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National Forest P-Burns

The Chequamegon has been doing quite a bit of burning this spring. Their fuels target was double. They dropped two engines ($186,000/year each) so they roate in crews to make up in fire season. They burned some openings near Park Falls and these photos were from Great Divide near Lake Namekagon; under buring oak stands to improve vigor. Reduce thins like balsam fir and logging slash. Should see better acorn production, a temporary reduction in white-footed mouse (Lyme disease vector). Alos burned some wildlife openings on the District. They are also burning north of HWY 2 on Moquah Barrens. I am happy to see the increased prescribed burning here, especially oak stands, long time coming. I also learned that it looks like the Chequamegon-Nicolet will once again be leading the nation in timber harvest.

Cool, nice to see they are doing some habit improvement!

The quality of the photos is not great here, they are much better on my website and in print but you get the idea.

Share your website Smokey

Very good to see. Thanks for posting Smokey.

Smokey - this sort of thing once used to be your game (I think so anyways, if I remember correctly)...do you miss it? Also, how big of an area will they burn at any one time? How many men (and/or women) will they have controlling it? Did you ever have a fire get away from you? Thanks.

I'm curious to know if there's a minimum area for a burn to be considered beneficial.

Tweed look up capturewisconsin.com and then type in his name. Smokey I hope you didn't mind me sharing that?

It's late, tired and I have not have had a good day. I miss it, I love it but have issues with it. I will post more Thursday. I hope this does not violate advertising rules here. If so, let me know. This is my main website.

It is good to see this finally happening. When our deer camp started back in the 40's, those original guy's always said if you didn't see 20+ deer a day, you weren't in the woods. Looking at old pictures you could see why, it was all logged off and there was browse everywhere. It is different to see pic's of there camps where all the trees around there tents were barely taller than the tents. Now it's all big timber. They all would comment that these woods need a good fire to get the deer back.

I never had a burn get away from me but did shut down some during test burns that looked dicey. As for area? It can be a couple of acres to over 10,000 that I have been involved with. Many uses for fire; timber slash removal, timber stand or species improvement, wildlife habitat, invasive species control.

Planning is intensive and as for how many people that too depends on size My thinking is the 1500 acres in these photos, about 25-30 people. The large burns are broken up into smaller parcels so the whole project is not lit at once but usually all in the same day if possible. Many things are taken into account. Programs are run to see what the result should be for successful burn, the chance of escape, wind, temp, fuels. Sheriffs Dept. notified, Ambulance service notified, Burn Units, local business, smoke management, and other things. After the burn is complete it is monitored until declared out, rain helps. Then it is monitored to see if it accomplished its goal. Plots are taken and data gathered. There is a website that has a lot of information on fire effects that is consulted. I mentioned it here on Bowsite in the past as anyone can access it. It has information for time of year to burn, how hot it should burn, etc.

Thanks for the info. Interesting material. Appreciate the response.

Very nice,,,,, no burning up in the UP, fire danger very high,,,, seeing the USFS fire trucks and personnel out, on patrol, nice to see,,,,,,,, doing a lot of trout fishing, but the woods could use a good soaking, very dry

Fire danger has been high to very high here too. Conditions are good then to burn. When it gets to Extreme they usually won't burn but there are some prescriptions that fit those conditions. About the only time they cannot burn is in Red Flag conditions. They might be burning in the UP but you haven't seen where.

Last year I was hunting some public land in northern Minnesota that was burnt off since we were last there. Mostly jack pine, some areas of it was dead before the burn. Ran into a DNR fire truck on patrol and talked to them some. I mentioned the burn area and said I was surprised they were able to burn such a large area. (several square miles) He said it was not a prescribed burn but they had wanted to burn most of that area. He said lightning started it.

From what I have heard, this is long overdue. Good to see.

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