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Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1519842
50 Nebraskaland • May 2024 mortality, Stout saw 70 to 75 percent. "So by happy accident, we just started shoving cut trees up against live trees just to get rid of them and not thinking that it was going to apply that intense heat source there," Stout said, noting that this cut-and-stuff approach to clearing prior to a burn is now the standard today. Each year, as neighbors looked across the fence and saw the results of a burn, including not only fewer trees, but a lusher stand of grass, more joined the association. In 2008, there was enough interest that Alberts helped form a second burn association he still leads, the Central Platte Rangeland Alliance, in the southeastern portion of the Loess Canyons and in the Central Loess Hills to the north between Brady and Lexington. Stout took over leadership of the LCRA, became the burn boss, and continues in that role today. The combined membership of both associations includes more than 120 individuals. In the Loess Canyons, members collectively own 264,000 acres, or 80 percent of the region. More join each year. That buy-in, and the fact that the groups and burns are led by landowners, has been their success. Working together on burns has rekindled something from days gone by, where neighbors regularly helped neighbors with their chores, knowing the favor would be returned. "I think it kind of got away from that here for a while," Stout said. "But this group, it seems like it kind of developed a whole new sense of community. It's really brought back the selfl essness of people." That cooperation also allows them to burn several properties at once, often burning from one county road to the next in an area with very few roads, rather than one property, which might require cutting fi re breaks through steep terrain. Now they build fi re breaks in places where the terrain makes them easy to both create and defend. Getting there was a process, as members weren't sure how many acres they could safely burn in a day. "They started with a section," said Andy Moore, coordinating wildlife biologists with Pheasants Forever, who has helped landowners in the Loess Canyons plan cedar-control projects since 2011. "And then there was a point where some of the members said: 'We can't do burns bigger than 2,000 acres because we can't get around them in a day.' They've proved that wrong. They've done burns bigger than that in a half day." To date, the largest burn conducted by the groups covered 4,500 acres, a daylong eff ort that covered property owned by 10 individuals. In 2020, LCRA members burned 22,000 acres, including several burns topping 3,000 acres. CPRA members burned another 7,500 acres, and a private contractor 6,500. In all, the groups have burned more than 150,000 acres, most of those since 2008. The burns are meticulously planned, many by Stout, fi rst as the burn boss and now as a technical service provider with the NRCS. And they are well attended, with more than Lush grasses and annual sunfl owers fi ll a pasture on Scott Stout's family's ranch in the Loess Canyons north of Curtis in the fall following a spring prescribed burn.