Experts Gather To Discuss Ways
To Educate Masses About Fire

By Colleen Schreiber

KERRVILLE — For better than a half a century, fire was viewed as a destructive menace to rangelands. Landowners were taught to fear fire, and for the most part cowmen couldn’t possibly comprehend why one would want to burn the grass when there were plenty of cows there who needed to eat it.

That elimination of fire ultimately helped set the stage for what many landowners face today on a large majority of native range: an encroachment of noxious, hard to kill brush species. That encroachment over the years has not only limited potential grazing capacity and destroyed habitat for native plants and animals, but it also increases the threat from wildfire.

Negative attitudes toward fire are slowly changing, however. Prescribed fire is becoming more accepted as an economically viable tool for management of the rangeland resource.

With that acceptance comes challenges, primarily from those who don’t yet understand fire and its benefits, not only to rangeland but to the entire ecosystem. Those who work with fire on a regular basis understand and appreciate the wide variety of limiting factors such as liability, the environmental community, and the push to eliminate or at least restrict the use of fire on a state or national level. Some of those very limiting factors brought a group of experts from a wide variety of state and federal agencies as well as private entities together at a recent prescribed burning workshop.

The objective of the workshop was to provide a format to discuss issues associated with prescribed burning. Some of the topics discussed included the liability issue, training programs, and the need for prescribed burning practitioners to police themselves rather than be policed by state or federal regulations.

Keith Blair, resource coordinator with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, over the last four years has conducted prescribed training for 264 people from various agencies, private landowners, volunteer fire departments, and the like. Blair has conducted prescribed burns in six different states and more than 40 counties in Texas. His topic addressed regulations and other reasons why prescribed burning is not more widely used in Texas.

"Sometimes I think we often forget why we got into this business in the first place," Blair told listeners. "The reason I did was because I love the land. I think that should be the attitude as we go through this workshop. We all need to work together regardless of who we work for."

Regulations dealing with prescribed fire, Blair said, are not limiting, per se.

"If you’re serious about burning, you can work with the regulations. If you’re not serious you can let any one of the regulations affect you."

State entities involved with regulations for prescribed fire include the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, the Texas Historical Commission Department of Antiquities Protection, and some counties which implement burn bans. Other entities or factors can regulate or limit the use of prescribed burning indirectly. They include endangered species and the liability aspect of fire.

The Outdoor Burning Rule, which became effective in September 1996, is perhaps the closest thing to a true regulation of prescribed fire. TNRCC has a "guidance document" which clearly defines the Outdoor Burning Rule. The agency describes the rule as the result of a "concerted effort to produce a streamlined, unambiguous rule that could be applied consistently and fairly throughout Texas." It says the purpose of the rule is "to protect the environment, promote public health and safety and avoid nuisance conditions through the sensible regulation of outdoor burning."

In essence, the rule states that outdoor burning is prohibited anywhere within the state of Texas, and then allows for exceptions for specific situations in which burning is necessary or does not pose a threat to the environment. Most any situation can be included in that "exception" category, which means that prescribed burning is not regulated in a very broad sense.

As for county burn bans, some can be worked through, Blair told listeners. Others are not so easy.

Blair spent the majority of his time focusing on the "other" factors that limit the use of burning in Texas. One of the main limiting factors, he said, is inadequate experience and training opportunities.

"We need more opportunities for individuals to gain hands-on experience on actual burns. Experience is more important than training. I truly believes this," Blair stressed.

He pointed out that typical training sessions teach individuals how to burn a couple of acres, yet most private landowners typically burn 1000 acres or more at time.

"We need to show them and train them for real situations," he reiterated.

Maintaining focus throughout the planning process down to lighting the match and conducting the "mop up" of the burn unit, he stressed, is perhaps the most critical aspect of conducting a safe and successful prescribed fire.

All too often, Blair said, those conducting the fires forget the importance of focusing. As an example he cited instances where ranchers who conduct their own burns might get up at four a.m. to work calves through the morning in time to be finished to set a head fire in the afternoon.

"That shows me that their focus isn’t on conducting that prescribed burn. I get up at four a.m. as well when planning to set a fire, but I’m watching the weather and going over the plan and the burn unit," Blair explained.

Another point is that those attending training workshops often learn how to conduct a burn using the best, most sophisticated equipment available; here again, Blair pointed out, such a situation is often not "real life" for a rancher.

"We have to show these private landowners how to burn a unit with the equipment they have," he explained.

Blair said training also needs to address the needs of the private landowner, not the needs of the government employee, and it should be regionalized. Burning in the High Plains is different from burning in the Edwards Plateau, Rolling Plains or the Piney Woods. Each has its own unique vegetation type, and all require not only different training but also perhaps a different prescription. Often, Blair noted, proven prescriptions such as the 60:40 rule developed at Texas Tech University by the late Dr. Henry Wright is not used.

"It takes a lot of the guesswork out of burning, just like the prescribed 100 to 500 foot dozed lines do," Blair told listeners. "In our training we need to better explain fire behavior and how following these rules increases the safety of a burn."

That said, Blair admitted that some burning prescriptions probably need to be refined to better determine what a burn is going to accomplish, and more variables need to be monitored for research purposes.

"We might need to include such factors as juniper leaf moisture. Oftentimes that factor can make or break a burn. It was particularly critical this year with all the moisture we had."

Another reason that fire is not used widely today is that in most areas, land managers are not dealing with historic vegetation. In many cases, lack of fire has allowed noxious species such as cedar, prickly pear and mesquite to overtake an area. That not only limits available long-term grazing potential, but in the case of some species like cedar, it makes conducting a prescribed fire more dangerous.

"We need to realize that frequency of fire and season of burn is critical," Blair said. "If you say you’re mimicking fire, that tells me that you’re burning at all times of the year."

In the general discussion, Dr. Darrell Ueckert, range ecologist with the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at San Angelo, told listeners that he feels one of the primary reasons fire is not used as broadly as it should be, particularly in his part of the state, is lack of fine fuel.

"Most landowners simply have not mastered the skill and the art of budgeting their forage production using a portion for livestock and for wildlife and saving a portion of it for fine fuel for creating an effective fire," Ueckert noted.

"Fire will never be utilized to its full potential until landowners recognize the real production system. Many ranchers think they’re in the livestock or the wildlife business, when in fact they’re in the grass business.

"Landowners simply are not committed to management of their land resource yet," he continued. "They like to manage livestock and wildlife. They’ll go to schools to learn how to manage these commodities, but they have not gotten serious about management of the rangeland resource.

"My generation and those of the past have considered themselves to be ‘cowmen’ and not conservationists and land managers. As professionals, we have a lot of catch-up work to do before fire will be utilized to its full extent."

On a positive note, Ueckert said he believes the new generation of landowners and ranchers will be more interested and more sensitive to land management than they have been in the past.

Dr. Wayne Hanselka, Extension program head at College Station, echoed previous speakers’ comments about lack of training. He told listeners about a survey conducted in the early 1990s in which landowners where asked if they used fire or planned on using fire and why or why not.

"We had a variety of answers, ranging from the liability issue to environmental concerns, but mainly the answer was lack of experience," Hanselka said.

Dr. Jim Ansley, with The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at Vernon, noted that many landowners don’t have a full appreciation of the time and effort that goes into planning a burn, as well as the need to be flexible in their schedule during burning season.

"They have to be able to mobilize their cowboys and be ready at any time when the conditions are right," he said, which as one would expect isn’t always easy to do.

Dr. Rob Mitchell at Texas Tech University filled the position vacated by Henry Wright and now coordinates all prescribed burning done at the university. He, too, echoed

similar comments dealing with the lack of ability.

Texas Tech does contract burning, and this past year they burned 13,000 acres in 31 days, everything from CRP cropland to juniper-infested rangeland.

"We were absolutely covered up and we had no way to address everyone’s desires to burn," Mitchell told listeners. "The general consensus was, ‘we don’t know what we’re doing and we don’t know how to conduct these fires in a safe manner. Help us.’"

One of the culprits in the training and experience deficit is money. Speakers noted that budget cuts and ultimately a shortage of agency personnel in field offices make it difficult to train sufficient numbers of private landowners.

"When we have fire schools, by and large the turnout is very low, and those who do burn continue to look to the agencies to help them conduct their burns, but more and more there’s just not enough agency personnel to help them with their burn," Ueckert commented.

Some of the discussion centered around developing a statewide program to specifically address the training of private landowners in prescribed fire.

"When I worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there were trained people at every burn unit whose job was fire management," Blair told listeners. "Now I work for TP&W and there’s not one dedicated person who deals with fire management. I think it’s very important if we’re going to move forward in prescribed burning to start dedicating people to that. I believe it is some agency’s responsibility to develop a program that is just for private landowners, and hopefully that program would have the backing of all the other agencies," he said.

Hanselka talked about past and ongoing attempts to educate the masses. Texas A&M Unviversity, he noted, began holding burning workshops in the 1980s. Texas Tech was involved with researching and conducting prescribed fire on private lands as early as the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In terms of the A&M system, he noted the difficulty in scheduling among the seven trained range specialists who conduct three to four workshops on fire a year.

"We have to set those dates in September, and when January 20 rolls around we have to burn and conduct these schools, whether or not the weather is going to be appropriate," he said.

Hanselka noted that the idea of having private contractors train and/or conduct fire on private lands is not really feasible because of the limited number of actual burning days.

"A contractor might be able to burn one month out of the year. What will he do for the other 11 months?"

As a possible alternative, Dr. Charles "Butch" Taylor, superintendent of the Sonora Experiment Station, told listeners about a newly formed prescribed burning cooperative. The idea of the co-op is to give members the opportunity to acquire adequate training by conducting burns themselves, and to pool their equipment and labor so that burns can be done effectively and in a timely manner, Taylor told listeners.

The Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burning Association, started about six months ago, now has 70 members. Only ranchers or landowners can be directors or board members.

"It’s for landowners and run by landowners," Taylor said, "and I think that’s made it even more popular. They know they’re running the show, and if it succeeds or fails they know it’s on their shoulders."

About 40 of those members, he said, have been to a burning school and have participated in burns. Taylor said that many are now starting to realize that to have an effective burn they have to have proper fuel loads.

Before a member can conduct a burn, he has to receive training and has to participate in other burns.

"In other words, they have to be active members if they want to burn on their own land. The landowners themselves came up with those criteria, and that’s made it even more effective," Taylor said.

One of the negatives of such an organization, he noted, is that there is a tendency to consider yourself an expert after only a couple of fires.

Jim Link with the TCU Ranch Management program grew up in the Flint Hills of Kansas and he told listeners that the cooperative idea has been going on for decades in his home state.

"We refer to it as neighbors getting together to help neighbors. They get a lot of acreage burned in a relatively short time," Link said.

Ueckert also pointed out that another major training deficiency is a lack of sufficient demonstration areas for long-term prescribed burning research.

"Today, most who do research on fire have to work on private lands or leased ranches, and there is no continuity where we can expect to continue to do burning, say, on a five-year basis," he explained.

The Kerr Wildlife Management Area and perhaps the Sonora Experiment Station are basically the only two areas where this can be seen, he said.

"We have to emphasize in these schools the importance of reintroducing fire into the ecosystem on a long-term basis. You can’t do it by burning on a place one time. You have to emphasize long-range reapplication burning and integrating fire with other brush management techniques," he stressed. Having demonstration areas, Ueckert pointed out, can help those interested in incorporating fire to actually see the long-term benefits.

Wayne Hamilton, lecturer at Texas A&M University and head of the Center For Grazinglands and Ranch Management, agreed with Ueckert and mentioned the importance of landowners understanding the synergism that fire creates with other species, both plant and animal.

"When we talk about cost-effectiveness, we need to look at how we can use fire to stretch the effectiveness of other management treatments," Hamilton said. "Where fire shines is as a follow-up treatment rather than as an initial treatment. Landowners must understand those long-term effects."