Feeling the burn again at Mashomack: Second ‘prescribed fire’ a total success
Once again, those outside on Shelter Island and the North and South forks on Thursday, March 27, saw rising towers of gray and white smoke soaring skyward. The fuel for the smoke was a second controlled burn — or “prescribed fire” — at Mashomack, where 80 acres of woodlands was burned, bringing the total acreage of forest consumed to 180, with 100 acres burned Sunday, March 22.
This tricky, and potentially dangerous, operation went without a hitch, due to the expertise brought to bear by a team of professionals and planned by The Nature Conservancy.
In the lead was Mashomack Preserve’s Conservation and Stewardship Manager Cody-Marie Miller. Ms. Miller credited the successful burns to a dedicated group of partners, including experienced “Burn Boss” Tom Dooley of South Carolina, who was an essential part of the leadership, as he was for the March 22 burn. Mr. Dooley spearheaded a crew of inter-agency, certified firefighters, with the experience to handle controlled burns, Ms. Miller said.
Island resident New York State Forest Ranger Bryan Gallagher, Fire Marshal Reed Karen and Beau Payne, a first responder who wears many hats on the Island, worked on preparations for the burn.
AN ANCIENT TOOL
Indigenous people have used controlled burns for centuries, long before the Europeans arrived in the Americas. The new arrivals quickly adopted the practice. According to authors A. Sydney Johnson and Philip E. Hale, “Indigenous cultural burns focus on what needs to be burned to revitalize the land with the intent of returning to make use of it again. Traditional baby baskets of the Yurok and Karuk Northern California tribes, for instance, are made from hazelnut shrub stems that are collected after fires.”
After a summer of activities at Mashomack, another burn is tentatively aimed for fall, and again next spring, Conservation and Stewardship Manager Miller said. Scheduling is dependent on many factors, she added, weather being one of the most important.
“The Nature Conservancy has been a premier group planning and carrying out these fires, meant to be a tool in restoring vegetation to healthy levels and improve habitats for wildlife,” Ms. Miller said.
According to the National Forest Foundation, prescribed fires benefit the health of woodlands by:
• Reducing forest density. Trees that grow too close together compete for resources, making them more susceptible to disease, insect infestations, drought, and severe wildfires. Low to moderate-intensity fire helps reduce density by removing the weakest trees, returns nutrients to the soil, and makes the remaining trees more resilient.
• Improving wildlife habitat. Fire creates diverse wildlife habitats by opening the forest canopy and creating opportunities for new vegetation to grow. Fire also creates snags, or dead trees, that are important to many endangered bird and bat species. These varied forest structures provide new opportunities for foraging and shelter that are key to a healthy ecosystem.
• Increasing biodiversity. Low to moderate-intensity fire reduces competition from invasive species and encourages the growth of fire-adapted native vegetation, making forests more resilient against severe wildfires.
• Lessening the severity of wildfires. Low to moderate-intensity fire reduces the risk of severe wildfires by reducing the number of fuels in the forest such as leaf litter, pine needles, and shrubs. This protects larger trees from high-severity stand replacing blazes that can be catastrophic to forest ecosystems.
