NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1253394
44 Nebraskaland • June 2020 is where many partners come into play. For Game and Parks forestry projects, for instance, there is considerable collaboration and multiple fi nancial supporters. Another big funding source, especially for private lands, is the U.S. Forest Service's State and Private Forestry program. Money collected from the Pittman-Robertson Act's excise tax on sporting goods and State Wildlife Grants, administered through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, also have been instrumental. Cows and Flames Thinning projects are a benefi t to the forest from a fi re perspective and also a wildlife one. For instance, a multi-year thinning of more than 200 acres underway near the buttes at Fort Robinson State Park is designed to not only provide fi re protection for the park and nearby community of Crawford, but also to boost wildlife habitat for species ranging from bighorn sheep to bats. Just as the vegetation gains diversity with open areas among tall trees, so too does wildlife. Managing the density of pines is just one of many aspects of management in the Pine Ridge, and the changes come with consequential challenges. Arnold notes that the ecology of the forest fl oor changes with removal of shade. "We are, in theory, just reorganizing the fuels. We went from a heavy fuel model, the dense forest, to a more open savannah with grass understory," he said. "Now, we need to manage the fi ne fuels, the grass." A point of emphasis has been to create infrastructure for grazing. He said most of the wildlife areas in the Pine Ridge do not have adequate livestock infrastructure, such as fences and water sources. Thanks to partnerships, that infrastructure is being constructed so grazing can be used to meet management objectives while not damaging habitat. Along with thinning, Arnold sees grazing to be instrumental to balancing the needs of the forest, even if it is done with cattle instead of bison. Also important, he said, is reintroducing fi re to the land. "With the right prescription we can put 'safe' fi re on the landscape and restore a historic fi re regime," Arnold said. "Fire is needed to naturally thin and prune ponderosa pines." Even though staff is highly trained and prescribed fi res follow strict guidelines, it is not always an easy sell. "The challenge is mainly a social one," he said. "The public sees the catastrophic wildfi res and perceives all fi re to be a bad thing and it has been suppressed so many years. Our goal is to do a forest management timber thinning and then use fi re to maintain these areas so they do not go back to overgrown stands." Fire also can treat areas already struck by catastrophe. Game and Parks has plans with the U.S. Forest Service and an adjacent landowner to conduct the largest prescribed burn ever in the Pine Ridge this fall; it's an area encompassing about While this image from the Pine Ridge of Sioux County may have aesthetic appeal, it bears evidence of the great forestry challenge in the West. Even though no wildfi res were in the immediate region on this September 2017 morning, the smoke from fi res hundreds of miles away was evident.