PRESCRIBED FIRE: A prescription fire may be the best 
medicine to create a healthy environment … details ahead 
on Passport to Texas…

This is Passport to Texas

Man mimics nature when he uses fire as a land 
management tool. He does this with controlled burning, 
and with prescribed fire. 

David Riskin, director of natural resources for state parks, 
says there is a difference between the two.

25—Controlled burning is a term that people use that you start 
at part A, and you burn until you get to part B. Professional land 
managers use the term prescribed fire because you have 
specific objectives,  you have specific outcomes, you burn under 
very specific conditions. And so a prescription is a planning 
document… you lay everything out ahead of time and you then 
implement it with very specific objectives in mind.

Those objectives naturally have to do with land 
management, as well as a range of various objectives a 
landowner may hope to achieve.

18—There can be a whole series of objectives. From very simple 
things like fuel load reduction. You can have specific habitat 
objectives…to change the vegetation structure and composition 
to support waterfowl, or to support antelope, or lesser prairie 
chickens…or Houston toads for that matter.

Learn more about prescribed fire on the TPW website.

The Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti 









Total sound bite time:		                 0:43.0
Maximum Script time:		                 0:42.0                     Suggested show time: 85.0 = 1:25