Fire-school class burns forest to save it
Controlled-blaze practice held in Camp Robinson woods
Students at the state’s annual prescribed-fire school tested their skills Wednesday afternoon, setting controlled fires in an oak and pine forest on the northern edge of Camp Robinson.
“Between mechanical thinning [of standing trees] and prescribed fires, we can keep the forest healthy,” said Joe Fox, the state forester. “A less dense forest is a healthy forest.”
Prescribed fires eliminate the ground clutter that fuels wildfires and competes with trees for nutrients, Fox said.
This year, 834 wildfires have consumed about 11,260 acres across the state, according to the Arkansas Forestry Commission.
A backfire behaved as intended Wednesday while reporters watched. From time to time rounds of blank ammunition cooked off as the fire moved up a gentle slope.
A backfire is a prescribed burn that is set along a control line such as a road and allowed to burn into the prevailing wind, Forestry Commission officials said. Eventually, the wind pushes the fire back into the burned-over area where there is no fuel left to support it. Officials said the student teams would later set a head fire that would burn with the wind until it reached the burned-over area and died.
Lt. Col. Gib Richardson,
environmental program manager for the Arkansas Army National Guard, said the military adheres to a comprehensive forest management plan to minimize the risk of a wildfire escaping the 33,000-acre base. Fires can be touched off by training exercises that involve mortar fire, other explosives and small-arms fire, he noted.
“We try to burn 4,000 to 7,000 acres a year on the post,” Richardson said.
Because there was a burn ban in effect in Pulaski County, Wednesday’s fires were set
in a section of Camp Robinson that extends into Faulkner County.
Doug Zollner, director of conservation at The Nature Conservancy in Arkansas, said there are ecological benefits to prescribed fires. The fires stimulate plants that provide good food sources for the state’s native animals, including deer and turkey.
Fox said prescribed fires should be carefully planned to take into account the weather, vegetation and terrain along with other factors. The 39 students participating in this week’s school were scheduled to spend 40 hours in the classroom and 12 hours
in field exercises.
Participants included representatives from the Arkansas Forestry Commission, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department, the Arkansas State Parks Division, the University of Arkansas at Monticello School of School of Forestry and Natural Resources, and the federal Natural Resource Conservation Service.
The annual school is conducted by Arkansas Prescribed Fire Council, which includes the Forestry Commission, the Game and Fish Commission, the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission,
The Nature Conservancy, the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service, the Arkansas Forestry Association and the Arkansas Parks and Tourism Department.
Landowners interested in using prescribed fires to manage their forests can call the Forestry Commission or the Arkansas Forestry Association for help, Fox said.
About 56 percent of Arkansas’s 19 million acres of forestland are held by private, nonindustrial owners, Fox said.
Last year, there were more than 1,000 prescribed fires covering about 224,500 acres.