More Habitat Diversity = More Wildlife

These past few weeks we have been starting to implement a forest management plan that I developed for a landowner last year. His goals were to improve the timber and improve deer and turkey habitat. WE CAN HELP!

He started off with a several hundred acre block of trees that were in varying degree of health and quality depending on topography and past land use. We took detailed inventory of the whole property and then broke up the land on paper planning to:

Increase Forest Health and productivity where good growth could be supported by identifying timber stands and performing a combination of TSI and Crop Tree Release on the stands to improve timber growth and wildlife habitat.
Increase Wildlife Habitat in areas where forest productivity is poor by managing them as Open Woodlands by thinning them to let light to the woodland floor, and then implementing Prescribed Fire to stimulate and increase green vegetation and tender woody sprouts.
Increase Habitat Edge by creating habitat transitions between certain management stands using Edge Feathering to increase habitat diversity.
Increase Wildlife Food Production and Water Availability with food plots and strategically placed water sources

Today, I want to focus on what TSI and Edge Feathering looks like on the ground.

In ecology, Edge Effects are changes in community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats.

In this segment of the overall plan map for the property you will see how the habitat was laid out with forest stands, edge feathering in red, food plots in green, water holes in blue, and open woodland/prescribed fire stands in orange. **Photo Direction** is for orienting the edge feathering photos.

In this photo you see how we make the transition from a continuous block of trees into 3 distinct but very complimentary habitat types. To the left is the boundary between forest stand 17 and 18 marked by the reference tree pointed by the red arrow. Stand 16 to the right of the installed fireline trail (orange line) will become an Open Woodland habitat.

In this photo you see the edge feathering completed, and creates a distinct habitat type and creates a transition between the Forest Habitat to the far left (see pic below) and the future Open Woodland habitat to the right.

This picture is what TSI looks like in stand 18, where we cut poorly formed, poorly growing, or undesirable species to make room for good quality trees to grow to their maximum potential. This makes for a productive healthy forest and good wildlife habitat.

May 31, 2018

Woodland Prescribed Fire to Improve Wildlife Habitat

Prescribed Fire can be used in the Ozarks and all across the south and central hardwoods region to naturaly influence plant mix and arangement in a way that meets your goals for your property, whether it be to increase or improve wildlife habitat, increase or improve forest regeneration, or improve grasslands for livestock.

Here we’ve conducted a prescribed burn for a landowner that is motivated and excited about managing his property for wildlife. Working with landowners that are passionate about management and witnessing them experience the results and sharing in that excitement is one of the best parts of what we do.

Post burn picture the landowner sent me this past week. He went from leaf litter to an increase in green herbaceous vegetation benefitting deer, turkey, and other wildlife.

Results from woodland burn spring 2018 (May 28, 2018)

March 23, 2018April 1, 2018

Prescribed Firing Technique and Land Management Objectives

Among many, there are 3 major atmospheric factors that influence fire behavior on a proposed prescribed fire.

Relative Humidity
Temperature
Wind

These 3 primary factors interact with each other at different rates influencing the ability of fuel on the ground to burn, depending on it’s type, size, and arrangement.

Couple these things with geographic factors such as slope (how steep the ground is), and aspect (which direction the slope is facing) and you start to build a recipe for how fire will behave on any given day.

This leads to one of the few things a burner can do to influence fire behavior to gain the best results. A good burner combines the knowledge of all influencing factors and applies the appropriate firing technique to best achieve the results desired from the burn.

Firing technique is applying the fire to the ground in such a way that the fire moves with or against the conditions that influence its behavior. Fire behavior with be different burning downhill and against the wind than burning uphill with the wind.

See how I use a backing fire technique coupled with the weather, fuel, and topography to achieve my objective with the burn.

March 2, 2017March 2, 2017

Objective Driven Burning

The Right Tool for the Job

Prescribed fire should always be done with a specific goal in mind. It should be looked at as another tool in your tool box that can be pulled out and used to accomplish a specific purpose. Can you identify some of the goals mentioned in this video?
Prescribed fire is a tool that when not used under the right conditions can cause a lot more damage and harm to your resources than not. An example would be: burning way to hot and damaging or destroying timber, or fire that escapes your control and damages your neighbors property.
Notice the short flame length and slow progress of this fire. The speed, and intensity of this fire is a result of the proper conditions we chose to burn under. See the discussion about preparation ahead of time here.

February 24, 2017March 2, 2017

Prepare ahead of time for fire

Plan ahead for Prescribed Fire

Having a well planned and well prepared fire line well ahead of the burn can make your burn day anxiety level much more bearable. There are few things worse than rushing to beat the clock to try and get a fire line in and do a prescribed burn while conditions are right. Burn windows (conditions favorable for a burn that meets your objectives) can come and go pretty quick. Plan ahead of time to have a good fire line installed so that the day of the burn, all it takes is a quick brush up and your ready to go.

This fire line was installed with a dozer the later part of the summer before this spring burn, and a quick once over with a good backpack blower is all that is needed to be ready. See the fire in action later in the evening right here.