Austin College students make strides in prairie restoration

By DAVY MOSELEY | East Texas Edition

Careful attention is given to the prescribed burn set by the students. Above, students walk the fire break, armed with "flappers" that help smother small fires before they get out of hand. -Staff photo by Moseley

January 24, 2002 -- We often forget that man has not always had at his disposal 100-horsepower tractors and 15-foot bat-wing shredders. In the old days, brush and weeds were kept in check by a much simpler management tool - fire.

As part of a January-term course called Hands-on Conservation: Restoration of a Native Prairie, a class of Austin College students participated in a series of prescribed pasture burnings on a 100-acre, college-owned site, known as the Sneed Prairie, in an effort to bar annual grasses and woody plants and restore the native, perennial blackland vegetation.

Only a small portion of the site still harbors remnants of the native prairie grasses that once dominated the area before the invasion of European settlers. The majority of the site was used for row crop agriculture or pasture, and consequently much of the native prairie vegetation was eliminated from the site.

In a grassroots efforts to regain what has been lost, much of the Sneed Prairie site has been burned by students every January the past three years as part of the course study.

According to Dr. Peter Schulze, associate professor of biology at Austin College in Sherman, and the instructor of the course, the fruits of the prescribed burning process will not be evident immediately. A restoration project such as this is an ongoing procedure centered around winter-season prescribed burns. Each year the vegetation grows back thicker, and woody vegetation recedes further.

A student with a strapped-on water tank is ready in case the fire moves in an unwanted direction. -Staff photo by Moseley

"I think the use of prescribed pasture burning as a management tool certainly is gaining favor," Schulze said. "But, people need to learn the guidelines. They're not difficult, but they need to be followed."

Schulze outlined the two major risks that come with prescribed pasture burns, safety and erosion:

"Obviously the greatest risk is safety. You don't want anyone to get hurt, and there is always the risk of property damage if a fire gets out of hand," Schulze said. "People should not burn without very good understanding of burn procedures and adequate crew. There are better ways to get your name in the paper."

Schulze stressed that prescribed pasture burns can be an excellent management tool, but only if conditions are right, and procedures are followed.

For a Jan. 9 prescribed burn, Schulze and his crew of students mowed firebreaks ahead of time by making single passes with a tractor and shredder throughout the pasture, effectively forming blocked-off sections of land that can be burned independently without setting the entire acreage ablaze at once. By doing this, a large open pasture can be burned modularly.

Their basic procedure was then to set a backfire on three sides, against the wind, so that a head fire could be set from the north side and let the wind carry the blaze until it reached the other three, now burned, sides. It did not take long.

Burning requires wind speeds between 5 to 15 miles/hour, and a relative humidity between 20 and 60 percent.

The group could have just started a head fire and let the wind carry it until the blaze ran out of fuel, but there would be no way to stop it. Obviously a safety risk.

Another risk Schulze spoke of is erosion. If an area is burned often, or is on a steep grade, the soil is more susceptible to heavy rains eroding away topsoil, because there is no longer that thick thatch of vegetation to hold the soil in place.

The benefits from prescribed pasture burning are many, the professor said.

In grasslands, prescribed burns can increase grass nutritive quality, palatability, availability, and yield; suppress unwanted plants; and improve wildlife habitat.

Grass quality, palatability, and availability are improved because the fire removes dead plant material and improves access to new growth.

Grass yields increase because charring, or darkening, the soil surface allows it to absorb heat and warm more quickly which stimulate earlier growth, and because competing weeds are suppressed.

However, if brush and small trees are the unwanted guest, Schulze said he has had good luck controlling them as well.

"In one year of burning on a prairie remnant, we reduced small trees (1 meter tall) by 90 percent, and larger trees by 50 percent," Schulze relayed.

According to the professor, generally, if you are trying to restore native grasses, or trying to suppress small trees, prescribed pasture burning will be beneficial; however, he pointed out that prescribed pasture burning is not a cure-all for poor range management.

"Many of the native, perennial grasses really thrive after burning, but I suspect that some of the annuals are being suppressed," he said.

"Our project is only possible because of funding and support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency," Schulze said. "Thanks to them, we have funding to support school trips to the site."

Those interested in the program should contact Schulze at (903)813-2284; or pschulze@austinc.edu. Landowners interested in the project are welcome to contact Schulze as well.

For more information on prescribed pasture burning, Schulze recommends two Extension publications: Prescribed Range Burning in Texas, publication number B-1310, by Larry D. White and C. Wayne Hanselka; and Planning a Prescribed Burn, publication number L-2461, by R.Q. Landers Jr.