Nature Conservancy Archives

Burners light up Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois

Kelly AnderssonNovember 15, 2023November 16, 2023Prescribed FireIllinois, Nachusa, Nature Conservancy, rxfire, TNC2 Comments

A Nachusa fire crew hit a 24-acre project area of the grassland Tuesday, November 14, for a prescribed burn on the prairie habitat. Fire has historically been an important and natural part of the prairie; clearing the ground cover stimulates new growth, and many native plants rely on wildland fire to open seed pods and regenerate. Sauk Valley Media sent their ace photographer to track the 10-person crew at Nachusa Grasslands as they worked to put in firebreaks, put down a water line, and ignite the grasses so the fire will burn in their planned direction.

Nachusa Grasslands RxFire — Conditions were just right for a prescribed fire on November 14 at Nachusa Grasslands in northern Illinois. Fire managers hope to do another burn at the end of the week. Photo courtesy Alex T. Paschal.

The 4,100-acre Nachusa Grasslands preserve consists of large remnant prairie, woodlands, and wetlands reconnected through habitat restoration to create one of the largest and most biologically diverse grasslands in Illinois. Including 4,000 acres of restored and remnant prairie, Nachusa Grasslands is home to 180 species of birds, more than 700 native plant species, and a herd of bison.

The Nature Conservancy purchased the core of the preserve in 1986, recognizing that Nachusa offered a terrific opportunity to restore a diverse native grassland.

Working hand-in-hand with Nature Conservancy staff, volunteer stewards collect and plant seeds, manage invasive species, repair wetlands, and conduct prescribed burns to preserve this ecosystem.

RxFire Nachusa — Prescribed burning: A volunteer fire crew sets a prescribed burn at Nachusa Grasslands preserve in Illinois. ©Andrew Simpson / The Nature Conservancy

The Friends of Nachusa Grasslands has a calendar online for its volunteer workdays; hunting season is scheduled in early December and the spring RxFire season will start up in March 2024. If you’re interested in volunteer opportunities, most workdays are scheduled on Thursday and Saturdays.

The Nachusa Grasslands and its visitor center are south of Rockford, Illinois and about a 2-hour drive west of Chicago.

The Friends organization is established to fund endowments for long-term protection of the Grasslands, conducting and encouraging stewardship, supporting science and education, and protecting the land here. Nachusa Grasslands is open from dawn to dusk, and visitors are welcome to hike in the non-fenced areas. Wildlife inhabitants include a herd of bison, which range across 1,500 acres and are often not visible from the Visitor Center or the roadsides. Almost 10 years ago, 30 bison were introduced to Nachusa Grasslands from three preserves owned by The Nature Conservancy in South Dakota, Iowa, and the Dunn Ranch in Missouri. Wind Cave National Park bison and elk, photo ©2013 Bill Gabbert

Originally part of the herd from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, these bison have been tested and show no traces of cattle genes. No hiking is permitted inside the fenced North or South Bison Units.

The bison and the grassland vegetation species all benefit from prescribed fire and the Nature Conservancy’s fire research, and this fire — like others at the Grasslands — was timed for weather and fuels conditions that would be conducive to a controllable prescription burn.

“Wind and dry air is what determines whether we can have a burn,” Nachusa Director Bill Kleiman on Tuesday told photographer Alex Paschal.

A light south wind pushed the flames and smoke north, so crews planned for locations of the firebreaks and road warnings for motorists traveling the area. The burn was roughly an “L” shape on Carthage Road, and two separate crew units started the process on either side — so the fire could burn together in the middle.

“If the side upwind doesn’t have enough of a firebreak,” Kleiman said, “it can jump it and burn the other side.”

Alex Paschal has a photo gallery from the burn [HERE].

RxFire workforce expands under new FS agreement with Nature Conservancy

Hunter BasslerNovember 15, 2023November 17, 2023Prescribed FireNature Conservancy, rxfire4 Comments

The U.S. Forest Service will fund almost $45 million over five years for The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to expand the organization’s prescribed fire projects and workforce.

In a recent statement, TNC said the funding will prioritize prescribed fire in the 21 landscapes and 250 high-risk firesheds in the Western U.S., and hiring to expand the workforce started in October. TNC also received permission to work on prescribed fires in any national forest within Idaho, according to Boise State Public Radio.

“For more than a century, policies suppressing wildfire and stamping out Indigenous Peoples’ burning practices largely kept healthy fire from hundreds of millions of acres of North American landscapes that needed it,” said Marek Smith, director of TNC’s North America Fire program.

The expansion is part of the FS Wildfire Crisis Strategy, specifically the program’s National Prescribed Fire Resource Mobilization.

Along with expanding its prescribed fire workforce, the strategy also calls for an expansion of both the Forest Service Fuels Academy and National Interagency Fire Training Center, which train new prescribed fire practitioners, managers, and entry-level fuels specialists. It also calls to address issues in resource availability, including overtime and hazard pay, contracts and agreements, and hiring more authorities.

A related strategy, the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy is reportedly in its “final stage” of developing a national cohesive wildland fire management system. The effort began in 2009, and the final phase has been in development since 2014.

“Implementation of the National Cohesive Strategy will be undertaken in the same manner it was created — with recognition of the differences among stakeholders across the country and a vision of how we can collectively achieve more together,” the plan says. “Together, we can learn from and replicate existing collaborative behaviors and successful practices to achieve even greater success.”

Western Oregon non-profit awarded more than $9 million wildfire risk prevention grant

Kelly AnderssonApril 13, 2023Preventiongrants, Nature Conservancy, Oregon

A Douglas County non-profit will receive $9 million in prevention grant funding, the second highest award in the state of Oregon. The U.S. Forest Service awarded $9,151,505 through its Community Wildfire Defense Grant program (CWDG) to the Douglas Electric Cooperative, according to a KEZI News report. The non-profit electric utility serves 11,000 meters in a 2,500-square-mile territory that includes Douglas, Coos, and Lane counties in western Oregon.

In Grant County, the town of John Day received two grants, including the state’s largest award of $9,907,344 earmarked for Grant County’s evacuation corridor and fuels management, Forest Service officials said. (This is the same Grant County that arrested a burn boss on a USFS prescribed fire last fall.) The Blue Mountain Eagle reported that Prairie Wood Products also was awarded a $1 million grant as part of an effort to strengthen the wood products economy and promote sustainable forest management. Through the Wood Products Infrastructure Assistance grant program, the Forest Service is providing funding to wood processing facilities to improve, establish, retrofit, or expand facilities that purchase and process byproducts from ecosystem restoration projects on federal or tribal lands.

The Forest Service’s CWDG program invests a total of $23.5 million to assist communities, and often partners with The Nature Conservancy. “In 60 years of working with wildland fire, The Nature Conservancy has learned that successful wildfire adaptation efforts are inevitably grounded in communities,” said Marek Smith, director of TNC’s North America Fire program. “The Community Wildfire Defense Grant program provides an important opportunity to deliver needed resources to communities that are doing the challenging work of living sustainably with wildfire.”

The 2021 Bootleg Fire on the Chiloquin Ranger District of the Fremont-Winema National Forest. South Central Oregon Fire Management Partnership photo

Some of the 100 funded projects — including the Chiloquin Wildfire Risk Reduction and Education project in Oregon — are led by TNC or its partners.

“We’re grateful for support of TNC-involved projects, and we’re deeply grateful to see a broad slate of funded projects that are diverse in terms of scope, communities represented, and geography,” said Smith. “A better future with wildland fire requires that outmoded ideas and approaches are transformed by the vision and experience of diverse communities.”

Forest Service officials said the CWDG program funding is made possible through the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, part of which prioritized low-income communities at risk of a wildfire hazard. An additional round of funding will be announced later this year.

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