Experts say the prescription for a healthy forest includes fire, but, as with most medicines, the right dose is needed.
Ronald Hendrick, professor of forest ecology at the University of Georgia, said fire predates man and is a natural part of the environment.
But Dr. Hendrick, also the university’s dean of academic affairs, said without some fire the environment suffers.
“Fires do have a beneficial purpose, but we have excluded fire for more than a century,” Dr. Hendrick said. “But it is not appropriate to simply let wild fires burn or just go in a haphazard way and set controlled burns. So you have to be very careful about fuel and weather conditions.”
A Healthy dose
Each year in Northwest Georgia about 6,000 acres of land in 13 wildlife management areas are purposefully and carefully burned, experts said. Last week, Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officials set out to burn 127 acres of the Pigeon Mountain Wildlife Management Area in Walker County.
“What we try to do is do periodic prescribed fires under controlled conditions where we can reduce fuel loads, so you are not going to have devastating wild fires,” said David Gregory, senior wildlife biologist for DNR’s Wildlife Resources Division.
From a wildlife management standpoint, controlled fires are also essential to a healthy ecosystem, he said.
“When it burns it returns those nutrients to the soil so they can be used again by plants,” Mr. Gregory said. “Having plants down low is good for wildlife because it provides nutrients low to the ground,” where animals such as deer, bear and rabbits feed, he said.
Last week’s burn in Walker County was somewhat successful, though recent rains made it to damp in places to sustain a blaze to clear off undergrowth, leaves and twigs.
“Even though we are still in drought conditions, the top eight inches of the soil is as moist as it has ever been,” said Lee Kelley, district forester in Rome.
Experts monitor weather conditions before a burn to determine the perfect time and ideal conditions.
Mr. Gregory is responsible for creating a fire plan for each prescribed burn, outlining favorable conditions to start the fire. For example, last week he wanted wind at 6 to 20 mph and a relative humidity of less than 27 percent.
“A lot of times we don’t even burn if it is this humid,” Mr. Gregory said. “But because this is the first time this area has been burned we just wanted to get one fire going even if it is a poor fire to reduce those fuel loads.”
Another reason for reducing fuel loads, primarily dead and dry branches and fallen trees, is to help support “early successional habitats,” Mr. Gregory said.
“Early successional species are ones that come out immediately or soon after some kind of disturbance,” Dr. Hendrick said. “So there are a lot of species that depend upon fire to clear out competing vegetation.”
Mr. Gregory said examples of early successional species that would benefit from prescribed burns are the Bachman’s sparrow and bobwhite quail.
The DNR wildlife biologist said Georgia was once considered the bobwhite quail capital of the world. But the state’s quail population has declined by more than 70 percent since the early 1960s, primarily due to the loss of early successional habitat.
Dr. Hendrick also said there can be economic benefit from a healthy ecosystem.
“It promotes species that may be important for commercial reasons. They may be important for wildlife, for sightseeing, maybe it’s berry picking, all kinds of things,” he said.
Experts said previous prescribed burns helped slow the blaze in some areas during last year’s wildfires in South Georgia — which were called the worst in decades, and burned more than 500,000 acres from Valdosta to northern Florida.
“Could it have helped if there had been more prescribed burning? Yes,” said Mr. Kelley. “It probably could, but that is a judgment call on my part.”
burning resistance
Mr. Gregory said prescription burns are often misunderstood.
“Some people just don’t like burning,” Mr. Kelley said. “They don’t like the smell.”
Experts also said it is always possible that a monitored burn gets out of control, but they work very hard to manage the process and fill the prescription.
Mr. Gregory said he hopes education will help the public understand importance of controlled burns.
“Environmentally, as long as the fire is done carefully, there aren’t really any particular draw backs,” Dr. Hendrick said.
Key terms
* Controlled or prescribed burn — both terms describe the process of creating and managing a fire
* Fuel load — the amount of materials that would easily burn, such as leaves.
* Early successional habitat — an area that is not overgrown and often provides important, highly nutritious seed and forage use as food by wildlife.
ON THE WEB
For more information about prescribed burns visit http://www.gfc.state.ga.us/ForestFire/PrescribedBurningMenu.cfm.
