Preparation for prescribed burning, Schiff Nature Preserve, 3/01/2009

I spent part of this past Sunday working with the NJ Forest Fire Service preparing for prescribed burning this spring at Schiff Nature Preserve.  This will be my third season of prescribed burning.

We have three goals with our program.  First and foremost, we want to reduce the wildfire danger to our neighbors by reducing the amount of flammable vegetation close to homes.  Second, the preparation work, if conducted properly and carefully, can help with maintenance and construction of woods roads and trails. There is one inaccessible portion of the Preserve where we will be creating a new trail that will also act as a firebreak.

Finally, prescribed burning can help maintain and restore degraded forests and meadows.  We have approximately 30 acres of native meadow habitat dominated by warm season grasses.  Prescribed burning is a proven way to effectively manage native warm-season grasses.  For our meadow management, we follow best management guidelines developed by the Xerces Society.  The Xerces Society recommends only burning 30% of a particular habitat patch in a given year to ensure long-term diversity of native polinators. 

Prescribed Burn Locations, Schiff Nature Preserve, Mendham, NJ

In the forested areas of the Preserve, we want to reduce the density of non-native invasive plants which dominate the understory and inhibit forest regeneration.  Frequent burning will reduce the density of non-native invasive plants. At the same time we implement this prescribed burning plan, we are overhauling our white-tailed deer management program, which up to now has had limited success at reducing the over-browsing of our native plants.

The idea is that as the deer herd is reduced, the invasives will concurrently be reduced by yearly prescribed burning.  Eventually we will reduce the frequency of burning and hope to start to see native plants regenerating in the growing space vacated by the invasives.   I am a big proponent of adaptive management, so we will also be developing a simple monitoring protocol in order to determine if we are getting the ecological results we are expecting.  

I am interested to learn how others are using prescribed burning as a land management tool.