North Carolina Prescribed Fire Awareness Month – 2021

“It was as Keeper of the Flame that man first became Steward of the Land” Stephen J. Pyne – Fire in America

This month is Prescribed Fire Awareness Month in North Carolina.  As I sit impatiently awaiting the right conditions, I thought I’d share with you some of the main reasons landowners should consider putting #GoodFire on the ground in their woodlands.

First, like I’ve said many times before, Prescribed Burning is the most rewarding thing we do as land managers.  It is not necessarily the fire itself, but rather what good the fire can do that makes it so captivating.  Vastly different than a maniacal arsonist that relishes in the devastation of a fire, the prescribed burner relishes only in the positive changes that a prescribed burn has across a landscape.

Reason to Burn

For a guy like me, who’s brain is always partially dedicated to deer, turkey, and other wild things, the number one reason to burn is to improve habitat for the species I love.  Those improvements range from the generation of grasses and forbs to the outside-in recolonization of insects and other small critters following a prescribed fire – both of which provide significant food sources for deer and turkey.  Prescribed Fire, when combined with adequate sun-light, helps to change the composition and structure of the forest floor.  That understory make-up of flora can be as thick or dense as you desire based on your management objectives and burn rotation.

Silviculturally speaking, prescribed burning has a ton of advantages.  One of those advantages rest in fires’ ability to speed up decomposition.  Trees and other living plants within a forest make use of the available nutrients within the soil.  As they die or as logging operations help tops, needles, leaves, and non-merchantable portions of trees become available, fire helps the forest consume them.

The process mentioned above also has a significant impact on the accessibility of a forest.  The same debris consumed by fire and thus by the forest is no longer available to hit you in the face, trip you, or otherwise hinder your movement or that of wild things heading from one point to another.  A prescribed burn just before a forest inventory can aid in the accuracy of data collected from your sample plots by making the tallying and measuring of individual trees a breeze compared to the same in some unburned stands.  Although I don’t recommend the entirety of a forest be open for as far as the eye can see when managing your woodlands for a variety of wildlife, open timber stands are certainly appealing to procurement foresters.

Year in and year out, forest debris accumulates with or without help from TSI (Timber Stand Improvement) initiatives.  Leaves, needles, and dead limbs all make their way to the forest floor.  Over time, the accumulation of such combustible matter can lead to fiery issues within stands where good fire is excluded.

Another important benefit of good, prescribed fire comes at the end of a forest rotation after the final harvest has been completed.  A site preparation burn does wonders to improve a planting surface and help young seedlings get a jump start on competition.  

Final Thoughts before Heading out to Burn the NC Woods

The privilege to implement #GoodFire across a landscape is a refreshing treat to a certified burner like me.  Just as much as #GoodFire helps to rejuvenate a forest, so too does it help to rejuvenate me.

If you’re a landowner who’s considering implementing prescribed fire on your place – don’t waste time!  Get your land on the radar of a burn crew as soon as you can!  Prescribed fire has the power to unleash the full potential of your forest.  If your land is already scheduled to be burned, rest assured that no one is more excited to carry out that duty than guys like me who love #GoodFire! Until then, from one keeper of the flame to the next, pray that one day soon, we can make nearly every day a burn day.