Live Green: Burning for the Birds!
OXFORD, Md – The Eastern Shore Land Conservancy and Tall Timbers from Tallahassee have partnered to cultivate a culture of prescribed fire, benefiting the local wildlife and vegetation.
What people don’t know about the difference between wildfires and prescribed fires are that wildfires are uncontrolled and threatening. Prescribed fires are planned for the purpose of preventing overgrowth of forests, mitigating wildfires through fuel reduction or even helping threatened species.
Prescribed fire coordinator from Tall Timbers, Kyle Magic and stewardship manager of ESLC, Larissa Prezioso were at Harley Farms in Oxford Maryland to help maintain the habitat of the Bob White Quail. Their population has been threatened due to excessive use of pesticides and habitat loss. The success of their health requires diverse habitat types for other grassland bird species.
Larissa Prezioso explained, “In North America, as a continent, since 1970, we’ve lost over half of our grassland bird species. Almost 90% of our northern Bob White Quail in Maryland, specifically since 1960.”
There has been a lot of success in other areas with dedicated Bob White Quail conservation efforts such as Chino Farms in Chester Town. The hope is the same will happen in other areas when using prescribed fire practices.
“It also opens up the seed bank a little bit more.” Prezioso pointed out. “You know, you get a lot more sunlight through when it’s not trying to penetrate down through all this thick grass. You can see the areas where it’s already started to green back up a lot, and it also adds a very unique kind of fertilizing effect from that ash and the soil chemistry.”
Harley Farms is six-hundred acres, but burning smaller sections of the property throughout the year is more manageable.
“This was a three and a half acre burn, and it took maybe an hour and a half.” Kyle Magic explained. “When it comes to burn planning, prescribed fire is mainly done during the early parts of the spring or, you know, the later parts of the fall, throughout the winter time. If we can’t get, a good top kill on a on a spring burn, then we’ll use herbicide, and then a fall burn.”
Another factor Prezioso and Magic consider when burning is smoke.
“Smoke is obviously a huge concern,” Magic said. “There are these, SSAs or smoke sensitive areas all around us. So, we really identify those and we will not burn. If the wind direction will cause that smoke to go in the direction of those SSAs, whether it be a road, a hospital, a school, a church, anything like that.”
Being aware that prescribed fires are helpful and not harmful can go a long way in getting people to support these preservation efforts.
“Property managers who have early successional habitat on their land, warm season grass buffers, other types of scrubby habitat, you know, the traditional way that we’ve seen on the shore of people managing that is through mowing, which can be costly,” Prezioso explained. “It can be time intensive, where fire has a lot of benefits in terms of time saving, cost savings.”
Prezioso and Magic encourage the public to attend a burn and learn or see if your local land trust is doing prescribed fire outreach.
“Whether you have no experience with prescribed fire or, you know, ten, 20 years of experience. We talk about things like fire ecology, you know, how to use fire, how to plan a fire. Some of the resources to help implement it on your own property,” Prezioso said.
To attend a burn and learn, visit the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy’s website.
