Controlled fires help trees thrive

HOBBS STATE PARK - The science behind the prescribed burning of forestland has advanced significantly in the past decade, forest managers said Saturday afternoon.

The controlled burns are tailored strategically, taking into account such variables as slope direction and weather conditions, and then mapped and studied afterward to record their results, said McRee Anderson, fire restoration manager for The Nature Conservancy.

“Burning is not just willy-nilly, where we go out and light a match just because it’s a good day to burn,” Anderson said during a presentation to about a dozen people at Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area, near Beaver Lake in Benton County.

Currently, land in state parks and forests is overburdened at about 300 trees per acre, but a more desirable range is 40 to 70 trees per acre so that sunlight can reach the forest floor, Anderson said.

Prescribed burns help thin out the trees, he said, which allow native species to thrive. Such burns also decrease dead vegetation, helping to prevent fires from spreading.

“What we know scientifically about fires is, you know that southern slopes are hotter and drier because they get a lot of sun,” Anderson said. “North slopes don’t get a lot of sun.”

Trees can better withstand the burning if the fire is limited to the base than if the fire has reached the treetops, Anderson said. Controlled burns are generally ground-level fires.

Anderson and two officials with the park acknowledged that there are peoplein Arkansas who question or oppose the practice of controlled burns.

“I think the main reason people are concerned about prescribed burns is the smoke,” Anderson said, adding that there are ways to control it. “I know that 10 years ago, this whole state was learning how to manage smoke.”

Fred Sutton, a park ranger, agreed.

“Most of the people around here have bought into the prescribed burning, but their biggest concern is smoke,” Sutton said during a question-and-answer session. When the park conducts a burn, factors taken into account include humidity, temperature, moisture onthe ground and the position of the jet stream, he added.

Anderson told the audience that American Indians used controlled burning to rid the landscape of dry or dead vegetation.

But between 1921 and about the 1970s and ’80s, “the idea was that all fire is bad,” Anderson said.

“It all started with the ‘Smokey the Bear’ thing,” said Hobbs park’s assistant superintendent, Jay Schneider, referring to the long-running public-service campaign. “Before 1980, it was: Put out all fires at all costs.”

But after a major fire at Yellowstone National Park in the ’80s, the federal government began questioning whether decades of no controlled burns had created more fuel for the Yellowstone fire, and policymakers began making changes.

Sutton and Schneider said that in 2012, lightning strikes triggered about a half-dozen fires in the conservation area and previous prescribed burns limited their spread.

Only one of them was sizable - a fire the first week of August 2012 that consumed 30 to 35 acres, they said. The rest burned 3 acres or less.

Anderson said that elsewhere across the state, federal and state agencies have found that controlled burns eventually lead to regenerated growth. In some cases, this has even included the appearance of rare plant species and native grasses not seen since the 1800s, he added.

“All this is driven scientifically, in trying to keep these species off the endangered lists,” he said. “This is all about keeping these species around.”