Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Burning to improve habitat ???

How many of you regularly burn part or all of your land or lease to improve habitat for wildlife? How often? How large an area? What time of year? What species most benefit from the burning? Downsides? How did you learn burning technique?

Thanks, RS

I do not, but would like to do part of my land. The problem is that when it needs to be done, it is usually too wet to burn very well. Late winter and early spring would be the ideal time, but my particular piece of land that I would like to burn has standing water at that time. Not deep, but enough to hinder the burn. Rarely are conditions right. miles

we burn about 3500 acres a year, we like what we call the 80-80-20 system temp. under 80 deg. humidity 80% wind less than 20 mph, we spend a considerable amount of time with disc cutting our fire breaks getting ready to burn, we burn in a checker board pattern of about 500 acre sections.we keep a burn map and depend on it to keep us organized.

controlled burning helps all the plant life and wildlife on the ranch.

there 3 things land owners don't do enough of, BURN BURN AND BURN. Rio7

In the East they don't burn enough and all we end up with is poison ivy, jap honeysuckle and multiflora rose thickets.

http://rs53.pbsrc.com/albums/g61/BlueRIO7/IMG_2116_zpszjw9jeyv.jpg~c100

Truth.

But, I'd rather people pay me to shred it.

I used to burn 200-300 acres per year for a landowner, but it is hard to make any money doing it. Especially in populated areas, the smoke management issues limit the conditions and acreages that you can burn in without opening yourself up to lawsuits. I can't think of a wildlife species that doesn't benefit from prescribed burning.

Shredding costs to much in tractor fuel and labor,and shredding will not get all the woody plants up off the ground there is a lot of native plant seed that will not grow with out burning, I am happy I don't have to worry about our smoke pi$$ing anyone off. Rio7

would you call yourself a "burningman"?

There was a time when I thought I was pretty hot, I have been over that for awhile now. Rio7

What he said. I burn about 25 or so of the 70 acres on my farm. Most of the areas that I burn are in NWSG or fallow areas and I burn the NWSG on a 2 to 3 year rotation. Its amazing what this does to the landscape and my quail and rabbit numbers have improved dramatically since I started converting the fescue to NWSG and doing prescribed burns. And if you've never witnessed a field of big blue and indian grass burning your in for a treat!!!

NWSG ?

RS

Native warm season grasses according to google.



Naperville Women's Social Group doesn't sound quite right in this context...

Oh, you mean weeds.


RS

We used to, have not for years anymore.

But it sure did good.

And I"m always amazed as many grass fires as we run a year, not many folks burn anymore.

But where they do, it really helps the land out.

Want nice green grass? Burn it off and let a month go by and some rain... wow...

I do try to burn my garden off every fall though...

This approach makes a lot of sense.


When I was in Zambia quite a while ago, they burned every year.

I don't know how they decided when and how to burn, but I very much doubt that there was much analysis involved. We'd see the line of fire across the horizon in October when it was dry as a bone.

Of course, doing it every year resulted in rather low levels of brush and fires that were reasonably low. My understanding is that the wildlife could easily move away and that burning helped some seeds germinate. I'll have to check it out, since this area of NM high desert gets awfully susceptible to fires.

we started doing control burns last year and will continue for the next several years.
Our ranch is mainly operated as an elk and wildlife ranch in conjunction with NMDGF. The benefits are great especially if you have allot of old growth and or an overpopulation of small trees etc.. that choke off new growth and compete. We especially concentrate on Juniper (some people refer to as cedar).

Since we are bordered on three sides by NF we also use it to establish a firebreak between us and them

We had friends with some land close to Laredo.

They too burned about 1/3 every year... on rotation and it sure made a difference for the cattle and the wildlife.

The problem these days is no one wants to burn in national forest for the most part and when you finally get a fire... watch out.

They burned in state forest in E Texas a few years back, and as a matter of fact, I think they did just this past fall when I drove through. Makes a LOT of sense.

Isn't the burning component of land management a terrorist act? There are a couple good men doing time in Pendleton that performed a controlled burn on their lease that are serving their second prison sentence for the one fire.

Fire is an excellent management tool that isn't done enough.

(Other issues in that case being put on ignore) you have a point
I am not allowed to control burn my state leases w/o their permission per the lease agreement. It is pretty specific what I can and can not do, same as BLM.

It's a great tool if used competently.

Wildlife thrives