Volunteers, staff, and guest agencies can work seamlessly.
Most years there are under two dozen burn weather days so make use of them.
Mentor others
Four of the crew are from the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. They sometimes send their fire crew to help others burn. It is a win for them and us. When you burn with other crews you learn and confirm. Two crew are from the Friends of the Illinois Nature Preserves. There is one TNC seasonal there and four Nachusa volunteers. Getting the job done.Big Woods unit burning well. The flame lengths are modest but these fires set back the brush and support the ground layer plants, and the fires sustain the oak and the hickory which do well with sunshine.
The bottom line:
Number of burn days was 19.
We burned 2,204-acres of Nachusa, close to a record high, on 16 burn units
We assisted on 874-acres on 12 units.
Average size of a burn unit was 138-acres with a unit as small as 3-acres and big as 300-acres.
Average crew size was 14.
The Northern Illinois University Fire Huskies were on the fire line. Here is NIU student Allyson Thompson with her mentor for the day, Susan Kleiman. We are literally passing the torch to the next generation. Ok a flapper in this case.Kaleb Baker (INPC), Pete Oliver (citizen), Phil Nagorny (TNC) at the Hill Site owned by the Middle Rock Conservation Partners. At the base of the hill you can see where Kaleb walked a circuitous path with that red torch.A day after the Hill Site fire with shrubs top killed by the heat but an old bur oak stands sentinel, that tree perhaps is old enough to have had Native American fires run past.This is a new knife mulcher made by Denis Cimaf on our also new Cat skid loader. This mulcher uses a sharp knife edge to make easier work of brush. This allows this 100 hp machine to do more work than the older blunt toothed style brush mower. The downside is you need to sharpen the teeth every day, or every other day, which takes about 20 minutes.
Bill Kleiman, Julianne Mason, and Mike Saxton publish this blog. Bill's daytime job is director of Nachusa Grasslands with The Nature Conservancy. Julianne works for the Forest Preserve District of Will County. Mike Saxton works for the Missouri Botanical Garden at their Shaw Nature Reserve. We are looking for guest authors on various topics of grassland habitat restoration. Contact us with your ideas.
grassland restoration network 
Bill , Excellent? Fran
Thanks for sharing this, Bill. Great work up there are usual.