BURNED RANGELAND can look deceptively barren for a while, particularly when the rains don't come, but a good growing season can change that picture dramatically. At left is a pasture burned this summer and still awaiting enough moisture to begin recovering. The pasture at right was burned in 1997 and enjoyed good rains the following year.

Burning Association Takes Lead
On Prescribed Fires In Summer

By Colleen Schreiber

SONORA — Ranchers, particularly in the Edwards Plateau, are showing increasing interest in using summer burns to control cedar and prickly pear. The Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burning Association, now into its third year, appears to be fueling that growing interest.

This year, the association successfully conducted 14 summer fires encompassing some 4700 acres. Association members were exempt from a drouth-related burning ban which has been in effect for a several months now.

The association recently conducted its annual meeting at the Experiment Station south of Sonora. New officers were elected and then members had a chance to tour two of those summer burns and another that had been conducted in 1997. Bob Buchholz replaced Curry Campbell as president and Wheelis Dockery was elected to the board of directors. Other directors are Tony Renfro, Jimmy Holman and Mark Hemphill.

The association was formed in the fall of 1997. Sonora Experiment Station superintendent Dr. Charles "Butch" Taylor, who has long been conducting research into prescribed burns on the station, is credited for initiating the concept and proposing the idea to area landowners.

Already deemed a success, the association continues to grow in size. The first year there were 62 members. Today 84 members represent some 500,000 acres in six counties.

"When we initiated the association, our goal was pretty simple," Taylor said. "It was understood that we wanted to use fire as a tool to help manage the brush problem and in turn increase water yield and improve carrying capacity."

From the beginning, Taylor insisted that the association be made up of ranchers and be run by ranchers. He had a personal goal in that he wanted to help ranchers gain enough confidence to eventually conduct their own prescribed burns. The association was, in his mind, the perfect solution.

"It's happening," Taylor says. "What tickles me most is that the landowners are now gaining the confidence to be fire boss on their own fires."

Curry Campbell, outgoing president, is one such rancher. This summer, for the first time, he prepared a fire plan and carried out his own burn with the help of the association on a section pasture on his ranch south of Sonora.

"I might be like a bull fighter practicing with a mutton goat," Campbell says. "I haven't seen fire raise its ugly head yet, but my level of confidence has gone from little or nothing to now where I feel confident in my ability to conduct my own burn safely. I know now that I can fight fire with fire using tools like wet lines and backfires."

The association recently became incorporated and gained nonprofit status. This enables them to take advantage of such opportunities as grants and gifts.

"We have to decide now what we want to become," Taylor told members. "We could continue to operate at a county level with low visibility, or we could grow in size and concept where we become a visible organization, known throughout the state for restoring the Edwards Plateau, for increasing water yield, wildlife habitat and livestock carrying capacity.

"The association probably has a more legitimate right, more than any other environmental organization that I know of, to make that statement," he continued. "This rancher-membership association has taken the initiative on their own to improve and restore the native range."

The association and its members, he pointed out, could vertically integrate some of their costs through ownership of equipment such as bulldozers, trailers and pumpers.

Taylor encouraged members to consider finding sponsors who believe in the association's goals and who have money to contribute to their cause. Direct donations, grants, trusts and the like could be garnered from the membership level, the local or community level, or even at the state and national level, he noted.

"Why should they be willing to sponsor our association?" he asked members. "Because we’re providing them with more water. The most valuable commodity in Texas is water," Taylor noted. "Go to any of these quick stops. You pay more for water than you do gasoline, and it's going to continue that way.

"We should all feel good when we see smoke on the horizon," he continued, "because that is helping put more water in the aquifer."

Taylor says summer fire in his area has become more acceptable because many have tried a winter burn and found that it didn’t work very well. He pointed out that one of the benefits of summer burning is that it doesn’t take as much fine fuel to carry a fire during the summer.

"In the areas where mesquite is the main problem, summer burns might not be the best answer or that beneficial. But here in the Edwards Plateau, where our predominant problem is juniper and prickly pear, two species that are very susceptible to a hot fire, and fine fuel loads are minimal at best, summer burns seem to work better," Taylor says.

Campbell is one of those who tried winter burning in the past.

"Six years ago we tried to do a winter burn on this same pasture that we did a summer burn on this year. We couldn’t get the fire to carry," Campbell says. "We had a lot of rock and a lot of cedar, but this summer with less grass than I had that winter, we burned probably 98 percent of the pasture."

Those attending the annual meeting had the opportunity to see first-hand the results of that summer burn. The section pasture had been stocked with cattle, sheep and goats at a rate of 28 acres to the animal unit. The area was rested from cattle and sheep grazing for about a year prior to the burn while goats continued to graze it up until January of this year. At the time of the burn, fuel loads across the pasture on average ranged from 1000 pounds per acre to 2000 pounds per acre on the deeper soil sites.

In preparation for the burn, fencelines were cleaned, the necessary dozer lines were put in, and safe zones 100 to 300 feet wide were burned in on the north and west sides of the burn unit. The head fire was conducted in August on a day when the temperature was 101 degrees and the relative humidity was at 30 percent. The labor crew on the day of the head fire consisted of 10 people.

"I’m happy beyond words with what this fire did. It opened up the canopy and it did tremendous damage to the prickly pear," Campbell told association members. "If I hadn't conducted a burn on that pasture, the stocking rate would probably have gone from 28 acres to the animal unit to 36, then 50. Now in time I’ll probably be able to improve on it and move from maybe 28 to 20 acres to the animal unit."

Campbell was fortunate in that about a week after the burn a two-and-a-half inch rain fell on the burned area. Not long afterward, it received another eight-tenths and then an inch and a half. He said he hopes to begin using the pasture in September of the coming year.

Campbell figures he has about $6 an acre in preparation costs. That cost included the labor costs for clearing fencelines and dozer lines and an equipment cost, even though he used his own. Figuring in a cost of deferment for an 18 to 20-month period plus the preparation costs, Campbell said he figures the total cost of his burn was less than $10 an acre.

"Fire is the only economical option we have left," Campbell insists.

Taylor and others are in the process of developing an economic spreadsheet for ranchers to use to better predict the cost of a burn based on things such as size of the burn unit, density of cedar, topography, labor, etc.

Taylor believes that the cost of a summer burn will be comparable to the cost of a winter burn. The expected longer treatment life of a summer burn, the researcher says, might also show that summer burns in particular parts of the country are, in fact, more cost-effective.

He expects the treatment life of a summer burn on ashe juniper, the non-sprouting species, to last 20, possibly up to 30 years. He noted that the treatment life is indicative of the effectiveness of the burn.

Depending on goals and objectives, a much more frequent burn interval is likely needed for the resprouting redberry juniper, but Taylor estimates treatment life in this community to last up to 15 years.

"You want to keep the redberry juniper from producing seed. Once it's top-killed, research data indicates that it begins producing seed five to seven years later," Taylor says.

The Experiment Station has done six summer burns over the last couple of years. Members of the association had the opportunity to view two of them. The burn conducted this past summer was a 40-acre pasture. The pasture was lightly stocked with goats, and cattle grazing had been eliminated for two years to grow the fine fuels needed to carry the fire. At the time of the burn, fuel loads ranged from 1000 pounds on the shallow sites to 2500 pounds on the deeper soils.

The pasture was burned on August 16th. Temperature was 102 degrees and relative humidity was at 29 percent. Taylor estimates that 99 percent of the pasture burned.

"It was a real hot fire, and it appears that we got a good kill on the cedar and on the pear," Taylor told the group.

Unfortunately, unlike Campbell's ranch, the station has only received about an inch of rain since the burn was conducted and the pasture hasn't recovered much at all. Deer, however, are heavily utilizing the tender regrowth on the various browse plants.

The pasture that had been burned this summer was in stark contrast to what the members saw at the next stop. There, little bluestem and sideoats grama covered the rocky surface and truly showed the positive potentials of summer fire.

The same kind of hot summer burn had been conducted on that pasture in August 1997. The temperature was 104 degrees and relative humidity was 23 percent.

"The results were similar to the other burn," Taylor said. "The pear was really thick, and today we would be hard-pressed to find any in this pasture. There wasn't a lot of juniper, but we wiped out all the little ones that were coming in."

Taylor was lucky in that the year following the burn was an incredibly good one, one of the best in many years, and the pasture basically recovered after one growing season.

"If it hadn't rained, it likely would have taken a couple of growing seasons before the pasture recovered."

Taylor said that what has pleased him most is the response of the higher successional grasses, particularly the little bluestem and sideoats grama.

"We had about 1400 pounds to the acre when we burned this pasture. Now we have at least 2000 pounds. It's being grazed now with sheep, and we have some heifers that will come in here in late winter," Taylor said.

"We haven't hit it hard yet," he said. "We burned it in August, stayed off it that fall, put some goats in in the winter for short period of time. We took the goats out before spring and we didn’t graze it at all that summer, then this fall we started lightly grazing it with sheep."

Taylor said he expects to be able to increase the carrying capacity by about 25 percent, adding that his estimate might be on the conservative side.

"This vegetation evolved under summer fire," Taylor noted. "Carrying capacity will be increased, water infiltration will be increased, and the wildlife habitat has already been improved.

"We haven't done a good job of showing ranchers the economic benefits of fire in the long-term," he continued. "Hopefully, this economic package that we are working on will help that.

"To me, ranching is a long-term deal. I have to decide if I want to be here over the long haul or am I just going to try and maximize my income on the short term. Problem is, nowadays some people have to plan on the short term just to survive."

Though the association has gotten off to a positive start, Campbell and Taylor say there is still much work that needs to be done in terms of education and research.

"The perception is still prevalent that fire is bad," Taylor noted. "It's up to us to change that perception, particularly with the younger generation. Whether fire as a rangeland tool will be carried into the future depends on them, the younger generation," he insists.

Changing that mindset and helping ranchers realize the importance of creating the necessary fuel loads to conduct an effective burn, Campbell says, are two of the challenges the association will be working on.