Amarsh rises from the ashes
Fire is crucial to the life cycle of wetlands such as Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge
Tracts across Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge told different parts of the story. Hundreds of acres were totally black, freshly burned. Yet you could look right across the road at marsh untouched by flame. And still other areas had fresh growth sprung from ash.
The scene was emblematic of the role that fire plays in the marsh as a natural part of the landscape’s life cycle. Here, fire is seen as an element of rejuvenation and rebirth, not as a destructive force.
“Fire is a natural phenomenon to help manage the marsh and other ecosystems,” said Jon King, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fire management officer for the Chenier Plain.
Fire sets back invasive plants and opens opportunities for new and more diverse vegetation. Nitrogen, critical to plant growth, becomes more available after a burn. As the habitat gets healthier, it becomes more beneficial to waterfowl and other forms of marsh wildlife.
Accumulation of dead underbrush and growth can weigh down the marsh, eventually causing it to collapse on itself. The removal of this debris not only keeps the marsh healthy and intact but removes potential fuel from future wildfires.
King has observed the paradox of fire — how it demolishes yet creates and inspires both fear and awe — since he joined USFWS in 2007. As a member of a federal agency, he has fought fires all over the country and on all kinds of topography.
He said fire has its unique set of challenges no matter the location.
He is a rare breed as half firefighter, half scientist. He not only puts fires out, he sets them, too.
King is charged with managing the two types of fires on the refuge, prescribed burns and wildfires. Or, planned and unplanned.
USFWS personnel burned 9,236 acres on the 34,000-acre Anahuac NWR in 2020. Wildfires burned another 6,383 acres. At neighboring Mcfaddin National Wildlife Refuge, 15,086 acres were burned under prescribed fire and 3,882 acres burned unplanned.
The National Interagency Fire Center recently said 80 percent of USFWS lands rely on “good fire.”
King and his crew have standard operating procedures in place to carry out prescribed burns, because “Mother Nature can’t do what she used to” with the increase of urbanization and habitat fragmentation. The prescribed burns are usually done in January or February, so cold fronts can push the smoke out into the Gulf of Mexico instead of nearby communities.
“We plan fires to benefit the habitat, but we do it in a way that we’re not going to put smoke on highways, smoke in schools and hospitals,” King said, adding that a half dozen or so USFWS firefighters from Wisconsin and Minnesota are heading to the area next month to help with prescribed burns.
Unplanned wildfires are prevalent, though.
“We have them quite often. The majority of our wildfires will be in the summertime, when those afternoon thunderstorms kick up and come in off the Gulf. They’ll drop a little lightning and start fires for us,” King said.
Aside from lightning, wildfires can be created many ways, including cigarettes, chains dragging on roads from vehicles, or intentionally. The most recent wildfires on Anahuac NWR appear to have been caused by humans.
Three separate fires erupted on Anahuac NWR and another on Mcfaddin NWR on Dec. 10. Those fires were contained that day and burned less than 2,000 acres.
A much larger wildfire on Anahuac NWR in November was a bit trickier to contain.
That fire burned for three days and chewed up over 4,000 acres. It began in the Middleton Tract and jumped the East Bay Bayou, a leap of about 60 feet.
King said the greatest threat from a fire in the marsh is often not the fire itself, but the smoke, which can be a major hazard if it chokes up nearby highways. The smoke from this fire could be seen in Northeast Houston.
King said all three of the main pieces of equipment used to contain marsh wildfires were utilized during this event.
Airboats ferried personnel to different positions. Marsh Masters (amphibious, tank-like vehicles) created trench-like firebreaks in the wetlands. Plastic sphere dispensers were deployed by helicopters, a technique King said is used about 10 times a year for marsh wildfires.
Pingpong-like balls filled with potassium permanganate and injected with glycol are dropped from the air. Then, a chemical reaction ignites the fireball and burns surrounding debris, stripping the area bare of fuel ahead of an oncoming wildfire.
The November blaze eventually was contained by fighting fire with fire. The flames finally reached a section that had been burned under prescription a few months earlier, and it fizzled out. King said the prescribed burn prevented the wildfire from torching an additional 3,000 acres.
King said that although the fires late last year were unplanned — and he still encourages folks to be careful in preventing these incidents — they were beneficial overall.
“It’s not like we wanted it to happen, but it actually did more good than bad,” King said. “We still don’t want them to happen this way because they’re unplanned; we’d rather have planned prescribed burns. But this one didn’t do any harm to the actual habitat since it was fairly wet at the time of the fire.”
These burns can be immediately advantageous for waterfowl, especially geese. King said he often finds geese loafing in the immediate aftermath of a fire.
“Wintering geese love those freshly burned areas,” King said.
Geese seem to find these scorched areas within a day or two. King said it is not uncommon for goose hunters to illegally start wildfires on the refuge to create a hunting spot.
“It cleans off that dead vegetation and allows direct access to roots and forage off that vegetation. You’ll get big responses from snow geese and whitefronts off of fire,” said Stephen Mcdowell, regional migratory game bird specialist for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
The clearing of underbrush allows more room for secretive marsh fowl like moorhens to maneuver around, taking cover from predators and nesting.
Fire can harm or benefit mottled ducks, a species of concern, depending on the time of year.
Mottled ducks live their whole lives in the marsh. A wildfire in late winter or early spring could destroy nests, and prescribed burns are scheduled to protect these birds during nesting season.
Texas mottled ducks typically nest in Spartina patens, a cordgrass species that Mcdowell said is “fire happy” and grows back quickly and lush.
“If you’ve got a good, healthy stand out there, you can potentially have better nesting habitat for mottled ducks,” Mcdowell said.
From the grass to the ganders to the beleaguered mottled duck, fire is a natural occurrence, and benefit, to the marsh ecosystem.
On Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge and elsewhere across the country, fire is not a menace for wildlife and habitat managers. It is a way of life.