10-02-2007, 03:10 PM
VERNAL - After watching three burn seasons come and go, the Bureau of Land Management and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources finally got the right conditions to light a fire in the Marshall and Pitt draw area on Diamond Mountain in northeastern Utah.
Bureau of Land Management drip crew members with the Marshall Draw prescribed burn in the background.
Photo by Ron Stewart
And it was a big fire.
"By the end of today, we should have burned around 3,000 acres," said an elated Steve Strong, natural resource specialist for the BLM.
The burn happened on Sept. 15, 16 and 21.
A better area for wildlife
"We finished the planning stages in 2004 and have been ready to go for the last three years, but this is the first time we had the right conditions for the prescribed burn," Strong said. "The weather kept shutting us down: too much wind, too much rain, always something. Even earlier this week, the wind shut us down, but today it has all come together."
According to Strong and Miles Hanberg, habitat manager for the UDWR, the burn is part of a larger effort to restore and enhance wildlife habitat.
"We've got pinyon-juniper (P-J) trees encroaching into new areas because of decades of fire suppression," Strong said. "Our objective is to remove the encroachment, which is taking over our valuable wildlife habitat: the browse species (like sagebrush and mountain mahogany).
"Our other objective is to create bighorn sheep habitat, mostly on the rocky ridges. We are trying to create openings of 80 to 100 acres that can be used by the bighorns. Once these openings are created, we plan to go in this fall and reseed the openings with grasses, forbs and browse species.
A plum of smoke rises from a prescribed burn in Marshall Draw.
Photo by Ron Stewart<br />
"This first stage was to open up the area by pushing back the PJ from the sagebrush and other mountain browse," Hanberg said as he looked at photos from the fire. "This burn has created a good mosaic of burned and unburned areas, which is what we want for wildlife habitat. It gives us some established areas with older plants, and some new areas where we are just starting the plant succession.
"The next stage is to go into some even heavier stands of pinyon-juniper, which are covering steep, rocky hillsides. It will be harder to get a good burn [on these hillsides], but it will really open up the area for bighorn sheep. Bighorns rely on their vision and hearing to escape predators, so they avoid forested and tall brushy areas. They prefer open areas near rocky cliffs [where there's plenty of room for them to see]."
The burn is a cooperative project among the UDWR, BLM, and the Diamond Mountain Land Owners Association.
"The total prescribed burn area is 8,000 acres. We'd like to burn about 3,000 to 4,000 acres per year," Strong said. "Roughly 60 percent of the land belongs to the UDWR. The rest is BLM, with a small slice of state school trust lands. The UDWR contributed the seed and did the archeological surveys. The landowners will fund the application of the reseed. We [the BLM] contributed the fire crews and [got the fire going]."
Safe, successful burn
"The first step is safety. We want to make sure we only burn what we want to burn," Strong said. "To do this, we go in before the fire and lay down a scratch or black line to establish the perimeter. Basically, we look to send the fire into unburnable areas, like rock falls, or physically create those areas by removing the burnable fuels prior to the main fire.
"On the day of the burn, we do a final burn plan using the winds to set our ignition pattern. We set the fire to use the winds and heat to pull the fire up or push it in the directions we want it to go.
"We used three different types of ignition on this fire including a helicopter that drops PSDs, affectionately called "ping pong balls," because that's what they look like," Strong said. "The balls are injected as they leave the helicopter. That triggers a chemical reaction that creates a small fireball about 20 seconds later. The helicopter allows us to light large areas and to get into the center of the fire.
Marshall Draw after the fire moved through part of the area.
Photo by Ron Stewart<br />
"We had crewmembers with drip torches controlling the edges of the fire. They set fire to the vegetation along the perimeter. That created a burn line, which flowed back toward the center."
The final technique was something similar to a starter pistol. This technique uses a .22 caliber cartridge to propel a fire starter.
"The pistols shoot something that looks similar to Roman candles. They fly out and bounce around, sending sparks everywhere," Strong said. "These work well to get fire into the interior from the perimeter. We relied on the pistols when the wind shut down the helicopter for a short while this afternoon."
The final step of this prescribed burn was having a crew watch it carefully to make sure it didn't start up again. A couple of days of rain and a snowstorm helped considerably with this step.
"We will reseed it this fall and hope for a good water year," Hanberg said. "We'll also treat a few areas for cheatgrass.
"Our goal is to get the plants we want established quickly so the cheatgrass doesn't have a chance to invade.
"We should see some use from wildlife as early as next year, and the area will only get better as the new plants get established."
Bureau of Land Management drip crew members with the Marshall Draw prescribed burn in the background.
Photo by Ron Stewart
And it was a big fire.
"By the end of today, we should have burned around 3,000 acres," said an elated Steve Strong, natural resource specialist for the BLM.
The burn happened on Sept. 15, 16 and 21.
A better area for wildlife
"We finished the planning stages in 2004 and have been ready to go for the last three years, but this is the first time we had the right conditions for the prescribed burn," Strong said. "The weather kept shutting us down: too much wind, too much rain, always something. Even earlier this week, the wind shut us down, but today it has all come together."
According to Strong and Miles Hanberg, habitat manager for the UDWR, the burn is part of a larger effort to restore and enhance wildlife habitat.
"We've got pinyon-juniper (P-J) trees encroaching into new areas because of decades of fire suppression," Strong said. "Our objective is to remove the encroachment, which is taking over our valuable wildlife habitat: the browse species (like sagebrush and mountain mahogany).
"Our other objective is to create bighorn sheep habitat, mostly on the rocky ridges. We are trying to create openings of 80 to 100 acres that can be used by the bighorns. Once these openings are created, we plan to go in this fall and reseed the openings with grasses, forbs and browse species.
A plum of smoke rises from a prescribed burn in Marshall Draw.
Photo by Ron Stewart<br />
"This first stage was to open up the area by pushing back the PJ from the sagebrush and other mountain browse," Hanberg said as he looked at photos from the fire. "This burn has created a good mosaic of burned and unburned areas, which is what we want for wildlife habitat. It gives us some established areas with older plants, and some new areas where we are just starting the plant succession.
"The next stage is to go into some even heavier stands of pinyon-juniper, which are covering steep, rocky hillsides. It will be harder to get a good burn [on these hillsides], but it will really open up the area for bighorn sheep. Bighorns rely on their vision and hearing to escape predators, so they avoid forested and tall brushy areas. They prefer open areas near rocky cliffs [where there's plenty of room for them to see]."
The burn is a cooperative project among the UDWR, BLM, and the Diamond Mountain Land Owners Association.
"The total prescribed burn area is 8,000 acres. We'd like to burn about 3,000 to 4,000 acres per year," Strong said. "Roughly 60 percent of the land belongs to the UDWR. The rest is BLM, with a small slice of state school trust lands. The UDWR contributed the seed and did the archeological surveys. The landowners will fund the application of the reseed. We [the BLM] contributed the fire crews and [got the fire going]."
Safe, successful burn
"The first step is safety. We want to make sure we only burn what we want to burn," Strong said. "To do this, we go in before the fire and lay down a scratch or black line to establish the perimeter. Basically, we look to send the fire into unburnable areas, like rock falls, or physically create those areas by removing the burnable fuels prior to the main fire.
"On the day of the burn, we do a final burn plan using the winds to set our ignition pattern. We set the fire to use the winds and heat to pull the fire up or push it in the directions we want it to go.
"We used three different types of ignition on this fire including a helicopter that drops PSDs, affectionately called "ping pong balls," because that's what they look like," Strong said. "The balls are injected as they leave the helicopter. That triggers a chemical reaction that creates a small fireball about 20 seconds later. The helicopter allows us to light large areas and to get into the center of the fire.
Marshall Draw after the fire moved through part of the area.
Photo by Ron Stewart<br />
"We had crewmembers with drip torches controlling the edges of the fire. They set fire to the vegetation along the perimeter. That created a burn line, which flowed back toward the center."
The final technique was something similar to a starter pistol. This technique uses a .22 caliber cartridge to propel a fire starter.
"The pistols shoot something that looks similar to Roman candles. They fly out and bounce around, sending sparks everywhere," Strong said. "These work well to get fire into the interior from the perimeter. We relied on the pistols when the wind shut down the helicopter for a short while this afternoon."
The final step of this prescribed burn was having a crew watch it carefully to make sure it didn't start up again. A couple of days of rain and a snowstorm helped considerably with this step.
"We will reseed it this fall and hope for a good water year," Hanberg said. "We'll also treat a few areas for cheatgrass.
"Our goal is to get the plants we want established quickly so the cheatgrass doesn't have a chance to invade.
"We should see some use from wildlife as early as next year, and the area will only get better as the new plants get established."