By Poh Si Teng
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
AVERLY, Ohio — The April winds were still. The temperature hovered around 65 degrees.
A good day to burn a woodland.
Dave Minney and his seven-member crew gathered at the Strait Creek Prairie Bluffs Preserve in Pike County, donned their yellow fireproof suits, lit their torches and set fire to 25 acres of land.
“What we are doing here in Strait Creek is believed to be the historical role of fire,” said Minney, Ohio fire manager for the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that owns property and runs environmental projects in the United States and 30 other countries.
Controlled burns protect old-growth forests and help keep invasive plants from overtaking prairies, proponents say. They also can help protect endangered birds and animals.
In Ohio, state agencies and private nature organizations have set controlled burns since the late 1970s. An average of 30,000 acres of land is burned each year, according to the Ohio Division of Forestry.
Southern and Western states practice controlled burns to prevent forest fires.
By burning certain prairies and woodlands in Ohio, experts say they can restore and protect each ecosystem’s biodiversity.
But some environmentalists prefer a “hands-off” approach to protect endangered plants and animals.
“I am 100 percent, totally, absolutely against prescribed fire burnings in Ohio and national forests because fire is totally unnatural, unnecessary and harmful to the eastern hardwood forests,” said Barbara A. Lund, from Save Our Shawnee Forest, an environmental grass-roots organization.
Lund’s group has been battling the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ five-year plan to burn more than 7,800 acres in the Shawnee State Forest in Scioto and Adams counties. The program began in 2001, and about 100 acres have been burned to restore habitat and reduce what experts call the “fuel load” -- trees dead and alive that can fuel wildfires.
In February, the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission ruled in favor of controlled burns at the Shawnee State Forest. They will resume this fall.
Lund said too many animals will die because they can’t flee the flames.
State wildlife officials disagree.
Gary Ludwig, a state wildlife biologist, said burns are conducted from mid- to late spring when animals don’t nest. He said most birds, rabbits and deer escape.
“We always take everything into consideration before we strike a match and light a fire,” said Ludwig, who added that fires can make certain habitats more conducive for endangered species.
At the Kildeer Plains Wildlife Area in Marion and Wyandot counties, endangered species such as the massasauga rattlesnake and the eastern plains garter snake thrive after prescribed burns, Ludwig said.
He said that without controlled burns, invasive plants, such as reed canary grass, would take over other grasses in many wetlands and prairies throughout western Ohio.
At the Oak Openings Region in northwestern Ohio, controlled burns help maintain prairie grasses and old-growth oak trees. In turn, these plants and trees are home to endangered species such as the Karner blue butterfly, said Gary Popotnik, land management director for the Ohio Nature Conservancy.
Wildfires used to do the same thing, but humans have become efficient at putting them out, said Lindsay Boring, director of the Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center in southern Georgia. The center researches prescribed burns.
Fire, Boring said, has indirectly protected the ecological system in North America for centuries.
In the past, American Indians burned land used for hunting and gathering. In the 17th century, when Europeans settled in North America, forests and woodlands were burned to create farmland, Boring said.
“We vastly underappreciate the sophistication with which these cultures used fire to manage the ecosystem,” he said.
Some environmental researchers say prescribed fires should be limited to 50 acres per burn, said Orie Loucks, a professor emeritus in botany and zoology at Miami University.
At the Strait Creek preserve, Minney wants to reduce the sugar maple and red cedar trees that compete for sunlight, space, water and soil nutrients with native oaks, which are more tolerant of fire.
On that April day, Minney and his crew watched the 3-foot flames burn against the winds at Strait Creek.
It took about an hour.
A few weeks ago, Minney returned and surveyed the 30 rare plant species that grow there.
Success, he said, can be measured in lavender blueheart plants. Before the burns, there were 15 to 20. Now, about 10,000.
It will take 20 to 30 years and several more controlled burns to bring back the original ecosystem, Minney said.
“Once you put fire into (the forests), you begin to allow the vegetation to grow again, to establish itself,” he said.
For more information, go to odnr.state.ohio.us and nature.org/ohio