Archive for January 12th, 2010

Prescribed Burning, 2

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

This is Passport to Texas

Fire’s always played a vital role in the creation of healthy ecosystem. Yet, as Europeans settled Texas, fire suppression was the name of the game.

That’s correct. As Europeans settled Texas, the occurrence of fire went down, because nobody obviously wants to have their house burned up.

David Veale is biologist for the M. O. Neasloney (nez-low-NEE) WMA in Gonzales County. On January 16 he leads a prescribed fire workshop at the WMA.

We start off with the historical perspective of fire, you know, what some of the fire intervals were. The native Americans did use fire to manage some of their grassland communities. And, so why it’s important to reintroduce that fire into the landscape; we also talk about what fire can do, and what is the role of fire in vegetation management.

And that’s just the beginning of what participants can expect…although Veale says the workshop is simply an overview.

You know, you can give somebody the information, and you can talk about it on paper, but until they’re actually put fire on their actual place where they’re responsible for that fire, that’s a big hurdle to get over.

Veale recommends after the workshop, landowners and managers consider joining prescribed burn associations.

We have a lot of them popping up throughout the state. And it’s a pooling of resources, it’s a pooling of expertise—it’s really a good thing.

That’s our show… supported by the Wildlife Restoration program. For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.