Kipp Morrill, Zone Assistant Fire Management Officer, knows how to control flames. (USFWS)
Fire is a word that can strike fear in some, but to others it’s viewed as something as natural as the rain. One thing is for sure, in this era of climate change, it has the potential to be as much our friend as well as our enemy when it comes to habitat.
Being a part of the Conserving the Future visioning process has been exciting. Collaborating with people from different programs and being able to share my passion for putting fire on the landscape with such a diverse audience has been very rewarding! What an amazing opportunity to help people become familiar with how we in the Service fire program work daily to, “keep fire on our side”.
But fire is like any other tool in the tool box, perfect for some things and not so good for others. Determining where, when, how much, and if we use fire at all will require some serious outside the box thinking in the years to come.
Sound science will need to be coupled with innovation to ensure that we are making decisions that will be a benefit to habitat and not destroy it. Solid planning on how to manage wildfires will help us decide if a fire can be managed to actually achieve a benefit to habitat or if it should be suppressed in order to protect communities.
As we look across a changing landscape, I am more than certain that our Service fire programs throughout the refuge system are ready and excited to take on the challenges we face.
Kipp Morrill, Zone Assistant Fire Management Officer, U.S, Fish and Wildlife Service
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The USFWS has many trained fire fighters that are willing and able to help meet any Refuge Management goals.
I would like to see fire used more frequently on refuges. Before fires were suppressed by European settlers, I would guess that most habitats experienced low-intensity fires fairly often. In fact where I live the native people deliberately set fires every year, to maintain large oak savannas. So these days instead of frequent, low-intensity fires we have infrequent, catastrophic fires that kill everything.
I also would not be surprised if there is some link between fire suppression and the spread of invasive plants. Perhaps a study could be done on that.
I am sure we all agree fire can play an important role in the management of refuges and specifically their habitats. As a manager I have always wanted fire as a tool but through time have found it increasingly difficult to utilize. Reasons I have experienced include smoke management and lack of fire crews on individual refuges. These are related. Because communities across America continue to manage smoke, the particulates, in their air it is making it more difficult to receive the OK to burn on any given day. This makes obtaining a burn permit and having all the qualified fire personnel at the refuge on the same day almost impossible. I do not assume we can just hire more fire staff but I do feel we could be allot more proactive at outreach to Smoke Management or Air Quality decision making personnel. Having individuals who are experienced at working with Smoke Management District personnel who know their language would be a great benefit to the personnel on the refuge. To have this support person to draw from would, in my mind, result in healthier habitats on our NWRS.
Fire is an important and essential land management tool that requires considerable skill and knowledge of our practioners. It’s vital the Fish and Wildlife Service continue to a lead in the application of fire across the landscape as we strive to accomplish land management objectives, while reducing the risk of adverse consequences.
Hi Kipp!
I enjoyed you blog. I hope the USFWS continues to use fire at historically relevant intervals. I hope the service continues to pioneer innovative practices relating to prescribed fire including the development of new prescriptions, and the use of new and evolving techniques. The strong commitment to personnel development within fire in USFWS has led to beneficial networks. The benefit is that the professionalism of the USFWS fire personnel is enhanced and USFWS receives national recognition in the fire community. This commitment makes it easier to develop relationships with other agencies and ultimately makes landscape scale burning more attainable.
Well stated Kipp! We are EXCITED and working daily to restore fire to the ecosystems across the National Wildlife Refuge System. Here in NC, we have already proven that we can restore fire to the pocosins and other ecosystems extending across the outer coastal plains of the State, something that many of our cooperators once said could never happen. Unfortunately, the OWFC has put so many strings on our burning along with the limits on funding, that this has been a major setback to our programs here in the Carolinas. We realize that in this era of restricted funding, (due the national economic crisis), we are going to have to be more innovative in getting our highest priority work done. However, as all field practioners know so well, much of our work is opportunistic in nature and cannot always be tied fixed locations and targets. I am hoping that our friends and leaders up in Washington realize this and can adjust to allow us more flexibility (and hopefully free up some more funding) to keep landscape scale burning a reality in our jurisdictions across the Nation.
See M. and M. Lusk. 2008. Fire Management and Invasive Plants, A Handbook. USFWS, 27 pp..
In addition to the many natural resource and public safety (i.e. reduced hazardous fuel loads) benefits that have been mentioned here I would like to add firefighter safety. More specifically I have observed a ripple effect here in Kansas where the professionalism and dedication to the safe management of wildlland fire both in a prescribed and suppression setting demonstrated by USFWS staff has increased the safety and effectiveness of other federal, state, and local partners in a dramatic way.