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/695082
40 NEBRASKAland • JULY 2016 fuels. These groups also work with landowners in unburned forests to thin smaller pines and cedars as protection against crown fires and to make homes and towns more fire-safe. Thinning, however, has limitations. Hand crews with chainsaws cannot cut on hillsides with slopes greater than 60 to 70 percent, while tracked and wheeled machines can cut only on grades up to 35 to 45 percent. At costs typically exceeding $500 per acre, thinning is prohibitively expensive at a large scale. Furthermore, thinning does not reduce the accumulated needle layer below pines, which, in areas, is three to five inches thick. During wildfires, the needles can smolder for days, baking the roots and lower trunk of living trees, killing them. Also a concern, the soil disturbance from thinning can set the stage for the invasion of cheatgrass, smooth brome and other weeds. In some western pine ecosystems, prescribed fire, conducted during the cool and moist winter or spring, is used to reduce tree densities and ground fuels. Winter fires are sometimes set when the sun-exposed, south- and west-facing slopes are snowless, while the sheltered and snow-covered north- and east-facing exposures act as fire breaks. Prescribed fire in Nebraska's pine ecosystems has never really caught on. In April of 1998, the Game Commission pulled off the last large prescribed fire in the Pine Ridge, a 1,200-acre burn on the Ponderosa WMA. "The fire did great things. It took out many patches of small pines, and only a few bigger ones, and reduced needle litter," said Schenbeck. Unfortunately, prescribed fire is not easily implemented in the rough topography and heavy fuels of our pine ecosystems. It requires well-trained crews, ample resources, such as water pumper units, and just the right weather – not too windy, hot, dry or wet. Ever- increasing housing development in the Pine Ridge and, to a lesser extent our other pine regions, makes prescribed fire even more challenging. Neighbors don't appreciate the smoke and there are risks to the homes if the fire escapes. Also, after the recent rash of large wildfires, many local residents have little tolerance for any fire in the landscape, despite the known benefits of prescribed burning. Some ranchers, however, have realized that fewer pines mean more prairie grass for their cattle. A combination of careful tree thinning followed by periodic prescribed fire to lessen ground fuels and pine regeneration can make areas of our overstocked pine forests healthier and less prone to severe damage from wildfires. In some cases, prescribed fire alone might suffice. The question remains, however, whether either practice can be conducted at a meaningful scale, as tens of thousands of acres need treatment. In all likelihood wildfires will continue in Nebraska's pine forests. Hopefully, most burned areas will continue to revert to pine woodlands and savannas with more natural tree densities and a century from now, Nebraskans will still have the opportunity to stand beneath majestic ponderosa pines and feel enchanted. ■ Its pine forests burned during the 1989 Fort Robinson Fire, much of the Petersen WMA in Sioux County has reverted to beautiful mixed-grass prairie and pine savanna.