Back in the Spring, personnel were preparing to conduct a prescribed burn in Polk county. The burn boss along with an operator were doing some final prep work to ensure that the containment lines were adequate and the site was ready for the burn.
by casey.matzke
by casey.matzke
This summer the National Prescribed Fire Resource Mobilization Strategy was released. The plan calls for six prescribed fire implementation teams to be created that will incorporate prescribed fire practitioners and expertise into a management structure. This concept would support the implementation of prescribed fire at multiple organizational and complex levels. These teams would be tailored to meet specific needs and facilitate multiple projects simultaneously. Each function that supports the implementation of prescribed burning can be scaled up or down at any level, to ensure that logistical, financial, planning, safety, and public information are staffed accordingly.
[Read more…] about National Prescribed Fire Resource Mobilization Strategy
by casey.matzke
The Texas A&M Forest Service is now accepting grant applications for the State Fire Assistance for Mitigation – Plains Prescribed Fire Grant through August 30th, 2023.
[Read more…] about Prescribed Fire Grants for Texas Plains Region are Open
by casey.matzke
by casey.matzke
Prescribed Burn School April 19 – 21, 2023 – San Angelo, Texas
Dr. Morgan Treadwell is back with her first Prescribed Burn School for 2023 in San Angelo, Texas on April 19 – 21! If you are curious about prescribed fire or would like to get more hands-on experience, this 3-day school is for you! View the agenda here.
[Read more…] about Prescribed Burn School April 19 – 21, 2023 – San Angelo, Texas
Interested in attending our online webinar on July 27, 2020 at 9:00 AM showcasing the research findings from Texas A&M University Dr. Urs Kreuter’s Joint Fire Science Program project:
“Fighting Wildfire with Prescribed Burning in the Southern Great Plains: Social and Regulatory Barriers and Facilitators” (funded by the Bureau of Land Management Joint Fire Science Program (Contract #L16AC00206))??
Please register HERE!
This week’s Range Concepts dives into the Texas Ecosystem Analytical Mapper (TEAM) from Texas Parks and Wildlife. TEAM is an easy-to-use FREE resource that includes soil mapping, plant community descriptions, threatened and endangered species, and much more!
The Seed Mix Map from Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute displays a FREE custom seed mix for an identified area defined by soil type within each ecoregion.
Both of these tools can be synergistically used together to build reseeding recommendations for disturbed rangelands, or for enhanced understanding of rangeland soils and plant communities!
Handout: Texas Ecosystem Analytical Mapper and Seed Mix Map
YouTube Tutorial Video: https://youtu.be/Nd_K7zbr0kg
Thinking like a grassland.
What does this mean to you?
Well, to Dr. David Augustine from the USDA-ARS Station in Fort Collins, CO and others, it means large-scale movement of many species. This large-scale movement enables the Great Plains evolved strategies to contend with drought, floods, and even wildfires…in a nutshell….extreme variability in weather resulting in low forage production.
Currently, our pattern of land ownership and use of Great Plains grasslands challenges native species conservation. For example, too much management is focused at the scale of individual pastures or ranches, limiting opportunities to conserve landscape-scale processes such as fire, animal movement, and metapopulation dynamics.
“Figure 1. Potential natural vegetation of US portion of the North American Great Plains, adapted from Kuchler (1964).”
“Estimated extent of 5 major ecoregions of the US Great Plains, subdivided into 14 vegetation communities as mapped by Kuchler (1964; see Fig. 1). For each community, we present the estimated percent of the landscape in each of 10 land cover types based on an integration of cropland data layers (2011e2017) with the 2011 National Land Cover Database.”
Opportunities to increase the scale of grassland management include:
Thinking like a grassland should be pretty easy for us range managers…open spaces, big country, and…thinking big!!
For an in-depth view of “Thinking Like a Grassland: Challenges and Opportunities for
Biodiversity Conservation in the Great Plains of North America”, click on this link: Thinking like a grassland Augustine et al., 2020 REM.
Ok, get excited because I have some news to share with you! For the past year, I have been putting together an improved burn school experience in the form of an online course. This course packs all of the prescribed burn education I go through in the first two days of a burn school and lets you go through the content at your own pace.
This course is perfect for you if…
• You are ready to see an improvement in your rangeland and ecosystem
• You are limited on time and want to learn how best to bring life back to your land
• You are interested in learning more about prescribed burning and the benefits of burns
• You currently are or are interested in becoming a Certified and Insured Prescribed Burn Manager (CIPBM)
• You want to be eligible for future certification from the Texas Department of Agriculture
Prescribed Burning Benefits
Prescribed burning, also known as controlled burning, is a technique used by certified fire experts to manage rangeland productivity and restore health to ecosystems.
Fire has played a significant but complicated historical role. Land managers have tried for decades to remove fire from fire-dominant ecosystems, which has affected future generations of land managers. It is important for us to be informed about the role that fire plays in our ecosystem in order to maintain rangeland productivity, especially systems challenged by brush encroachment.
Prescribed burning can be defined as hazard-reducing burning of a wildfire, set intentionally for purposes of forest management, farming, and prairie restoration. Prescribed fires are intentionally ignited in order to achieve specific land management objectives, such as restore ecosystem health and recycle nutrients.
Many species depend on fire to maintain their habitat. Fire is one of the best management tools for invasive plant control and prescribed burning can prepare the land for new trees and vegetation.
Prescribed burns help manage weeds and lower the risk of wildfires by reducing the amount of flammable fuel in the area. Additionally, they can restore nutrients to the soil and encourage healthy plant growth.
Ready to take the next step in restoring your land through prescribed burns?
Prescribed Burn School Details
Cost: $200
Sections: 13
Time: 24 hours
Launch Date: February 10, 2020
Self-paced, available year-round
Once the course is launched, you can enroll at any time and set your own pace for learning. The course allows for flexible study time to go through the materials whenever you want.
Prescribed burning requires extensive planning, training, personnel, and equipment. There are important steps that have to be taken prior to the day of the burn in order to conduct a prescribed burn safely and correctly.
This course walks you through all of the steps of a prescribed burn and gets you ready to participate in a burn field day.
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
• Explain the history of fire as an ecological tool
• Evaluate fuels present across many environments according to their defining characteristics
• Describe fire behavior according to physical and chemical principles
• Prepare for weather conditions as they relate to burning
• Discuss the impact topographic influences have on fire behavior
• Analyze the effect that fire has on plant communities and wildlife habitat
• Plan a prescribed burn
• Identify proper burning equipment and safety techniques
• Employ proper firing technique according to the prescribed burn goals and objectives
• Mitigate smoke impacts
• Understand laws and regulations regarding prescribed burning
• Evaluate potential burn sites
After you successfully complete the course and earn your certificate, you will have 1 year from the date of completion to sign up and participate in a field day to become eligible for certification through the TDA. Available field dates will be listed at the end of the course.
The Prescribed Burn School course goes live on February 10, 2020. Find it on AgriLife Learn, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension’s new online learning platform.
Want us to send you a reminder when the course launches? Sign up today and we will notify you as soon as the course is open for registration.
Click here for more info on this course!
In 2017, a group of prescribed fire researchers (including me!) set out to answer the age-old question…is prescribed fire liability…prescribed fire’s scapegoat? Check out this work that talks about the Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burn Association escape prescribed fire lawsuit here.
(J.R.Weir,U.P.Kreuter,C.L.Wonkka,etal.,LiabilityandPrescribedFire:PerceptionandReality,RangelandEcology&Management, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2018.11.010)
Although use of prescribed fire by private landowners in the southern Great Plains has increased during the past 30 yr, studies have determined that liability concerns are a major reason why many landowners do not use or promote the use of prescribed fire. Generally, perceptions of prescribed fire−related liability are based on concerns over legal repercussions for escaped fire. This paper reviews the history and current legal liability standards used in the United States for prescribed fire, it examines how perceived and acceptable risk decisions about engagement in prescribed burning and other activities differ, and it presents unanticipated outcomes in two cases of prescribed fire insurance aimed at promoting the use of prescribed fire. We demonstrate that the empirical risk of liability from escaped fires is minimal and that other underlying factors may be leading to landowners’ exaggerated concerns of risk of liability when applying prescribed fire. We conclude that providing liability insurance may not be the most effective approach for increasing the use of prescribed fire by private landowners. Clearly differentiating the risks of applying prescribed fire from those of catastrophic wildfire damages, changing state statutes to reduce legal liability for escaped fire, and expanding landowner membership in prescribed burn associations may be more effective alternatives for attaining this goal. Fear of liability is a major deterrent to the use of prescribed fire; however, an evaluation of the risks from escaped fire does not support perceptions that using prescribed fire as a land management tool is risky. Prescribed burning associations and agencies that support land management improvement have an important role to play in spreading this message.
EPPBA LAWSUIT
In the second case, insurance provided to members of a PBA in Central Texas contributed to the initiation of multiple lawsuits following an escaped fire that negatively affected the use of prescribed fire by some landowners. The specifics of this incident and its aftermath were obtained through interviews with people involved in the lawsuits and through analysis of legal briefs and motions filed with the Sutton County court. In March 2011, a contractor who was neither certified as a burn manager nor insured was hired by a pair of private landowners in Sutton County, Texas to conduct a prescribed burn on their property during a burn ban. The contractor had recently become a member of the local PBA and counseled the landowners who hired him to also join the PBAs so that they would be covered by the prescribed fire insurance provided by the association to its members. To comply with the PBA’s insurance requirements, the contractor also filed a burn plan with the PBA. In addition, these people requested an exemption from the county judge to apply prescribed fire during the burn ban. The judge ruled that only certified burn bosses would be granted a variance and denied the request. In contravention to this ruling, the contractor nevertheless proceeded with the planned burn. In preparation for the burn, the fire crew pre-burned backfires along firebreaks to create blacklines on the downwind side of the planned fire. During blackline burning, the wind direction shifted, causing the fire to ignite a stand of extremely dry juniper trees. Embers from the burning junipers were blown outside of the burn unit and initiated an escaped fire that burned approximately 405 ha on the contracting landowners’ property and three adjacent properties. Even though there was no major property damage or injury, the escaped fire led to multiple lawsuits. Three plaintiffs filed lawsuits involving the landowner’s property, where the fire started; the PBA; and a founding member of the PBA who had disapproved the proposed burn. Two insurance companies became involved in claims by the three landowners including the company that underwrote the PBA’s prescribed fire insurance policy and the company that provided insurance for the landowners who had signed the contract for the burn. Initially, the latter insurance company stated its policy did not cover prescribed fire damage but ultimately agreed to pay for the claimed damages to settle the litigation. Once the insurance companies agreed to pay for the specified damages, the defendants were dropped from the lawsuit. The ultimate effect of the lawsuits for the unapproved burn was that the insurance company withdrew coverage of the PBA’s prescribed fire insurance policy. Importantly, the insurance company omitted to include an “illegal activities” clause in the policy with which the insurance company would not have had to pay any claims because this was a fire conducted against
the ruling of a county judge. The PBA was named in the lawsuit due to wording in its bylaws that erroneously made it appear that the PBA did contract burning for landowners. As a result, numerous PBAs rewrote their bylaws to emphasize they only provide education, training, and opportunities for landowners to conduct prescribed burns and to clarify that PBA membership does not provide the right to burn outside state laws or prescribed burning guidelines set by the PBA. The fear of liability from this one incident has dramatically reduced the use of prescribed fire in the region, even though the escaped fire and subsequent lawsuits stemmed from an illegally and improperly conducted burn. One informative statement came from an individual who was a PBA member and had burned regularly but became concerned about risk following the outcome of the lawsuits stemming from this illegal burn in which he had no part. He stated: “How could I get started burning in 2003 without checking my insurance coverage for hostile (escaped) fire? There was no visceral ‘fear.’ Also, there were no escapes on my30-plus fires. Now the fear is intellectual. With it comes inertia. No one wants to have an escape, and we all know that with any fire there is always that risk. Why doesn’t planning allay that fear? The damage done by the arrogance of the escaped fire in 2011 hangs around our shoulders like a cloak.”
This individual experienced risk reversal and stopped using prescribed fire because of concerns about the actions of others—in this case a lawsuit initiated by a neighbor because his land was burned and due to the existence of an insurance policy against which he could claim. Most other people in the area who had used prescribed fire and were not covered by the PBA’s insurance policy continued to burn undeterred.