Managing and Protecting Mast Thickets with less frequent fire
Managing and Protecting Mast Thickets With Less Frequent Fire: Who would have ever thought, I a pro-fire advocate all my life would ever argue for a little less fire in some areas. The Southeastern United States has now become so advanced in prescribed fire not just for wildfire mitigation, but for ecological reconstruction that I feel I have to speak out. All through my life I have had to battle brush encroachment in upland pine ecosystems in the South because of land owner neglect and or mismanagement. Because of the pro-fire culture in the South, due in a large part to my early mentors, folks today are really jumping on the frequent prescribed fire bandwagon in both public land agencies and on private land.
We have come so far to lead the rest of the world in the use of prescribed fire, that in our enthusiasm to rebuild and maintain our open park-like pine savanna ecosystems with more and more frequent fire, we have been removing and degrading mast thickets so necessary for some plant and wildlife species. In order to maintain the maximum diversity in our fire adapted pine ecosystems we should come to a more intimate understanding of the land we manage same as the native people using cultural burning did before us. One important way is for our plant specialists to get more involved with our local and regional fire managers to better educate them as to the special fire needs of some species of plants and animals.
It’s important to have the majority of our pine forests with a suitable groundcover maintained with frequent even annual fire. However, I believe we should set aside at a minimum 5-10 percent of our land area for mast thicket preservation and reconstruction. As human population pressures mount we have to really think about concentrating mast production beyond natural norms on land that is best suitable for this, a kind of permaculture for plant and animal species diversity. We can’t be ecological purists because with more and more human over-population pressure on our remaining ecosystems we really don’t have a choice, either we continue as we have been doing in conservation and ecological reconstruction, or we are going to lose diversity at an ever increasing rate.
What really set me to thinking about thicket preservation was Karl Ambrose sometimes overbearing and radical approach to preserving mast producing areas in the pine flatland ecosystems for bears. This resulted in my writing the article “Ranch the Bears”. Previously my friend and plant specialist Linda Duever had been pointing out this issue to me. Recently what set me off on this tangent was when my friend Lee Conner who is an avid hunter and fisherman told me that the Apalachicola National Forest just southwest of the Tallahassee airport had wiped out a large stand of chinquapin with heavy mulching equipment and herbicides. On our Birdsong Plantation as a child we had one large chinquapin on the property and I frequently ate the nuts that had a good taste unlike boiled acorns that have a bland taste.
Chinquapin got hit hard by the chestnut blight but seems to be coming back in places and this area next to Tallahassee may well have once been fire managed by Indians being that it is in the area covered by native villages prior to European settlement. Who knows it’s possible they might have even planted and managed this stand as part of their nut and berry orchards in the area. It has been recounted that when the surveyors first came to survey Tallahassee for the state capitol they met with an Indian chief who came out of his nut orchard. On one of my Facebook posts an individual posted that the Indians in the Northeast United States may have so cultivated Chinquapin as to double the size of the nut.
In this reference to Chinquapin it states: "Chinquapin, or "chinkapin," is a diminutive cousin of the American chestnut. Although their name derives from eastern-dwelling Algonquian Indian language, chinquapin trees are known as far west as Texas, and several species exist. In North Carolina the principal chinquapin tree, Castanea pumila, occurs in the Piedmont and Mountain regions. Small and shrublike in nature and often with several trunks, a chinquapin seldom grows above 20 to 30 feet in height. The wood of chestnuts and chinquapins is extremely rot resistant and has been used in making railroad ties and posts and rails for fences. The occasional split-rail zigzag fences along the Blue Ridge Parkway are fashioned mostly from these trees.Chinquapin husks contain a single kernel that, when ripe in the fall, is a tasty foodstuff for humans as well as animals.
Kemp P. Battle, the president of the University of North Carolina from 1876 to 1891, remarked that there were two local delicacies that students dependably would raid: scuppernong grapes and chinquapins. In his day a convenient grove of chinquapins stood near the intersection of Columbia and Franklin Streets, main corners of modern-day Chapel Hill. In the early 1950s it was possible to buy a bag of chinquapins at roadside stands in hilly, rural North Carolina counties such as Stokes and Surry. The bag was approximately the same size as a bag of peanuts sold at a ball game and usually cost a nickel. At the end of the decade the price had increased to a quarter a bag, if one could find them for sale at all."
I think plant and animal ecologists and fire managers needed to think long and hard how best to manage and maximize mast production in certain areas with less frequent fire. Soft mast like blueberries, wild plums, wild persimmon, grapes and hard mast species like Chinquapin, need less than annual fires but frequent enough to keep them from being topped out by undesirable tree species like water and laurel oak. There are plenty of hard mast species like hickory, walnut, pecan that have some fire adaptability and are not so endangered by frequent burning. It’s these soft and hard mast bush or small tree species that require special attention with less frequent fire and knowledge as how to apply fire approaching the intimate knowledge of the native peoples before European settlement.
The future solution toward mast thicket preservation would be to build in scattered small acreages of intensively managed mast shrubs, in areas that are easy to protect with natural and artificial fire breaks. It does not make a lot of sense to sacrifice a lot of frequent fire acreage if the shrubs are scattered far apart. In agricultural areas this naturally happens with fence rows. Along with less frequent fire, mechanical and chemical treatements could be used to intensively build and maintain these mast shrub thickets.
Those that have an interest in prescribed fire please join our Facebook group the Association of Fire Management Activists.
We have come so far to lead the rest of the world in the use of prescribed fire, that in our enthusiasm to rebuild and maintain our open park-like pine savanna ecosystems with more and more frequent fire, we have been removing and degrading mast thickets so necessary for some plant and wildlife species. In order to maintain the maximum diversity in our fire adapted pine ecosystems we should come to a more intimate understanding of the land we manage same as the native people using cultural burning did before us. One important way is for our plant specialists to get more involved with our local and regional fire managers to better educate them as to the special fire needs of some species of plants and animals.
It’s important to have the majority of our pine forests with a suitable groundcover maintained with frequent even annual fire. However, I believe we should set aside at a minimum 5-10 percent of our land area for mast thicket preservation and reconstruction. As human population pressures mount we have to really think about concentrating mast production beyond natural norms on land that is best suitable for this, a kind of permaculture for plant and animal species diversity. We can’t be ecological purists because with more and more human over-population pressure on our remaining ecosystems we really don’t have a choice, either we continue as we have been doing in conservation and ecological reconstruction, or we are going to lose diversity at an ever increasing rate.
What really set me to thinking about thicket preservation was Karl Ambrose sometimes overbearing and radical approach to preserving mast producing areas in the pine flatland ecosystems for bears. This resulted in my writing the article “Ranch the Bears”. Previously my friend and plant specialist Linda Duever had been pointing out this issue to me. Recently what set me off on this tangent was when my friend Lee Conner who is an avid hunter and fisherman told me that the Apalachicola National Forest just southwest of the Tallahassee airport had wiped out a large stand of chinquapin with heavy mulching equipment and herbicides. On our Birdsong Plantation as a child we had one large chinquapin on the property and I frequently ate the nuts that had a good taste unlike boiled acorns that have a bland taste.
Chinquapin got hit hard by the chestnut blight but seems to be coming back in places and this area next to Tallahassee may well have once been fire managed by Indians being that it is in the area covered by native villages prior to European settlement. Who knows it’s possible they might have even planted and managed this stand as part of their nut and berry orchards in the area. It has been recounted that when the surveyors first came to survey Tallahassee for the state capitol they met with an Indian chief who came out of his nut orchard. On one of my Facebook posts an individual posted that the Indians in the Northeast United States may have so cultivated Chinquapin as to double the size of the nut.
In this reference to Chinquapin it states: "Chinquapin, or "chinkapin," is a diminutive cousin of the American chestnut. Although their name derives from eastern-dwelling Algonquian Indian language, chinquapin trees are known as far west as Texas, and several species exist. In North Carolina the principal chinquapin tree, Castanea pumila, occurs in the Piedmont and Mountain regions. Small and shrublike in nature and often with several trunks, a chinquapin seldom grows above 20 to 30 feet in height. The wood of chestnuts and chinquapins is extremely rot resistant and has been used in making railroad ties and posts and rails for fences. The occasional split-rail zigzag fences along the Blue Ridge Parkway are fashioned mostly from these trees.Chinquapin husks contain a single kernel that, when ripe in the fall, is a tasty foodstuff for humans as well as animals.
Kemp P. Battle, the president of the University of North Carolina from 1876 to 1891, remarked that there were two local delicacies that students dependably would raid: scuppernong grapes and chinquapins. In his day a convenient grove of chinquapins stood near the intersection of Columbia and Franklin Streets, main corners of modern-day Chapel Hill. In the early 1950s it was possible to buy a bag of chinquapins at roadside stands in hilly, rural North Carolina counties such as Stokes and Surry. The bag was approximately the same size as a bag of peanuts sold at a ball game and usually cost a nickel. At the end of the decade the price had increased to a quarter a bag, if one could find them for sale at all."
I think plant and animal ecologists and fire managers needed to think long and hard how best to manage and maximize mast production in certain areas with less frequent fire. Soft mast like blueberries, wild plums, wild persimmon, grapes and hard mast species like Chinquapin, need less than annual fires but frequent enough to keep them from being topped out by undesirable tree species like water and laurel oak. There are plenty of hard mast species like hickory, walnut, pecan that have some fire adaptability and are not so endangered by frequent burning. It’s these soft and hard mast bush or small tree species that require special attention with less frequent fire and knowledge as how to apply fire approaching the intimate knowledge of the native peoples before European settlement.
The future solution toward mast thicket preservation would be to build in scattered small acreages of intensively managed mast shrubs, in areas that are easy to protect with natural and artificial fire breaks. It does not make a lot of sense to sacrifice a lot of frequent fire acreage if the shrubs are scattered far apart. In agricultural areas this naturally happens with fence rows. Along with less frequent fire, mechanical and chemical treatements could be used to intensively build and maintain these mast shrub thickets.
Those that have an interest in prescribed fire please join our Facebook group the Association of Fire Management Activists.