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www.ncprescribedfirecouncil.org

NORTH CAROLINA PRESCRIBED FIRE COUNCIL NEWSLETTER

(Volume 2, Issue 3) Fall 2009

Prescribed Fire Awareness Week Planned

February 7-13, 2010

Rob Mickler and Cynthia Van Der Wiele, Co-chairs of the NC Rx Fire Council’s Regulatory, Policy and Environment Committee have been working with the Governor’s Policy Advisor on Environment to have the 2nd week in February 2010 officially proclaimed by Governor Purdue as the 1st annual “Prescribed Fire Awareness Week” in North Carolina. Along with the official Proclamation, Rob and Cynthia will be working with the NC Division of Forest Resources, NC Parks and Recreation, NC Wildlife Resources Commission, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Ft. Bragg, Sandhills Fire Council, the Fire Learning Networks, TNC-NC, private landowners, Montgomery Community College, NC State University, Duke University/Duke Forest, and a host of others to arrange a variety of activities across the state in order to highlight the importance and role of prescribed fire to legislators, the governor, governor’s policy advisors, and key cabinet members. Some of the activities proposed include educational and scientific posters at the Capitol Building Rotunda (with presentation/reception); tours and activities associated with Fire in the Lakes at Boiling Springs Lakes; Op-Eds in major NC newspapers; and other field activities and events in the piedmont, Uwharries, and Sandhills. For our first Prescribed Fire Awareness week to be a success, it will need YOUR participation! Because the General Assembly will not be in session, this affords the perfect opportunity for your agency to highlight and promote your prescribed fire activities among the legislators in your district. Please contact Rob and Cynthia for more information and to volunteer to coordinate activities.

Rob Mickler: rmickler@alionscience.com Cynthia Van Der Wiele: cynthia.vanderwiele@chathamnc.org

Thanks in advance!

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“One Message, Many Voices” Prescribed Fire Media Campaign

“One Message, Many Voices” is a media campaign being developed for the Southern Group of State Foresters, through Tall Timbers Research Station and a local ad agency in Tallahassee Florida. This media campaign has been developed to promote prescribed fire by “reframing our product (prescribed fire) to meet the customer’s needs.” Program goals include:

• Fewer misunderstandings about prescribed fire

– Fewer false reports of wildfires

– Fewer complaints about smoke

• Greater policy support for prescribed fire

– More diligent commitment to prescribed fires

– Sufficient funding to keep forests and grasslands healthy

• Greater public understanding of prescribed fire

– Awareness of the benefits of prescribed fires

– Awareness that prescribed fires are professionally managed and controlled.

The strategy is to get people’s attention by offering them something they are seeking: A closer relationship with nature. Then pitch the importance of prescribed fire in the context of a web site about nature (VisitMyForest.org). This is currently under development. The primary web site is also under development: http://working.goodfires.org/. All this has been developed through the use of focus groups and market research. The initial grant from the US Forest Service, Region 8, was for $400,000, of which $205,000 will be used in the development of media campaign items, consisting of TV, Radio, and print materials. These are currently under development, and will be ready for review this coming January, 2010. This will leave $195,000 or $15,000 per state (13 states) to begin the roll out of this media campaign.

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First Annual State Foresters Prescribed Burning Award The team of County Ranger Phillip Inman, District Ranger Michael Hardison and District Forester Shane Hardee were recently selected as the recipients of the first annual State Forester’s Prescribed Burning Award. Wib Owen, State Forester, presented the award to the trio at the annual meeting of the Prescribed Fire Council on Tuesday, August 11. “Response to the new award was great and the award committee and I were really impressed.” Owen said. The team beat 16 other nominations that were received from six out of the N.C. Division of Forest Resources’ 13 districts across the state. In total there were 10 counties and 27 individual Forest Resources employees named in the nominations. “I was surprised and humbled to have been recommended for the award. I do consider it an honor to be selected in the company of Phillip and Shane,” Hardison said. Hardison says the district has been focused on prescribed burning for a long time and that it takes the support and effort of everyone. He added that the support folks, from county personnel to district staff to Regional staff, really deserve a lot of the credit because it has truly been a team effort. “I would also like to recognize the efforts of Gary Curcio. Gary is definitely the GURU when it comes to fire science,” Hardison said. “His fire projections through modeling, development of the FIRE RAWS program and smoke management considerations have provided a baseline for burn parameters that we currently use.” The recipients were described as individuals who have worked extremely hard in their district to promote prescribed burning despite the many obstacles they have had to overcome. Especially as the population rises in many of the coastal counties and more concerns are being raised over air quality, including in Brunswick County. To help alleviate the misconceptions of prescribed burning, these individuals spent many hours educating the public on the benefits of burning and working with partners. According to Owen the team has an overall philosophy that burning as a whole is the most cost effective ecological management and fire prevention tool. They are strong promoters of burning because of the benefits for tree crops, wildlife, native plants and animals and at the same time reducing the potential for wildfires. “They take on the challenge of burning with a sense of enthusiasm and professionalism,” Owen said. “It is not just the many acres available to be burned that have caused this team to be so successful in their burning. Rather, it is their drive to make it happen that has contributed to their success,” The actions of this team include a burning record of 1,493 acres in Brunswick County this year alone. They have also conducted growing season burns and a 500 acre

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experimental burn on organic soils with help from the Nature Conservancy and other state agencies. This burn demonstrated that the division can burn safely in these challenging fuels in a controlled manner. “The leadership on these burns was outstanding and they each have a great deal of knowledge to share on burns that have not normally been conducted by DFR,” Owen said.

Award winners left to right: Shane Hardee, Mike Hardison, and Philip Inman. State Forester Wib Owen Hardison knows firsthand the importance of prescribe burning as a management tool and as a fuel reduction method to aid in reducing wildfire intensities. District personnel work closely with private landowners who are interested in promoting growing season burns and with The Nature Conservancy on experimental burns in Pocosin fuels. It’s these opportunities that allow the team to enhance their knowledge of these type burns as well as the criteria needed for burns to be conducted successfully. Hardison admits there have been growing pains along the way. “Prescribed burning has been a viable tool for our division for quite some time. I think we must always be ever mindful of proper pre-planning and potential impact to the general public with our burn decisions,” Hardison said. “The successful burns are noteworthy. It’s the burns that go south without proper planning that people remember.” The team encourages burning whether it is winter or growing season or site prep because they know how critical it is to have and continue to develop burning programs, even when it is not popular among the public. Their work has helped to increase species such as the Venus flytraps and pitcher plants. “Few folks have done more for burning than this drip torch toting team whose interests are to protect the state's natural resources as well as all those who enjoy them,” Owen said. “The committee felt like all of the nominees are well deserving of recognition. All had overcome obstacles to accomplish prescribed burning. All had good relationships with landowners and partners and most all are engaged in education. It was hard to pick just one.”

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Owen added that all of the nominees received great accolades and that they seem to define what makes a successful prescribed burner and prescribed burning program, including their ability to rise to the challenge to plan and organize appropriately to put the landowner's goals and objectives first. The nominees were often commended for their ability to educate landowners, community, and hunt club members on the many benefits of burning.

QUOTES FROM WIB OWEN, STATE FORESTER, ABOUT THE MEMBERS OF THE WINNING TEAM

As the District Forester, Shane Hardee sets an example that burning is important by leading burns for DFR as well as on his family's farm. He looks for burning opportunities and monitors the weather forecasts. On good burn days, he calls his staff and encourages them to burn. On category one burn days, he is in touch with the National Weather Service to see if possible burn windows can be granted. These calls have lead to several additional burn opportunities for DFR as well as other burners. Shane has been commended by National Weather Service staff for providing feedback on their weather forecasts after burns which helps increase the Weather Service’s forecasting accuracy. Shane is a also very effective in working with local government staff and is held in highest esteem by town officials based on his handling of an escaped wildfire and working with the town officials on burning ordinances. Mike Hardison, District Ranger makes and provides key contacts for burning as well as finding resources available to help with burns. He works proactively, writing plans, establishing fire lines, and serving as burn boss. He works hard to train individuals to burn to insure that there are always qualified people on a burn. Mike is dependable and very safety conscious when it comes to burning. County Ranger Phillip Inman works hard to get the job done. Along with the others he has worked to support burning on land that was formerly in industrial ownership. In 2009 they burned 10 stands totaling over 1,170 acres. Four of the stands contain Cooley's meadowrue, an endangered plant that requires periodic burning. He assisted in developing a burning plan to enhance habitat for this plant.

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Prescribed Fire in an Urban Setting By Kenneth A. Bridle, Ph.D., Stewardship Director, Piedmont Land Conservancy

Piedmont Land Conservancy works in the nine northwest Piedmont counties in North Carolina. One of the most unique and significant easements that PLC holds is on the 98 acres of land which now composes nature based Price Park in Greensboro. The property was previously a private club for the Jefferson Pilot Company based in Greensboro and was a mixture of some mature hardwood forest, early successional pine forest, creek corridor, several wetlands and about 25 acres of open meadows. The property was purchased and encumbered with an easement that allows for limited trails and park infrastructure, prohibits increases in impervious surface, and promotes the use of native plants, wildlife habitat management and environmental education. No playgrounds, ball fields or other sports facilities are allowed. The old Jefferson Pilot clubhouse building, abandoned at the time of purchase, was replaced with a branch of the Greensboro Public Library. The new Kathleen Clay Edwards Branch library has an environmental education theme and is built to take advantage of the views of the woods, pond, meadows and wetlands that surround the building. As a result of this library being sited in a public park, it has become one of the most visited libraries and parks in Greensboro. The location and facilities also make it a natural home location for many environmental groups which are natural partners in the management of the site. These groups have built nature trail interpretive signs, a chimney swift tower, bat and bluebird boxes, native plant bird and butterfly plantings, rain gardens and other projects are in the works. The Greensboro Parks and Recreation department sees this site as a good location to partner with others to explore the management of invasive species, wildlife habitat management and ways to make a nature based park better for the public and the species that live there. With that background we (PLC and Greensboro Parks and Recreation) are in the process of developing a management plan for the site that incorporates all the interests of the environmental partners, the needs of Parks & Recreation and the library. The area that is the focus of this article is the open upland meadows. We know that most of this meadow has been grazed at least back to 1905 and probably earlier. Plant surveys have indicated the presence of many non-native weedy species typical of old pastures and some woody invasive exotics that have become established since the last grazing animals were removed about 20 years ago. For the past ten years the site has only been mowed each March just before the site was used for a Battle of Guilford Courthouse reenactment. Two years ago the revolutionary war buffs found another more suitable location and that left us to consider more thoughtful management of the site. Bird counts have showed that these areas have been home to a few eastern meadowlarks and other grassland birds over the years but the habitat was only marginal. It was decided two years ago that one of the tools that could be used to restore these meadows to more of a natural prairie type of vegetation and wildlife habitat is fire. The utility of fire is well known to several of us on the Price Park management team and

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PLC has several years of experience burning as part of the restoration of some old cattle pastures in a nature preserve we own in rural Surry County. We are also familiar with the long history of burning forest blocks at the Piedmont Environmental Center which is also in Guilford County. The Piedmont Environmental Center is located on several hundred acres of city owned land on the west side of High Point Lake. Dick Thomas the Executive Director of the center previously worked at Weymouth Woods and has experience with the use of fire managing forest lands in the Sandhills. He initiated a program of prescribed fires to manage some of the forests of the Piedmont Environmental Center over 20 years ago. The first burns got some positive press but since these fires burn in woods mostly out of sight of any neighbors the public notice has waned. Price Park is quite different than the Piedmont Environmental Center. While the forests of the Environmental Center are out of public view, the meadows of Price Park are highly visible. The Price Park prescribed burn site is bordered on the north and west sides by busy streets lined with shopping centers and business parks. On the east side of the site is a long established residential neighborhood. On the south side is a new elementary school. Since the main road along the west edge of the site is on a ridge line it makes the entire open meadow visible from thousands of commuters each day. Greensboro airport is also only two miles to the west.

Since one of the guiding principles of Price Park is public environmental education the close proximity of all these people and the high visibility of the site is seen as positive. Any management practice that we use or demonstrate at this site is noticed, commented on and evaluated by the public. They watch the routine activities like mowing, herbicide spraying, tree work and any digging on site and they call PLC or Parks and Recreation if they have questions. As a result we know that non-routine best management practices like prescribed burning will be noticed by the public and the media and can be the basis of many teachable moments.

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To get the most out of the educational aspects of the burn several things were done: We wrote press releases to all the local media about the upcoming burn and invited folks to come and watch. We set up an e-mail list serve to provide updates to folks who expressed an interest in wanting to be informed. We also put in a prescribed burn display in the lobby of the Price Park library and kept the environmental educator on the library staff informed so she could answer questions. The Parks and Recreation department also has an e-mail database of neighborhood groups and concerned citizens and we sent our press release and a digital version of the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Councils brochure to everyone on that list in the Price Park region of the city. We also retained the services of a consulting forester to be the burn boss for the project. With his assistance we had a series of onsite planning meetings with the PLC staff, Parks and Recreation staff of several divisions, NC Forest Service, representatives of the T. Gilbert Pearson Audubon chapter and the Triad Chapter of the NC Native Plant Society. The Greensboro Fire Marshal provided a permit for the burn after a phone conversation. The permit required that the Greensboro Fire Department have a tanker on site and ultimately our interaction with the fire department evolved into them bringing out more equipment and fire fighters than we actually needed. They were getting continuing education credit for being there. The Greensboro Police Department has a Community Assistance Division who provided traffic control along the highways and were very accommodating of our loose schedule. Since there is an elementary school just across the street from the burn site there was significant concern addressed about getting them involved. Since school was out during much of the early summer planning meetings we never got much response from them. Ultimately we thought it best to burn in the third week of August to avoid the first week of school. We tried to do the burn the week before school but got rained out. With school starting the following week we finally went over and sought out the principal and some of the staff who seemed interested to have this as an experience for their fourth and fifth graders. The school’s only concern was that the burn be over by two pm when the parents arrived to take students home. Specifically related to the prescribed burn of the large meadow we decided to break it into two or three cells. This is partially to leave big sections un-burned at any one time for wildlife habitat and also gives us the opportunity to start on an easy block with limited obstructions first and then move to more complex sites as our team and neighborhood gain experience and comfort level. The first 10 acre block to be burned is bordered on three sides by active roads (two city streets and a school entrance drive), and the clubhouse access road that once went through the park but is no longer used and has had its pavement recently removed. There are only a few large cedar trees along one edge and no other obstacles to burning. The biggest problem we knew we would encounter at a Price Park prescribed burn would be smoke management. To help with that problem we did two things. First we decided that we would burn in the midsummer when the chances were best for calm

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winds and the chance for a transport height that would take the smoke out away from the area. Second we knew that there were significant areas in the meadow that had a dominance of fescue grass that would be green and thick at the time of the burn. So we mowed these areas in late March and then waited till the end of April and sprayed all the re-growth with Roundup using an ATV mounted boom sprayer. This killed the fescue and by the time of the burn it was dry and other herbs and grasses were coming through. These actions also cut down the smoke from the burn but also left some areas with not much fuel to propagate the fire. The city mows a 15 foot buffer strip around the road edges which keeps this portion of the meadow a well manicured lawn. Inside of this grass strip we used a tractor mounted rototiller to construct a fire line. A five and a half foot wide band was tilled all the way around the burn block about a month before the burn. This allowed us to have a bare dirt fire break which would not be an obstruction to either the city mowers or our plans to overseed the burn area with a seed drill. We also have some areas that are thick with lespedeza before the burn and the city brought out a mower to mow them before they flowered. The mowed lespedeza thatch burned very nicely but the plants have started to grow back and we plan on spraying the resprouts with Triclopyr late September. We started the burn with backfires against the wind moving upslope on August 20 but after about 45 minutes of stripping in fire a sudden thunderstorm drenched our efforts. By the following week the site had dried, the humidity and winds were low and the transport height was sufficient to move the smoke out of the area. We put out the word by phone and e-mail on Wednesday night that we possibly might be burning at mid-day on Thursday the 27th. At the appointed time the conditions looked right and we lit the torches just as the fire department arrived on site. The police arrived about the same time as did two television crews, two newspaper reporters, a photographer and a water color artist! Standing along the curb on the school side of the street were all the classes of fourth and fifth graders from Jefferson Elementary School. Several park visitors and library patrons came over to watch along with some folks from the adjoining neighborhood and some representatives of the environmental groups who partner with us at Price Park. The fire burned quickly, the smoke went straight up and the entire event was over in 45 min. By the time the parents arrived to pick up the kids the site was black but not even hot. We plan on over seeding the site in mid October with a mixture of native warm season grasses and herbs. Depending on our ability to find additional funds to pay for more prescribed burns and seeding we would like to burn the other half of the large meadow next spring and then over seed that one also. Subsequent burns of the site that we did this summer could be in the early spring of 2011 depending on the growth of our seed mix. There are additional blocks that might benefit from burning at Price Park including a seven acre Bird and Butterfly Meadow, a three acre wet meadow and several blocks in the pine woods that would benefit from fuel reduction, invasive species control and thinning. We hope that this site can become a training ground for city staff and other

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potential practitioners as well as a good place for the public to learn about prescribed fire and other habitat management that seems necessary for restoring ecological function to our urban landscapes. If anyone would like to assist these efforts at Price Park with funding or expertise please feel free to contact me at kbridle@piedmontland.org.

Sparks Fly Over Chicago’s ‘Last Urban Forests’

By Erika Brekke March 05, 2009 http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=119903 The above link, in which protesters are opposing the use of fire in an urban park in Chicago, illustrates the important role of reaching local citizens with education and outreach when planning prescribed burns. Quote from Urban Wildlife Coalition web site: “Help Protect Our Forest Preserves from Restoration”

Reintroducing Fire to an Urban Park

The 6,000-acre William B. Umstead State Park, situated between Raleigh, Durham, Cary, and Research Triangle Park, is bordered by I-40 to the south, RDU International Airport to the west, Highway 70 to the north, and residential housing developments to the east. Once a patchwork of homesteads and eroded farmland, its pine and mixed hardwood forests are slowly regenerating, and serve as a refuge for wildlife and humans alike. The N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation conducted its first ever prescribed burn in William B. Umstead State Park in January 2008 without a hitch, followed by a second burn in March 2009. The division has been conducting prescribed burns for decades, but due to the urban location and perceived smoke management issues involved with burning at Umstead, it has remained fire-suppressed since its inception in 1937. The lack of fire, combined with the effects of multiple hurricanes and ice storms in recent years, have resulted in high fuel loads in much of the park. One of the burn program’s primary goals is to reduce fuel levels to prevent catastrophic wildfires, a goal well supported by park neighbors. In addition, prescribed fires will increase forest health and improve habitat for a population of federally endangered Michaux’s sumac (Rhus michauxii) in the park.

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Several key factors made the initial burns at Umstead successful , not the least of which was a supportive park superintendent with prescribed burn experience. Additionally, the Division of Parks and Recreation put out a news release prior to the burns. The practice will continue for each future burn. The news releases raised public awareness and alleviated concerns regarding risks or inconveniences. Park staff also made a concerted effort to communicate directly with adjacent neighbors, including officials at RDU Airport. A well-trained and dedicated seasonal burn crew, the first of its kind for State Parks, facilitated the larger second burn in 2009, allowing for faster ignition operations and smoke dissipation. A dedicated burn crew also made it possible to burn on days when park staff had prior commitments. The division’s ecological burn coordinator is working to expand existing burn units and increase the acreage under prescription in the park, so that additional dormant season burns may be conducted when the seasonal crew returns this winter.

Nature Conservancy Plans Bluff Mountain Burn The Bluff Mountain Preserve in Ashe County is one of The Nature Conservancy’s crown jewels. Bluff is one of the most significant natural areas in the Southeast. In just a few steps, you can walk from a Carolina hemlock forest to a dwarf red oak – white oak forest to a rare flat-rock plant community. But, Bluff is changing. The chestnuts that once dominated the canopy were killed by the chestnut blight in the early 1900s. The chestnuts were replaced by oaks, which need an open understory to grow. The oaks have reached maturity, but oak seedlings aren’t getting the light they need to grow because they are being shaded out by maples, mountain laurel and rhododendrons. Over time, this process will change the entire ecosystem. That’s why The Nature Conservancy plans to bring fire to Bluff sometime this coming spring. The area hasn’t been burned in recent memory, and there isn’t a lot of controlled burning in northwest North Carolina. Research in the Virginia mountains north of Bluff and other southeastern states show that fire played a key role in maintaining the open woodland character in the Appalachians until the turn of the century. The Nature Conservancy is working with researchers at Bluff Mountain to look at the forest stand history and has set-up plots to monitor and assess effects of the 80-acre experimental controlled burn in a high elevation red oak forest. As part of their homework for the Bluff burn, Conservancy staffers have looked at other similar areas that have benefitted from controlled burns. One of those places is Big Spring Bog Natural Area in the mountains of southwest Virginia – about an hour north of Bluff.

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Claiborne Woodall, Southwest Region Steward for Virginia’s Department of Conservation and Recreation, recently hosted a visit by Margit Bucher, who directs the Conservancy’s fire program, and other staffers. Woodall walked visitors around the bog, which is now an open glade dotted with wildflowers and the butterflies and bees that are drawn to them. This wasn’t the way Woodall found the area during his first visit in 1998. He says it took him an hour to locate what was left of the bog. After crawling through thick underbrush on his hands and knees, he finally located it – two tiny little herbaceous openings not more than a couple of hundred square feet. The Grayson County bog’s restoration is largely due to the use of fire on the landscape. Big Spring Bog and Bluff Mountain have many of the same wildflowers, including Gray’s lily and death-camass. According to Woodall, those flowers have benefitted from controlled burning. “Death-camass existed here in the early 90s, but it was gone by 1998,” Woodall explains. “After our first burn, we counted 30 plants. After the second burn, there were 100 plants.” He says Gray’s lily came back “by the hundreds” after fire.

Death-camass is one bog species that will benefit from fire at the Bluff Mountain

Claiborne Woodall, Southwest Regional Steward for Virginia’s Department of Conservation and Recreation and Margit Bucher, NCTNC, at the Big Spring Bog Natural Area

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The bog came close to totally closing in as the full range of nasty invasives from microstegium to multiflora rose choked the bog. The area was also full of trees, which were shading out the wildflowers and causing other problems as well. “The red maple and pines were sucking up the water,” Woodall says. In 2002 Virginia’s state ecologist visited the site and sounded the alarm, Woodall explains. “The stuff was blinking out. It was screaming this need to be burned. The ecologist was shocked at what he saw. He said we better do something or just sell the property, because there would be no reason for us to have it.” “You couldn’t see from here to there,” says Woodall, pointing to a crop of wildflowers 150 feet away. That was a sad state for an area that Woodall says contains a higher concentration of natural resources than anywhere else in Virginia. The bog has been burned in 2007 and again in 2008. The plan is to continue burning every two or three years until the bog is more fully restored and then switch to a five to seven year interval for maintenance. In the meantime, Woodall relishes every moment he gets in the bog. Those days of crashing around on his hands and knees looking for the bog are long gone. Instead, he can stand in the center of the bog and point to a four acre area that is beginning to look like a textbook picture of an Appalachian mountain bog. Bucher hopes that the Bluff Mountain burn will be another success story for controlled burning. Preparing for the 2010 burn will occupy a large portion of her time in the coming months.

Lessons from the Fire Line By Terry Sharpe

During the spring of 2009 I participated in a number of prescribed burns on private lands in the southern Piedmont and Sandhills. As burns go, ours were relatively simple. No huge pocosins, no urban areas, no 500 acre blocks, or schools; just a few houses and lightly traveled highways. Our burns were done through an informal coop where friends and neighbors get together to help each other. We had a good year with no major escapes, injuries, or property losses. But it seems that every burn presents an opportunity for learning. So I put together the following “lessons from the fire line,” a checklist to help us in the future and thought they may be of interest to other burners. Following is the 2009 list of close calls and potential blunders: Fire lines can only be too narrow . Though no serious escapes, we had some close calls, one notable “jump” stemmed from using an access road for a fire line. The bare wheel ruts had a strip of grass in the middle that allowed our back fire to leap frog

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across the line. One can’t prescribe a fire line width, because conditions vary so much, but having a fuel free line is critical. Next time we will disk that road. Don’t be afraid to bail. If you are not comfortable don’t be afraid to put the burn off until conditions are better, you have had time to take care of potential problems, or you can gather adequate resources. We arrived at one site, ready to burn, but found heavy fuels and dead snags adjacent to the line that the landowner had prepared and just across the line and downwind an occupied home with a pine straw covered yard. We put this one off until we were able to take care of the dead snags and catch the wind in a more desirable direction. Place your resources where they can do you the most good. People like to visit and it seems that they always gravitate toward each other on the fire line. A good fire boss keeps his or her crew members stationed at strategic points so that the lines are covered and any problem can be recognized and dealt with promptly. Provide your crew with time to visit at the weeny roast following the burn. Think before you light. Taking care of dead snags or valuables inside the line before the fire is ignited will lead to a safer burn with less energy expended and smoke inhaled. It is no fun to remember the pile of creosoted fence posts when you see the black smoke and you don’t want to chance a flat tractor tire while clearing flaming debris from around a pile of logging slash. Do a quick cost benefit analysis. Ok, is it really worth riding into a burn block after it is burning with a $20,000 piece of equipment to save a $20.00 chicken coop? Nope…. Plastic melts, burns, and smokes. Seems like plastic is everywhere these days. Plastic fiber optic markers, guy wire markers, and culverts don’t hold up well in a fire maintained ecosystem. Scout them out and rake around them before you light the fire. We had a good year, as none of our small problems blew up into big ones, but we will be smart if we acknowledge them and work to avoid similar potential problems in the future. Hope that our list will be of value as you plan and conduct burns and I encourage you to share your list for a future issue. Wishing each of you a safe and productive burning season.

Consortia for Regional Fire Science Delivery and Ou treach

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has funded nine Regional Science Delivery and Outreach Projects for the purpose of developing plans for consortia of fire managers and scientists in different regions of the US that will increase the application of fire research results in all aspects of fire management. The North Carolina Prescribed Fire

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Council (NCPFC) is a participating partner in the JFSP project to develop these consortia. The NCPFC is involved with two groups for proposals involving North Carolina: “ Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists” (Principal Investigator – Tom Waldrop) and “Putting Fire Science on the Ground – Increasing the Southern Exposure” (Principal Investigator – Alan Long).

Tom Waldrop (Southern Research Station, Clemson, SC) is one of the nine investigators from around the country who was invited to submit a proposal for funding to support Fire Science Delivery. When completed, the proposal will develop the Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists (CAFMS). Major partners for CAFMS will be the US Forest Service, state and local land management agencies, the Nature Conservancy, Prescribed Fire Councils, and other interested government and non-government groups. CAFMS will include fire managers along with government and university scientists throughout the Appalachian region which stretches from Pennsylvania to Alabama. Three CAFMS workshops are being held throughout the Appalachian region to discuss effective methods of Fire Science Delivery. One was held in Asheville, NC on September 16 and 17, 2009. Others are scheduled in Athens, OH on October 6 and 7, 2009 and Charlottesville, VA on November 18 and 19, 2009. These workshops will help to prepare a final proposal to JFSP for the science delivery consortium by identifying what we have, what we want, and what is realistic. Registration and locations for workshops can be found on the Southern Research Station homepage: http://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/. The first CAFMS workshop was a great success with 18 researchers and 14 managers attending from 10 different states, including NCPFC Chair Dean Simon and other NCPFC members. Many limitations of communication styles were discussed. It became clear that everyone is short on time and that we all digest information in different ways. There will be no single solution to solve the problem of fire science delivery. A primary deliverable for CAFMS would be research syntheses of fire effects on multiple ecosystems. Meetings, workshops, road trips, and other means of promoting communication among scientists and managers will be used to deliver science results and identify management needs. Future workshops will discuss the same problems but with different groups of fire managers and researchers. The other consortium project, whose regional focus is southern pine ecosystems in the southeastern Piedmont and Coastal Plain from Texas to Virginia, is being led by a team from the University of Florida (UF) and NC State University (NCSU), with Alan Long of UF as Principal Investigator. The UF-NCSU team held a Focus Group meeting in Raleigh, NC on Sept. 22, 2009, following the NCPFC Steering Committee Meeting, to get input on how individuals involved in fire (control, prescribed burning, ecological effects, human interactions, etc.) receive and use fire science information. Sixteen individuals, including NCPFC Chair Dean Simon and other NCPFC members, participated in the Focus Group meeting, from a diverse group of organizations and viewpoints. Agencies and perspectives represented included US Fish and Wildlife

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Service, US Forest Service, NC State Parks, NC Division of Forest Resources, NC Wildlife Resources Commission, US Dept of Navy, NC Natural Heritage Program, State Climate Office, NCSU Forestry Extension, Fayetteville State University, a county planning organization, a fire researcher, and a private landowner. At the Focus Group meeting for this consortium, participants provided feedback about the kind of fire information that managers use and would like to have. Fire weather information, such as mixing height, relative humidity ranges, surface winds, and temperature ranges, were deemed to be important by most participants; both historic data and forecasts were desired. Other needed fire information includes: site-specific information on fuel loads, soil types, and fuel moisture; defined risk parameters for burning of private land and small areas that give a "safe window" for a burn; ecological effects of different fire regimes in different ecosystems, especially some Piedmont systems and pocosins; ecological information such as locations of sensitive populations and communities; smoke modeling and emissions projections; and GIS datasets of all kinds. Fire information that participants indicated they would like to have includes: real-time log or map of where others are burning on the same day, to inform smoke issues; spatially explicit information on weather, fuel modeling and consumption at a burn-unit scale; better technical support for predictive tools, so that scientists are responsive to fire managers’ identification of problems; and improved access to prescribed fire outreach information for landowners, the general public, and structural firefighters. Participants identified several beneficial functions that a regional consortium could serve: summarize, simplify, and consolidate fire information and make it available in several formats; create a clearinghouse of lessons learned in fire management; develop a single website portal that includes a fire science library site with standards and information for every state, links to other sources, and fills in gaps; make information distribution active (i.e., feeds), not passive; and create more opportunities for mixing of fire managers and scientists. The next step in the process of needs assessment for this project will be an on-line survey of a much larger audience of people who use fire science in the Southeast. The survey will be distributed in late October. As these two consortia will complement each other and benefit the entire state of North Carolina, the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council is supporting and endorsing both of these proposals. These two consortia complement each other: one establishing a consortium of fire science providers and managers to enhance fire science delivery and adoption for the western (mountain) region of our state (part of the southern Appalachian region) and the other for the central and eastern part of North Carolina (included in the southern yellow pine region).

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NC Prescribed Fire Council Holds 4th Annual Meeting

Dean Simon symbolically passes the torch to incoming Fire Council Chair Doug Sprouse.

Doug will begin his term in March, 2010.

The 4th Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council (NCPFC) was held on August 11, 2009 at the Moore County Agricultural Center in Carthage, NC and was a great success. A total of 96 people attended from across the state. Following opening remarks by NCPFC Chair Dean Simon, a variety of programs were presented by invited speakers and provided important and timely information for prescribed burners as well as initiated interesting discussions regarding fire related issues in the state. Vince Carver (U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service) presented a program on Appropriate Management Response at the Evans Road Fire, followed by a presentation by Emillie Cooper (American Forest Foundation) about her work with Prescribed Fire Cooperatives. Following the morning break, a Success Story by the Sandhills Prescribed Fire Council was presented by Mike Norris (The Nature Conservancy). We then heard about Ft. Bragg Burning Issues from Joe Stancar (U. S. Army). NCPFC Subcommittees met over lunch and provided updates after lunch. The afternoon presentations included a discussion of Contract Burning in the Sandhills by John Ward (Applied Services and Information Systems), the Sandhills Game Land Fire Program by Chris Jordan (N. C. Wildlife Resources Commission), the Weymouth Woods Burning Program over the last 35 years by Scott Hartley (N. C. Division of Parks and

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Recreation), and the “One Message – Many Voices” prescribed fire media campaign by Debbie Crane (The Nature Conservancy). The meeting closed with presentations of the first annual State Forester’s Prescribed Burning Award from N. C. Division of Forest Resources State Forester Wib Owen to the team of County Ranger Phillip Inman, District Ranger Michael Hardison, and District Forester Shane Hardee. Then, NCPFC Chair Dean Simon presented the Council’s Prescribed Burner of the Year Award to John Ann Shearer for “service to the Council and outstanding support for the continued use of prescribed fire as a land management tool in North Carolina”. Finally, there was a “passing of the torch” to Doug Sprouse as the incoming Chair. A big thank you is extended to Doug Sprouse, Jim Gray, and all others involved in arranging the meeting and to the N. C. Division of Forest Resources and N. C. Association of Consulting Foresters for providing funding for the meeting. Additionally, thanks to all attendees for their participation and we look forward to seeing everyone at next year’s annual meeting which will be in the coastal region of the state.

2009 Prescribed Burner of the Year Award John Ann Shearer received the Council’s 2009 Prescribed Burner of the Year Award during the Annual Meeting in Carthage. John Ann has been a tireless and effective ambassador for prescribed fire in North Carolina and has been involved in the Council going back to 2002 when it was an informal group called the "NC Fire Team." Among the many official and unofficial capacities that John Ann has served the council are:

� helped with planning and operation at nearly every one of our annual meetings. � an enthusiastic member of the steering committee. � editor of our newsletter. � fielded requests for information or assistance from landowners and burners. � served as behind the scenes one person “oversight committee” for the Chairman

on numerous occasions. � Served on the State Foresters Prescribed Burning Award committee

Join us in thanking John Ann for her support of the Council.

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Prescribed Fire Council Web Page

http://ncprescribedfirecouncil.org/ Under the creative efforts of our new webmaster Susan Miller, the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council website has a new look. The hope is the new design will be easier to read and also make it easier to find information. We are still working on cleaning up and refining some links. The Education and Outreach Committee encourages all Council members to send in any comments on the website - what you like, don't like, or what's missing - to Kelley Van Druten (kelley_vandruten@fws.gov). The committee is also working to add some new features that will give members reason to keep checking the site. Features in progress include a "Frequently Asked Questions" page and a "Recent Events" page. We'll send out more information as these pages and others are developed.

2009 PRESCRIBED FIRE COUNCIL LEADERS

Dean Simon Chair dean.simon@ncwildlife.org

Doug Sprouse Vice-Chair/Chair Elect doug.sprouse@ncdenr.gov

Terry Sharpe Past Chair sharpetl@etinternet.net

Faren Wolter Secretary-Treasurer fwolter@uncfsu.edu

Jim Gray At-large steering committee Jmgray1@earthlink.net

Kevin Harvell At-large steering committee Kevin.harvell@ncdenr.gov

Bart Kicklighter At-large steering committee bkicklighter@fs.fed.us

Chris Moorman At-large steering committee chris_moorman@ncsu.edu

Brent Wilson At-large steering committee brent.wilson@ncwildlife.org

John Isenhour At-large steering committee john.isenhour@nc.usda.gov

Scott Hartley At-large steering committee scott.hartley@ncdenr.gov

Erica Taecker At-large steering committee etaecker@fs.fed.us

Kelley VanDruten Chair, Education and Outreach kelley_vandruten@fws.gov

Vacant Chair, Data Collection

Bob Mickler Co-Chair, Policy committee rmickler@alionscience.com

Cynthia Van Der Wiele Co-Chair, Policy committee cynthia.vanderwiele@chathamnc.org

Margit Bucher Chair, Implementation mbucher@tnc.org

Mark Megalos Chair, Membership mark.megalos@ncsu.edu

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NOMINATIONS NEEDED

The North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council is seeking and accepting nominations for the 2010 Vice-Chair position and four (4) At-large Steering Committee members to serve 2-year terms. The election will be held around the first of the year and winners will begin serving March 1, 2010. The duties of the Vice-Chair are to:

� Be a member of the Steering Committee for one year before assuming the Chair position.

� Serve in the absence of the Chair. � Chair the Annual Meeting Subcommittee.

At-large Members of the Steering Committee should be willing to participate in the annual meeting and attend Steering Committee meetings throughout the year and to send a designee to represent them if they are unable to attend a meeting. Nominations should be submitted to Doug Sprouse (doug.sprouse@ncdenr.gov) by December 4, 2009. Additionally, the Council is still seeking a Chair for the Data Collection and Information Subcommittee. The Data Collection and Information subcommittee gathers data on where prescribed burning in NC currently is conducted (location, fire frequency, burning entity, goals, etc.), delineates where more prescribed burning would be beneficial to natural resources, and identifies the impediments to implementing prescribed burning in maintaining ecosystem health. If you would be willing to chair this subcommittee, please contact Doug Sprouse.

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES

NC Certified Burner Course

October 27-28 Montgomery Community College, Troy, NC

Online registration. For more information,

contact Melinda Gore at 919-857-4825

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RX-410 Smoke Management Techniques

Haw River State Park 11/16-19/2009.

The course will be offered jointly by NCDFR and TNC. Cost approx $60/day for room and board, no tuition. It will be advertised through DFR and TNC websites in next few

weeks. http://www.dfr.state.nc.us/education/nwcg_training.asp

http://www.tncfire.org/training_fire.htm

AFE 4th International Congress: 2009 Fire Ecology and Management

Fire as a Global Process November 30th - December 4th, 2009

Savannah, GA

The Association for Fire Ecology announces that Early Bird Registration is closing October 15th for the 4th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress.

Please register online at: www.fireecology.net/Congress09/Home.html. Be sure to register for your accommodations online at: www.fireecology.net/Congress09/Hotels to

reserve your Fire Congress participant.

Don’t forget to register for one of the workshops a nd field trips:

Workshops: BehavePlus Fire Behavior Modeling System

Evaluating Fire Hazard Gains vs. Environmental Losses after Fuel Treatments in the WUI

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) Program Smoke Modeling

Suite of Fuel Management Tools

Field Trips: Francis Marion National Forest

Joseph W. Jones Ecological Research Center at Ichauway Little St. Simons Island

Moody Forest Natural Area Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

Wassaw Island National Wildlife Refuge

http://www.fireecology.net/Congress09/SocialProgram

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Contact info update needed for Certified Burners

Certified burners please visit the NCDFR Website at: www.dfr.state.nc.us

In the lower right corner of the home page is a link to Certified Burner update which will take you to a page with the information below.

The NCDFR is attempting to update contact information for persons who have

successfully undergone training required to become a state-recognized certified burner as defined in the North Carolina Prescribed Burning Act. If you have undergone such

training and wish to continue to be listed with the division as a certified burn boss, please fill out the form on this page.

If you are interested in becoming a certified burner, or are uncertain of your certification status, please contact Melinda Gore at 919-857-4825.

7th Eastern Native Grass Symposium

“Native Grasses on Working and Natural Landscape October 5-8, 2010

Please mark your calendars and save the date! The symposium will be held at the

Knoxville Marriott (http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/tysmc-knoxville-marriott/). We are developing a broad agenda with a special emphasis on working landscapes that will

include sessions on:

Forage Biofuels

Ecosystem Restoration Wildlife Management

Seed Production/Landscaping Land Reclamation (Mines, landfills, etc)

and other topics of interest for native grasses in the eastern US (and Canada). More

information regarding field trips, a call for papers, a more detailed agenda, and registration will be forthcoming.

Please save the date and join us in East Tennessee!

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Plants on Fire

Southern blazing star, Liatris squarrulosa (Asteraceae) by Johnny Randall, Ph.D., Assistant Director, North Carolina Botanical Garden,

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Southern blazing star was named for its exuberant inflorescence, but it would be equally appropriate for its name to have come from the blazing fires that make it a star in the October landscape. In our part of the country there are approximately 25 Liatris species and between 40 and 50 species in North America. Although Southern blazing star’s range looks extensive on a distribution map – covering much of the Eastern US to Texas and north to the Great Lakes – you’ll most often find this species clinging to the roadside/woodland margin. Like most Liatris species, Southern blazing star occurs in glades, barrens, prairies, and savannas, where dense stands can make impressive displays, particularly where fire is frequent. Southern blazing star is also allied with the suite of shade intolerant fall-flowering herbaceous plants that once made up the once extensive Piedmont savanna ecosystem. One of our most gratifying ecosystem rehabilitation experiences included the Southern blazing star. A tract that had historically contained Southern blazing star and many of its fire-dependent cohorts had grown up in 25-year-old loblolly pines. Believing that there might be some recovery potential of these herbaceous plants, NC Plant Conservation Program and North Carolina Botanical Garden staff, with help from a dozen prison inmates, cut out the pines and hand carried these off the site. (We didn’t want to disturb the ground with heavy equipment for fear of disrupting what seeds and rootstocks might be in the soil.) We then burned the area in late winter to clear the duff and waited...

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It is difficult to describe the incredible progression – from spring through fall - the dozens of nearly lost savanna plants whose rootstocks had lain dormant for perhaps 20 years. The culmination of which was a stand of Southern blazing star - in the thousands - like no one (at least among baby boomers) has ever seen. And to think that all of this plant resurrection was made possible by just adding fire... I want to believe that there are many similar sites that have nearly succumbed to woody plant succession that can be similarly restored with proper fire management. The suite of shade-intolerant herbaceous plants that occupied the expansive Piedmont savannas is extensive and we must continue to take up the torch for these plants before it’s too late...

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RESEARCH UPDATES

The Stand Manager

The Stand Manager Newsletter is a technology transfer and outreach product of the Technical Development, Planning and Utilization Branch of the NC Division of Forest Resources (DFR). The newsletters contain timely articles and information on a variety of technical forest resource management topics of interest to professional foresters and technicians as well as landowners and other natural resource managers. Past issues have focused on hardwood and conifer silviculture, forest products and markets, nursery production and tree improvement, forest pests, non-native invasive species, wildland fire research and other topics. Our goal is to produce 2 to 3 issues each calendar year. We welcome your ideas and contributions for future article topics as well as overall improvement.

The June 09 issue contains an article with case history information on smoldering following a Green Swamp burn on organic soils.

http://www.dfr.state.nc.us/Managing_your_forest/stand_manager.htm

Fire in Eastern Oak Forests The proceedings of the 3rd fire in eastern oak forests conference is available on line at: http://treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/17287 The publication contains 10 full-length papers and 12 abstracts of posters that were presented at the 3rd Fire in Eastern Oak Forests conference, held in Carbondale, IL, May 20-22, 2008. The conference was attended by over 200 people from a variety of groups, including federal and state agencies, nongovernmental organizations, universities, and private citizens Publication Available Managing Working Lands for Northern Bobwhites The USDA NRCS Bobwhite Restoration Project, edited by Wes Burger and published by NRCS summarizes the results of a number of research efforts focused on creating and maintaining early succession habitats. The publication contains a wealth of information about the use of prescribed fire and prescribed fire in combination with other habitat management techniques. http://www.whmi.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/TheQuailReport.htm

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The illustration is credited to: Hart, E. from Managing the Forest and the Trees: A Private Landowner’s

Guide to Conservation Management of Longleaf Pine. Theo Davis Sons, Inc., Zebulon, NC. 37p. UP ROOTING THE WIREGRASS MYTH John C. Gilbert, John S. Kush and John P. McGuire Abstract: Aristida beyrichiana and Aristida stricta, commonly referred to as wiregrass, are both conditional understory species in the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) ecosystem. A common but misleading association exists between longleaf pine and wiregrass. The longleaf pine-wiregrass ecosystem is often used synonymously with the entire longleaf pine ecosystem. Another common misconception is that the presence of wiregrass is necessary to maintain the structure and function of the longleaf pine ecosystem. In fact, the understory of the longleaf pine ecosystem is composed of an extensive variety of species which is not consistently dominated by a single species. Wiregrass is one of the more well known of the understory bunchgrasses. An often forgotten but prominent understory component of the longleaf pine ecosystem is bluestem (Andropogon spp.). Bluestem is also referred to as broomsedge, broomstraw, beardgrass, and a variety of other common names. At least nine species of bluestem have been identified in the longleaf pine ecosystem. The range of bluestem stretches from Texas to Florida, north to Maine, and west to North Dakota, which blankets the range of the longleaf pine ecosystem. The presence of bluestem provides many aesthetic, commercial, and ecological values to the understory of longleaf pine stands. With extensive restoration efforts of the longleaf pine ecosystem underway, bluestem is a valuable understory component across the longleaf pine ecosystem. In Longleaf Alliance report #10 May 2007 in an article titled "Wiregrass-Overrated" and Longleaf Alliance report #8 May 2005 "Uprooting the Wiregrass Myth".

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Treating fire-excluded pine woodlands with chipping and burning may be valuable

restoration tools under some circumstances, but they are inappropriate tools for high-quality longleaf pine woodland, as pictured here. Credit: Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Chipping, Burning, and the Care of Southeastern Pin e Woodlands Summary Chipping as a land management tool is increasing in popularity of treating lands where burning presents problems, such as areas with ever growing populations along the wildland-urban interface. Escaped fire, and health and nuisance hazards from smoke have caused many managers to avoid burning altogether. The researchers found chipping by itself is likely not an adequate surrogate for fire, either for restoring ecosystems to desired plant communities, or for limiting fuels, changing fire behavior, and reducing smoke as a safeguard for future wildfires. However, chipping in conjunction with fire demonstrates mostly positive benefits for limiting fuels, changing fire behavior, and reducing smoke as a safeguard from future wildfires. A single chipping followed by resumption of frequent fire appears to be the best tradeoff between relatively minor but detectable negative impacts of chipping on plant biodiversity and the positive benefits of chipping in restoring fuels and structure to fire-excluded stands. In high quality sites with diverse ground layer vegetation and a history of frequent fire, chipping does more harm than good and is not recommended as a management option. Key Findings • Chipping is more appropriate when used as a pretreatment on long-unburned sites where ground layer plants have already been severely compromised. The benefits of reduced woody plant competition and open space for herbs outweighs the impacts to plants. • Repeated chipping is not appropriate as a fire surrogate for maintaining ground layer plants. • Chipping can protect against the possibility of dangerous wildfire, but it is not necessary to chip before resuming prescribed fire if initial prescribed burn conditions are carefully selected.

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• Chipping appeared to protect against dangerous wildfires as long as fuel heights remained low. • Only slightly more than half the area of the chipped plots burned as compared to upwards of 80 percent in the burn-only plots. • Chipping can greatly reduce smoke if burns are done when fuels have enough moisture. Fire Science Brief Issue 59 July 2009 Page 1: www.firescience.gov

!!!!ATTENTION MEMBERS!!!! If your e-mail address or other contact information has changed,

please contact Mark Megalos to update your records.

To join the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council , complete this form and mail it to the address below. You can also fax the form or contact Mark by e-mail. Mark Megalos, Ph.D. Box 8008, Extension Forestry

NC State University Raleigh, NC 27695-8008 FAX: 919-515-6883 PHONE: 919-513-1202 mark.megalos@ncsu.edu

NAME:

ORGANIZATION:

MAILING ADDRESS:

CITY: STATE: ZIP CODE:

PHONE: Email:

Are you interested in participating on a Council subcommittee? YES NO

If YES, which one? Education and Outreach _________

Policy and Regulatory _________

Membership _________

Implementation _________

Annual Meeting _________