass in the pond. Wood Ducks really liked this pond as well, and the Wood Storks, when the water got low in dry years. Around this pond we burned the productive marsh to keep back the trees in this niche. In later years, a leak developed in the dam and in dry years this pond now dries up in dry years.
A wetland is really ideal when it has a fluctuating water level and is burned. When the water is low, grasses and sedges grow on the dry bottom, and when they are flooded they provide food for wildlife.
A pond with a stagnant bottom does not have near the diversity in the water and around it that a pond where the water level changes during the year. So fire along with manipulation of water levels really increases the diversity of plant and animal species simulating natural processes in fragmented ecosystems and environmental niches on a parcel of land.
Now, as to the field and savannas on Birdsong, my father and I had our work cut out for us after he took the cattle off the land. We found that without a lot of grazers and just a few browsers like our Whitetail Deer it was difficult to keep our open land and we had to increase the intensity of the fire to compensate. Even this was not enough and over many years we slowly had to face the fact unless we were going to use equipment, as we did in some fields, that the open land was going to turn into upland
savanna.
Again this is where knowledge of history really helps because at one time not that long ago there were Eastern Buffalo and wolves, and ten thousand years ago mammoth and mastodon. I assume like the elephants in Africa, mammoth and mastodon were good at pushing down trees, clearing brush, and along with the buffalo allowed for very lush highly combustible fire type grasses to dominate like Tripsacum.
Dad had introduced bahia grass in the fields for the cattle, but when the cattle were off the fields the land began to revert to native grasses and sedges including Broom Sedge. I figure that over hundreds of years, if left alone, we could end up with the uplands returning to a Longleaf-Wiregrass fire ecosystem. It would be a typical fire savanna with high fire grasses like Tripsacum in the drains along with non-fire climax forest of hardwoods, beach and magnolia, along the creeks here in the Southeastern United States.
So without these other species of grazers and predators that the white man and the Indians before had wiped out over thousands of years, the overall ecosystem must have been quite different than now, even in areas where we have been simulating natural processes. We just have to do the best we can, but it would be interesting to bring in buffalo into this area and even elephants to see just how much effect these beasts have on fire ecosystems.
A little farther north there are experiments in the Eastern United States involving the reintroduction of elk and some interest in how elk along with fire could reshape man devastated ecosystems. As we have seen with wolves in Yellowstone even the reintroduction of just one species, wolves, has even led to geological changes because of the effect on elk populations and I assume buffalo populations as well.
We have a long way to go to understand the loss of many different species of animals and plants on forests, savannas, wetlands, and grasslands. Tripsacum was almost wiped out in the Southeast by cattle as it can’t take overgrazing and it’s not hard to visualize a mammoth or mastodon along with Saber Toothed Tigers wading through savannas of Tripsacum.
I was responsible for reseeding Tripsacum on Birdsong after my father got to experimenting with it on Tall Timbers Research Station. As a young man not even yet out of high school, I used to scuba dive working for Tall Timbers and FSU in local rivers in Florida to find the remains of these beasts no longer in our ecosystems most likely because of the hand of man.
So you see creating diverse ecosystems is an art as well as a science. We try to experiment to improve diversity of plant and animal species on land, but as can be seen it’s not easy, it takes a lot of knowledge and folk wisdom and one really needs this strong bond to the land that only really comes from growing up and living on the land one’s whole life.
After the Burn
For the uninitiated stepping out onto the burn just after the fire, the landscape looks like a vision of hell, black and deluded with dead logs, stumps and rat nests, still smoking. The tree trunks have been blackened and the land covered with a coating of ash. The land manager keeps checking the fire lines to make sure no hidden brands have ignited across the fire line and that no burning dead trees have fallen, or are going to fall across the fire lines.
If there is a burning dead tree, we have to take it down with a chain saw, or try to put it out if it’s not burning too badly with a water sprayer. This is tricky because even when you think you have the smoldering tree out, it can start burning again hours later from just a tiny ember hidden someplace in the tree. This is why we keep checking the line until it gets damp and then we can go home to rest up because the next morning we need to check the lines again about ten in the morning. This is when the dew begins to evaporate and fire can travel again if a tree or spark has taken the fire across the fire line.
Usually by this time any dead tree that we thought we had out but did not, would be smoking again. In areas where the fire line has cut through dead roots or peat in dry sandy soils one might have to come back to check from time to time for weeks. There are places like this in the Flatwoods south of Tallahassee Florida.
On well managed lands like Quail Plantations, the land managers never leave the land and are out
most every day doing other work than fire. They study the land that they have burned, watch it green up, and by summer the uninitiated would not even know the area had been burned unless they noticed a fire blackened pine trunk of fire scar. In the subtropics vegetation grows very rapidly due to the heat and rain, and so it is imperative that we burn every year to keep all this vegetation under control, except for areas where we need to allow some plant species to grow two or three years between burning.
Most of the industrial burning by government agencies is three years or more and this may be okay to protect forests from wildfire, but for most species of wildlife it is not good. Not much wild life or vegetation on the ground can survive being tightly overgrown by trees and most wildlife species live off the ecosystems on the forest floor and if shaded out there is not much but leaves and needles. This is another reason (why selective cutting mimicking natural processes of thinning) is not just good for income, but for the wildlife as well, as it opens up the pine canopy so more sunlight gets to the ground.
Over the year the land manager observes his or her handy work and may make changes to the burning based on what is observed and from experiments on the land the next winter. Summer burning in some instances where there is good pine overstory may create additional diversity on a small scale, but by and large the best policy is to winter burn. One most definitely should not summer burn fields without an overstory of pines as my father and I found out fast enough on some plots we developed on Birdsong.
One of the tenants of good fire management is to experiment on a very small scale, then scale up if the experiment is successful and to repair the damage if not successful. It is very time consuming and expensive to bring in heavy equipment to repair damage, or even worse to just ignore the damage that was done that has resulted in a loss of habitat and diversity.
In the case with summer burning on Birdsong's fields, we found this fire was slowed down by green growth and would even creep around the brush allowing the brush to get high enough to stand up to fire and become trees. We did discover how easy it was to herd insects and I even experimented with eating those roasted by the fire, or caught moving ahead of the light slow fires. I found I liked them both
raw and cooked.
Now might be a good time to bring in the views of both Herb Stoddard and Leon Neel, both who have integrated and practiced good fire management techniques for both forest and wildlife management on a micro-management scale.
The Stoddard-Neel Approach to Timber Management in the Southeast
Most people are aware of the devastating effects of large scale clear cutting and regeneration on public and private lands that devastates ecosystems much the same way as catastrophic fire. But few are aware that there is a better way to manage and regenerate forest timber and ecosystems on both public and private land. What the Stoddard-Neel Approach does is provide for a continuous regeneration and improvement of a forest, while bringing in much needed income for property owners.
Just as with prescribed fire, we mimic natural process leaving a light footprint on the integrity of the forest and its ecosystems. However it requires an exhaustive understanding of the natural ecosystems being managed over a long period of time and for generations. The forest is kept healthy and intact as the forest is progressively thinned as it grows and is regenerated over long rotational cycles in small parcels.
Of course environmental activists are aware that logging corporations often try to use simulated thinning as a pretext for excessive logging of public lands. We have some problem with this even in private forests when the owners or land managers are not familiar with good timber management practices. We don’t want the logger in control over the management of timber because they will often over thin because it’s in their best short term interest. We also don’t want careless loggers scaring up the bases of pine trees as they pull cut logs out of the forest with their skidders.
So the way it works in plantation country is that we have independent foresters like Herb and Leon who worked directly for the landowner and manager and not for the logging or land clearing companies.
The independent foresters charge a fee to oversee timber management which involves marking trees and then following the logging to make sure that only marked trees are cut. They also make sure that trees are not scarred by falling cull trees, or by careless skidder operators pulling logs out of the forest in a hurry. Each individual tree to be culled is marked waist high is also marked with paint on the base, so the forester waking through the timber stand can make sure that only the allotted trees are cut and no more.
Often the independent forester even personally handles the controlled burning or prescribed fire for his or her clients. Over many years working for a client, the forester develops an intimate relationship with the land being managed and works closely with the land manager who also has developed an intimate relationship with the specific parcel of land over decades for both timber production and wildlife production.
I think large bureaucratic centrally controlled land management agencies can learn a lot from how decentralized private plantation lands are managed incorporating native “folk wisdom”. In The Art of Managing Longleaf it is stated:
"While Stoddard-Neel is not a formulaic approach to forest management, it does rest on several fundamental commitments. One is to single tree selection. Single tree selection was not a new technique in the forestry profession when Herb Stoddard first started practicing it; its merits had been debated for some time. But in Stoddard and Neel’s iteration, the central proposition was a conservative marking strategy and the long-term survival of the forest, rather than the most efficient production of timber resources.
Each tree taken, in effect, mimicked natural, small-scale disturbance events such as lightning strikes, blow-downs, insect damage, and other natural mortality. Such events open gaps in the forest canopy, allowing more light to hit the forest floor and making room for longleaf regeneration to take place. To open these gaps, Stoddard and Neel first selected the weakest trees for removal, leaving the stronger trees to build up the timber volume so the fewer, but more valuable, trees could be removed the next time around. "
As the reader can see, there is a sustainable and economic way to manage ecosystems both with fire and with good management practices that simulates natural wild-lands. But it takes a lot of understanding of these ecosystems to do what is best for nature and for man. There is a middle ground that is good both for man and nature and maintains important diversity of ecosystems by simulating natural processes. The simulating of natural processes has been refined to a high art on Southeast hunting plantations and can be adapted to ecosystems elsewhere. Ponderosa Pine forests for example, in the Western United States are similar in many ways to pine ecosystems in the Southeast. Herb Stoddard had this to say about burning Longleaf Pine in plantation country.
“Within our region there is considerable diversification of flora and topography, and this has a bearing on just how control burning may best be handled. When I say best, that’s my own viewpoint. Other people may have better ways of doing it. First: Whenever possible, and in almost all conditions in which we use fire as a tool in land management, the soil should be damp at the time of burning. The duff, and remains of limbs, logs, and other punky material and debris from past selective lumbering operations, should be wet.
If dry, it may smolder for days or weeks, often constituting a hazard for nearby pine areas through “pickup” fires. Second: Burn in pine lands from high combustibility to low. For example, the combustibility of Longleaf Pine debris under given conditions of wind and moisture is much higher than that for Slash, Loblolly, Shortleaf, and Pond Pine. Set fires first under Longleaf stands, or where this pine predominates on the hilltops, when conditions of dampness and air movement are right for light burning. If wiregrass (Aristia) constitutes most of the ground cover, rather than broomsedge (Andropogon), the fires may burn “just right” soon after a “front” has gone through with an inch or more of rain, followed by sunshine and wind.
A mixture of wiregrass and Longleaf straw traps much air, which accounts, in part, for its extreme inflammability, so it should be burned when so damp that “swingeing” fires will only burn downwind. Some of you may question the word “swingeing,” but we’ve used it for a long time and think it has a real meaning. Such areas may best be burned only a few hours following the rain. Next day the fires may be re-set and burn farther down the slope under the less inflammable Loblolly and Shortleaf Pines; it may take several days of sunshine and re-setting of fire, before we can complete burning through the bottoms, and under scattered stands of pine.
Careless users of fire not infrequently reverse this procedure, starting to burn a unit only when the lower slopes can be made to burn through. The result is likely to be a severe “blow up,” when the flames reach the top of the hill covered with highly inflammable Longleaf and wiregrass. That I think should be the “a” in the alphabet of controlled burning. Always burn from spots of high combustibility when conditions first becomes right to spots of lower combustibility when conditions me be right only after several days. Make a mistake and the woods are very unsightly and damage may be done to the Longleaf.”
In summary, even though I have used the subtropical Southeastern United States to illustrate how we control burn, these basics of burning can pretty much be used from arid to arboreal landscapes. Of course modifications and adjustments are necessary to adapt the techniques to the land being fire managed.
For the uninitiated stepping out onto the burn just after the fire, the landscape looks like a vision of hell, black and deluded with dead logs, stumps and rat nests, still smoking. The tree trunks have been blackened and the land covered with a coating of ash. The land manager keeps checking the fire lines to make sure no hidden brands have ignited across the fire line and that no burning dead trees have fallen, or are going to fall across the fire lines.
If there is a burning dead tree, we have to take it down with a chain saw, or try to put it out if it’s not burning too badly with a water sprayer. This is tricky because even when you think you have the smoldering tree out, it can start burning again hours later from just a tiny ember hidden someplace in the tree. This is why we keep checking the line until it gets damp and then we can go home to rest up because the next morning we need to check the lines again about ten in the morning. This is when the dew begins to evaporate and fire can travel again if a tree or spark has taken the fire across the fire line.
Usually by this time any dead tree that we thought we had out but did not, would be smoking again. In areas where the fire line has cut through dead roots or peat in dry sandy soils one might have to come back to check from time to time for weeks. There are places like this in the Flatwoods south of Tallahassee Florida.
On well managed lands like Quail Plantations, the land managers never leave the land and are out
most every day doing other work than fire. They study the land that they have burned, watch it green up, and by summer the uninitiated would not even know the area had been burned unless they noticed a fire blackened pine trunk of fire scar. In the subtropics vegetation grows very rapidly due to the heat and rain, and so it is imperative that we burn every year to keep all this vegetation under control, except for areas where we need to allow some plant species to grow two or three years between burning.
Most of the industrial burning by government agencies is three years or more and this may be okay to protect forests from wildfire, but for most species of wildlife it is not good. Not much wild life or vegetation on the ground can survive being tightly overgrown by trees and most wildlife species live off the ecosystems on the forest floor and if shaded out there is not much but leaves and needles. This is another reason (why selective cutting mimicking natural processes of thinning) is not just good for income, but for the wildlife as well, as it opens up the pine canopy so more sunlight gets to the ground.
Over the year the land manager observes his or her handy work and may make changes to the burning based on what is observed and from experiments on the land the next winter. Summer burning in some instances where there is good pine overstory may create additional diversity on a small scale, but by and large the best policy is to winter burn. One most definitely should not summer burn fields without an overstory of pines as my father and I found out fast enough on some plots we developed on Birdsong.
One of the tenants of good fire management is to experiment on a very small scale, then scale up if the experiment is successful and to repair the damage if not successful. It is very time consuming and expensive to bring in heavy equipment to repair damage, or even worse to just ignore the damage that was done that has resulted in a loss of habitat and diversity.
In the case with summer burning on Birdsong's fields, we found this fire was slowed down by green growth and would even creep around the brush allowing the brush to get high enough to stand up to fire and become trees. We did discover how easy it was to herd insects and I even experimented with eating those roasted by the fire, or caught moving ahead of the light slow fires. I found I liked them both
raw and cooked.
Now might be a good time to bring in the views of both Herb Stoddard and Leon Neel, both who have integrated and practiced good fire management techniques for both forest and wildlife management on a micro-management scale.
The Stoddard-Neel Approach to Timber Management in the Southeast
Most people are aware of the devastating effects of large scale clear cutting and regeneration on public and private lands that devastates ecosystems much the same way as catastrophic fire. But few are aware that there is a better way to manage and regenerate forest timber and ecosystems on both public and private land. What the Stoddard-Neel Approach does is provide for a continuous regeneration and improvement of a forest, while bringing in much needed income for property owners.
Just as with prescribed fire, we mimic natural process leaving a light footprint on the integrity of the forest and its ecosystems. However it requires an exhaustive understanding of the natural ecosystems being managed over a long period of time and for generations. The forest is kept healthy and intact as the forest is progressively thinned as it grows and is regenerated over long rotational cycles in small parcels.
Of course environmental activists are aware that logging corporations often try to use simulated thinning as a pretext for excessive logging of public lands. We have some problem with this even in private forests when the owners or land managers are not familiar with good timber management practices. We don’t want the logger in control over the management of timber because they will often over thin because it’s in their best short term interest. We also don’t want careless loggers scaring up the bases of pine trees as they pull cut logs out of the forest with their skidders.
So the way it works in plantation country is that we have independent foresters like Herb and Leon who worked directly for the landowner and manager and not for the logging or land clearing companies.
The independent foresters charge a fee to oversee timber management which involves marking trees and then following the logging to make sure that only marked trees are cut. They also make sure that trees are not scarred by falling cull trees, or by careless skidder operators pulling logs out of the forest in a hurry. Each individual tree to be culled is marked waist high is also marked with paint on the base, so the forester waking through the timber stand can make sure that only the allotted trees are cut and no more.
Often the independent forester even personally handles the controlled burning or prescribed fire for his or her clients. Over many years working for a client, the forester develops an intimate relationship with the land being managed and works closely with the land manager who also has developed an intimate relationship with the specific parcel of land over decades for both timber production and wildlife production.
I think large bureaucratic centrally controlled land management agencies can learn a lot from how decentralized private plantation lands are managed incorporating native “folk wisdom”. In The Art of Managing Longleaf it is stated:
"While Stoddard-Neel is not a formulaic approach to forest management, it does rest on several fundamental commitments. One is to single tree selection. Single tree selection was not a new technique in the forestry profession when Herb Stoddard first started practicing it; its merits had been debated for some time. But in Stoddard and Neel’s iteration, the central proposition was a conservative marking strategy and the long-term survival of the forest, rather than the most efficient production of timber resources.
Each tree taken, in effect, mimicked natural, small-scale disturbance events such as lightning strikes, blow-downs, insect damage, and other natural mortality. Such events open gaps in the forest canopy, allowing more light to hit the forest floor and making room for longleaf regeneration to take place. To open these gaps, Stoddard and Neel first selected the weakest trees for removal, leaving the stronger trees to build up the timber volume so the fewer, but more valuable, trees could be removed the next time around. "
As the reader can see, there is a sustainable and economic way to manage ecosystems both with fire and with good management practices that simulates natural wild-lands. But it takes a lot of understanding of these ecosystems to do what is best for nature and for man. There is a middle ground that is good both for man and nature and maintains important diversity of ecosystems by simulating natural processes. The simulating of natural processes has been refined to a high art on Southeast hunting plantations and can be adapted to ecosystems elsewhere. Ponderosa Pine forests for example, in the Western United States are similar in many ways to pine ecosystems in the Southeast. Herb Stoddard had this to say about burning Longleaf Pine in plantation country.
“Within our region there is considerable diversification of flora and topography, and this has a bearing on just how control burning may best be handled. When I say best, that’s my own viewpoint. Other people may have better ways of doing it. First: Whenever possible, and in almost all conditions in which we use fire as a tool in land management, the soil should be damp at the time of burning. The duff, and remains of limbs, logs, and other punky material and debris from past selective lumbering operations, should be wet.
If dry, it may smolder for days or weeks, often constituting a hazard for nearby pine areas through “pickup” fires. Second: Burn in pine lands from high combustibility to low. For example, the combustibility of Longleaf Pine debris under given conditions of wind and moisture is much higher than that for Slash, Loblolly, Shortleaf, and Pond Pine. Set fires first under Longleaf stands, or where this pine predominates on the hilltops, when conditions of dampness and air movement are right for light burning. If wiregrass (Aristia) constitutes most of the ground cover, rather than broomsedge (Andropogon), the fires may burn “just right” soon after a “front” has gone through with an inch or more of rain, followed by sunshine and wind.
A mixture of wiregrass and Longleaf straw traps much air, which accounts, in part, for its extreme inflammability, so it should be burned when so damp that “swingeing” fires will only burn downwind. Some of you may question the word “swingeing,” but we’ve used it for a long time and think it has a real meaning. Such areas may best be burned only a few hours following the rain. Next day the fires may be re-set and burn farther down the slope under the less inflammable Loblolly and Shortleaf Pines; it may take several days of sunshine and re-setting of fire, before we can complete burning through the bottoms, and under scattered stands of pine.
Careless users of fire not infrequently reverse this procedure, starting to burn a unit only when the lower slopes can be made to burn through. The result is likely to be a severe “blow up,” when the flames reach the top of the hill covered with highly inflammable Longleaf and wiregrass. That I think should be the “a” in the alphabet of controlled burning. Always burn from spots of high combustibility when conditions first becomes right to spots of lower combustibility when conditions me be right only after several days. Make a mistake and the woods are very unsightly and damage may be done to the Longleaf.”
In summary, even though I have used the subtropical Southeastern United States to illustrate how we control burn, these basics of burning can pretty much be used from arid to arboreal landscapes. Of course modifications and adjustments are necessary to adapt the techniques to the land being fire managed.