Daucus carota, Queen Anne’s Lace. Wilhelm and Rericha in Flora of the Chicago Region point out to us that Daucus means carrot. And of course carota means carrot. So a carrot’s carrot. If you dig up the tuber of this plant it does not smell like a tomato.
The authors also point out that Daucus carota is introduced from Eurasia. That Higley and Raddin, way back in 1891, list it as “spontaneous in waste places and old gardens but dying out in three or four years“. That is my point of this short essay! Queen Anne’s Lace is exotic, but not invasive. It is a “decreaser”. It will diminish on its own.
As Tom Vanderpoel explained to Stephen Packard, who told me three decades back; when you see queen anne’s lace you should add seed, not weed it. The plant is not much of a competitor, so when you see a bunch of Daucus carota it means there was some disturbance that simplified that bit of habitat and opened some niche space for queen anne’s lace to exploit for several years.
The photo above is a fallow front yard from a house we demolished several years back. I sprayed some broadleaf herbicide in the yard to kill some lawn weeds. So I made perfect habitat for queen anne’s lace.
Wilhelm and Rericha also state that “It since has become ubiquitous and persistent in waste ground and degraded portions of remnant natural areas. “
A few of our stewards have been known to remove queen annes lace, but this is because they have very little of it, because they have seeded the area and those native plants are starting to dominate, the queen annes lace is decreasing and they want to be rid of it. We sometimes will mow a thick patch because someone is asking us to. It is biennial so you can mow it for some effect, or spade it. But perhaps leave it and go pick some seed to plant there.
Queen Anne’s laceFrom the Apiaceae family, Daucus means carrot.The flowers later form this basket of seeds, which will turn brown about a week later.
Overview: Small remnant prairies in eastern Kansas host exceptional levels of plant diversity, and the combination of conservation and working lands create heterogeneity on the landscape, as well as opportunities and challenges for restoration. Local experts will share their knowledge of ethnobotany, plant ecology, biodiversity, microbiomes, fungi, and plant-soil feedback in the context of restoring grasslands. A field tour of the KU Field Station will highlight a medicinal plant garden; an immersive art exhibit that applies cultural burning in a restored grassland, and research on the interactive effects of climate, mycorrhizae, and biodiversity in restored prairie.
Meet at Baker Wetlands Discovery Center, 1365 N 1250 Rd., Lawrence, KS
12:00 Welcome and meeting orientation (Bill Kleiman and Sara Baer)
12:15 Presentation on Kansas ecosystems: Helen Alexander, Professor Emeritus and Grassland Heritage Foundation Board Member
1:00 Presentation on soil inoculants: Liz Koziol, Research Professor, Kansas Biological Survey
Break 1:45-2:00
Field presentations and discussions
2:00 Group 1: Baker Wetlands – Field talk and tour of restorations
Group 2: Depart for the KU Field Station Armitage Center
Welcome Bryan Foster, Director of the KU Field Station
2:45 Group 1: Depart to KU Field Station Armitage Center
Bryan Foster, Director of the KU Field Station
Group 2: Dimensions in biodiversity experiment
Jim Bever, Professor and Sr. Scientist, Kansas Biological Survey
3:30 Group 1: Dimensions in biodiversity experiment
Jim Bever, Professor & Senior Scientist, Kansas Biological Survey
Group 2: Here-ing exhibit – integrating art and cultural burning into restoration.
Sheena Parsons, KU Field Station Manager
3:45 Group 1: Here-ing exhibit – integrating art and cultural burning into restoration.
Sheena Parsons, KU Field Station Manager
Group 2: Medicinal plant garden – Ethnobotany and restoration
Kelly Kindscher, Professor and Senior Scientist, Kansas Biological Survey
4:30 Group 1: Medicinal plant garden – Ethnobotany and restoration
Kelly Kindscher, Professor and Senior Scientist, Kansas Biological Survey
Group 2: Travel back to Baker wetlands and tour of Baker wetlands
5:30 Baker Wetlands: discussion and refreshments
Dinner with others in Lawrence or travel to Shawnee (approximately 40 minutes).
Day 2: Exploring Prairie Restorations at Shawnee Mission Park
Meeting time and address:
8:30 am
17501 Midland Dr, Shawnee, KS 66217
We will stage at the golf course and shuttle to the restoration sites in the park adjacent to the site.
Overview of activities (8:30 am – 12:00 pm): We plan to continue our restoration conversations in the field with a day hosted by Johnson County Park and Recreation District at Shawnee Mission Park. We will explore sequentially restored prairies anchored by old growth units in a park that sees two million visitors a year. These sites reflect diverse restoration strategies in a highly visible suburban park setting. Local staff will share lessons learned from years of adaptive management, volunteer engagement, and long-term monitoring. See how restoration efforts are taking root in one of the most visited parks in Kansas City area!
Optional activity: Natural resource shop visit (8204 Renner Rd.) will be held after lunch at the Tomahawk Hills Golf Course.
REGISTRATION: Follow this link to register. Please register by August 15th. The number of participants is limited, so we encourage you to register early.
To help cover costs, there is a suggested donation of $20 to the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research. Please follow this link and select “Center for Ecological Research Endowment.”
It is good to do simple monitoring or testing to see if a weed treatment you are using works. I will describe the simple way I tested a herbicide treatment. I retreated this patch and found it did work. Read on.
On May 30, 2024 I sprayed eight distinct mature patches of reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) with clethodim herbicide. Each patch of reed canary was about six feet in diameter, the plants 3 to 4 foot tall, and in flower. So their big growth spurt was done for the season.
As I have read, it is recommended to apply clethodim when the plants have emerged several inches and are actively growing. I have tested this and it works. I was hoping for a longer application window by spraying more mature plants. Would that work?
The herbicide mix was 1.5% Intensity (clethodim), ammonium sulfate crystals (three cups added to a 50 gallon mix), and a half ounce per gallon of methylated seed oil. Maybe I needed more AMS and MSO.
In each of the eight patches I drove in a four foot tall fiberglass rod. The rod could withstand a fire and be noticeable a year later.
I sprayed the patches so the milky herbicide mix was starting to drip off.
I recorded this information into Field Maps.
I made a calendar reminder for a year later to look at the results.
Yesterday I looked, May 28 2025, and all eight patches looked very healthy. The clethodim did not control reed canary grass that was applied when the plants were mature.
One of the 8 patches treated a year previously with clethodim. They looked like this last year when I sprayed them. And they look fine a year later after clethodim. This suggests clethodim applied to mature reed canary grass in late spring does not work.
But then again. I try a second application. The next day, May 29, 2025, I did make a new clethodim mix and re-sprayed the same 8 patches of reed canary to see what happens. Below are two photos of those patches about six weeks later on July 19, 2025. They are clearly top killed. I was surprised. Top killed but are the roots dead? I will leave the fiberglass rods in them and check back in May of 2026 and report back.
Top killed reed canary grass treated with clethodom six weeks previously.
I encourage managers to test out their treatments. It was not hard. It was also not rigorous enough to publish a scientific paper or get a degree.
Mike Saxton – Manager of Ecological Restoration and Land Stewardship – Shaw Nature Reserve – Gray Summit, MO
Stump grinders are one of those tools that you don’t use often and when you do use one…you sometimes have to re-learn your technique if it’s been a couple years since you operated last. If you use them so infrequently, perhaps it’s best to rent or barrow. There are a lot of different models out there and most have a big spinning disk with replaceable teeth. You can picture it.
As part of a 120 acre prairie establishment / logging project, we have ground thousandsand thousands of stumps using a Kubota SVL track loader and a Fecon StumpEx stump grinder. I outlined that project in a previous GRN blog post
Fecon StumpEx – 1,368 lbs, bit diameter is 32″, requires 20-42 gallons per minute high flow
Kubota SVL loader – we were running the StumpEx on an SVL-90-2 for a couple years. High flow GPM = 36. We are now running it on a new Kubota SVL-97 with a high flow GPM = 40. So we are at the upper end of the StumpEx flow requirements.
The above stump took about 1 minute to grind below grade. It was roughly 15in diameter and 3in tall.
A well-conditioned cutting tooth will peel off large chunks of stump – 3/4in thick in this picture.
New purchase price was $21,000. I’m told the hydraulic pump is $12K to replace. The spiral cone is $1K to replace. And we just found out that the cutting bit is $8K to replace.
After many thousands of cedar, oak, and ash stumps, we had lost a lot of material both from wear and from conditioning (I hesitate to call it “sharpening” because you don’t want a sharp edge). We had a weld break and while it could be repaired, the writing was on the wall. After a few years of use, thousands of stumps and about 90 acres of stumps clear…we had to replace the bit.
If you grind a few stumps a year, this implement might be overkill. If you remove dozens of stumps each year and will continue to do so for many years, this could be a worth while investment. It’s well built and performs well. Handles large stumps in no time. It is pricey but you get what you pay for with Fecon products.
(yes – we could have dozed or dug out the stumps with an excavator. Thousands of root balls and a pock marked, divoted landscape would have been the result. This was a big commitment but we felt the right choice for the future of this restored prairie.)
By: Bill Kleiman – Director Nachusa Grasslands, Elizabeth Bach – Research Scientist Nachusa Grasslands, Elizabeth Becker – Doctoral Student SDSU / UC Davis Joint Doctoral Program in Ecology
Restoring any ecosystem is extremely difficult and getting it right on the “first try” nears impossibility. For tallgrass prairies, attempts to leap from an abandoned agricultural landscape to a highly diverse prairie are often thwarted by non-native species and an over-abundance of warm season grasses like big bluestem. How then, can we go from an established prairie with moderate forb diversity to a high diversity prairie?
Over a decade ago, Bill Kleiman, the Project Director of Nachusa Grasslands, asked this question and wanted to know if adding seed to an already restored prairie (i.e., overseeding) would increase diversity. He established treatment plots across three sites at Nachusa in 2009 and 2012 that varied in seed inputs and disturbance intensities to test this. The full details of this experiment can be found here, but the abridged version of the treatments is below:
Control plots: no manipulations
Seed: overseeding only
Low intensity disturbance: harrowing and overseeding
Intermediate intensity disturbance: harrowing, overseeding, and additional applications of Poast grass herbicide during the growing season
High intensity disturbance: Disking, harrowing, and overseeding
In 2023, species composition and abundance data were collected in each of the treatment plots (photo 1). Data collection consisted of identifying all species and their percent cover in three 1m x 1m quadrats that was then averaged across each treatment plot.
Photo 1: Species composition and abundance data collection in a treatment plot.
When compared to control plots, it was found that the high intensity disturbance treatments increased native species richness by over 40% and native species diversity by 15%. The low intensity disturbance plots also increased native species richness and diversity by 20% and 12% respectively, when compared to controls. In high intensity plots, we found an average of 23.2 native species averaged across all plots compared to only 16.4 native species in the control plots. In the low intensity plots the average number of native species found was 21.6 native species. This data can be seen in the graph below.
Figure 1. Average native species richness across each treatment. The number of native species is indicated at the top of each box. The stars on the graph indicate the amount of significance compared
In short, we found that overseeding paired with topsoil disturbance is key to increasing plant species richness and diversity in established prairie plantings. Overseeding alone did not seem to result in significant increases in richness or diversity over time in this instance. This could be because this was a singular overseeding event and multiple rounds of overseeding may be needed for it to successfully increase native species richness and diversity.
Disturbance is likely important in this scenario because it disrupted the roots of some established species and reduced competition above- and belowground for newly sown species. Even the low intensity disturbance, which may not have fully disrupted the rooting structures of established species, was likely important for forming microsites in the soil which allowed some seeds to successfully germinate and establish over time.
Contrarily, we found that additional herbicide application may negate the positive impacts of disturbance, inhibiting native species richness and diversity. This is likely due to non-target effects of the herbicide though it is unclear what was driving these non-target effects in this experiment.
Finally, as Bill noted in previous posts, it is difficult to distinguish these treatment differences by just walking through the prairie. Since the treatments can be resource intensive, mangers should weigh these differences with respect to their specific goals before implementation.
Yellow and white sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis and M alba) are on the invasive weed list of many natural areas managers. The plants are biennial, so on year two they bolt, bloom, and produce a lot of seed. They are a legume and their seed sits in the soil for years, releasing some annually to give you a run for your money.
I bet some insects like the nectar and pollen sweet clover produces, and in a pasture I would think cattle would graze it. It was originally brought to the continent for hay. We managers have seen how sweet clover can form incredible thickets and so we push back when feasible.
A long time ago my new boss Stephen Packard told me you can mow the sweet clovers to kill them but you have to mow them below the lowest leaves. If you mow above the lowest leaves it will resprout.
As sweet clover matures the leaves die off from the ground up.
A key point here is the longer you wait the higher you can mow.
I have found Stephen’s advice to be solid. Decades back we reduced fields of white and yellow sweet clover with mowing done at the right time. A few years later we only had to spot mow some patches, then later just some backpack spraying of patches, and now just a sprinkling of plants we can spade or spray or cut.
As with all weeds, you have strategies for some areas that are different from other areas. Mowing sweet clover won’t work in rocky areas. If you have thousands of acres to manage you may not have sweet clover on the top of your list of weeds. Like many ecological questions the answer starts with “It depends”.
June 25, 2013: Removing sweet clover. You only need to remove sweet clover if the seeds are forming.
The yellow sweet clover blooms first. Wait to mow it until it is just about to be mature enough to produce seed. At Nachusa this is about June 15 to 20. White sweet clover is ready to mow around the Fourth of July.
June 18: Stihl FSA 200 electric brush saw cutting a yellow sweet clover. A brush saw can mow nearly flush to the ground so they can be a good choice of a tool. They are faster than spading or hand scything. But we still mostly use a spade as the spade is cheap and effective.We are about to try this tri blade out which comes with its own orange shield. We hear this will work well. Gas string trimmer to cut yellow sweet clover. White sweet clover is too robust for a string trimmer. White sweet clover on June 17. Note that to mow this below the lowest leaf stem you would have to cut flush with the ground. That won’t happen with a mower. Yellow sweet clover on June 15. So this could be mowed at the height where I hold the plant, perhaps 5 inches. Many mowers can do this. June 15: Yellow sweet clover. You would need to mow at the height I am holding it, essentially flush with the ground. A mower can’t do this. You could cut it with a spade flush with the ground, but we tend to use the “Parsnip Predator” weed spade to loosen the soil and then pull it up with the roots. If the plants are in seed when cut then they need to be removed from the field. June 14: Yellow sweet clover. That stem with leaves on it means you can’t mow this plant yet. June 7: So how low do we have to mow this one?June 5: A yellow sweet clover that was mowed June 5. Too early is what I concluded. It is a macerated mess but there were a few leaves below the cut.
Patience is a prairie word: A key point here is the longer you wait the higher you can mow sweet clover.
June 16: Yellow sweet clover in early seed. I would haul this one out if you can.
It is good to do simple monitoring or testing to see if a weed treatment you are using works. I will describe the simple way I tested a herbicide treatment. I retreated this patch and found it did work. Read on.
On May 30, 2024 I sprayed eight distinct mature patches of reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) with clethodim herbicide. Each patch of reed canary was about six feet in diameter, the plants 3 to 4 foot tall, and in flower. So their big growth spurt was done for the season.
As I have read, it is recommended to apply clethodim when the plants have emerged several inches and are actively growing. I have tested this and it works. I was hoping for a longer application window by spraying more mature plants. Would that work?
The herbicide mix was 1.5% Intensity (clethodim), ammonium sulfate crystals (three cups added to a 50 gallon mix), and a half ounce per gallon of methylated seed oil. Maybe I needed more AMS and MSO.
In each of the eight patches I drove in a four foot tall fiberglass rod. The rod could withstand a fire and be noticeable a year later.
I sprayed the patches so the milky herbicide mix was starting to drip off.
I recorded this information into Field Maps.
I made a calendar reminder for a year later to look at the results.
Yesterday I looked, May 28 2025, and all eight patches looked very healthy. The clethodim did not control reed canary grass that was applied when the plants were mature.
One of the 8 patches treated a year previously with clethodim. They looked like this last year when I sprayed them. And they look fine a year later after clethodim. This suggests clethodim applied to mature reed canary grass in late spring does not work.
But then again. I try a second application. The next day, May 29, 2025, I did make a new clethodim mix and re-sprayed the same 8 patches of reed canary to see what happens. Below are two photos of those patches about six weeks later on July 19, 2025. They are clearly top killed. I was surprised. Top killed but are the roots dead? I will leave the fiberglass rods in them and check back in May of 2026 and report back.
Top killed reed canary grass treated with clethodom six weeks previously.
I encourage managers to test out their treatments. It was not hard. It was also not rigorous enough to publish a scientific paper or get a degree.
By: Julianne Mason, Forest Preserve District of Will County, Illinois
For the past decade or so, I have had a slow-burn obsession with tracking the outcomes of spring treatments of clethodim herbicide, to reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea). It is a Top 5 invasive plant in our wetlands in northeastern Illinois, and we spent 4,000 hours and 6,000 gallons of herbicide in 2024 to combat it across 3,200 acres. Given the amount of effort, it is important to make sure that the treatments are as effective as possible!
Fall treatments of clethodim, a grass-specific herbicide, are fairly consistently effective on reed canary grass – see previous study here and follow-up observations here. However, it’s desirable to treat invasives before they go to seed, and as natural area managers, we generally want to kill reed canary grass in the spring before it goes to seed. Spring clethodim treatments to reed canary grass have seemed to be more variable in results. To try to figure out why some treatments are more effective than others, I marked individual reed canary grass plants from ten different clethodim treatments between April and July, 2024, and tracked their outcomes the following spring (2025).
Why clethodim? For the past decade, we have used clethodim as our herbicide of choice to combat reed canary grass because it does not kill native sedges and forbs. This makes it different than using a non-selective herbicide like glyphosate or imazapyr, which leave “holes” in the vegetation because they kill everything in the overspray zone. Over the course of a decade, sites that we consistently used glyphosate to spray reed canary grass in the spring became weedier as reed canary grass and other invasives recolonized the glyphosate “holes”, necessitating more herbicide treatments in a downward spiral. In contrast, sites that we consistently used clethodim on the reed canary grass became more dominated by natives and had less invasives over time. Note that we are working in remnant and restored natural areas where there are native species present to reclaim a competitive advantage once the reed canary grass is selectively targeted.
Bare areas left from glyphosate herbicide application to reed canary grass the previous year. Reed canary grass had been sprayed with clethodim herbicide (red circle – browned vegetation). Yellow circle was a missed patch of reed canary grass. Native bulrushes and sedges were unaffected by the herbicide treatment.In my 2016 study, comparison of two adjacent plots where the reed canary grass was treated with clethodim and glyphosate herbicide, viewed two years after the treatment.
Despite its advantages over time, individual clethodim treatments are often underwhelming. Although it does not happen too often, I have witnessed treatments with nearly magical effects, where the reed canary grass is selectively killed and rich, diverse, native-dominated sedge meadows are released. This usually happens after a prescribed burn, when the grasses are treated when they are 3-4 inches tall. However, this timing is difficult to achieve because clethodim and other grass-specific herbicides are not aquatic approved, and wetlands tend to be wet in the spring. Oftentimes, the reed canary grass treatments must be delayed until the wetlands dry out, and the grasses are then 6” + tall. Many of the treated reed canary grasses just appear stunted by the clethodim herbicide treatment. Although they generally appear affected – the leaves become chlorotic, and they don’t flower or produce seed – they also don’t die. At least not that season.
Perhaps there may be a delayed effect going on. In my 2016 study, individual reed canary grass plants were marked and treated with clethodim in the fall. For the next several years, I recorded them as being “stunted but alive”. Then, when I found the marking flags five years later, the reed canary grass plants had died and were gone. Maybe they were selectively weakened by the clethodim treatment and eventually outcompeted by the natives that were not impacted by the herbicide.
To look at the outcomes of spring clethodim herbicide treatments, I marked 10 individual reed canary grass plants in 10 different clethodim treatments between April – July, 2024, and tracked their outcomes the following spring (2025). Here are some of the (still preliminary) results. All treatments were made with 1.5% clethodim (v/v) and using a surfactant containing ammonium sulfate. However, the treatments were made by five different crews, each using different brand names and products in their herbicide concoction.
Reed canary grass was sprayed with 1.5% Intensity herbicide on 4/8/2024, after the area had received a prescribed burn. The herbicide concoction included Choice WeatherMaster AMS (0.5%) and Activator 90 surfactant (1%). The grasses were about 4” tall when they were sprayed. A month after treatment (left), it looked very effective. However, many of the marked individuals re-grew during the fall of 2024 (center). An herbicide crew was in the area spraying reed canary grass during the fall of 2024, and the marked plants may have gotten a second treatment. In the spring of 2025 (right), the marked reed canary grass plants were dead and native forbs and sedges had filled in.
This wetland area stayed wet for the entire spring in 2024, and didn’t dry out until July. The reed canary grass was sprayed with 1.5% clethodim herbicide on 7/2/2024, when the plants were well past seed-set (left). The herbicide concoction also included 2% Surfate AMS, 1% MSO, and 0.2% PenATrate Eco surfactant. During the fall of 2024, the treated plants re-grew considerably (center). The herbicide crew was in the area spraying reed canary grass again during the fall of 2024, and the marked plants may have gotten a second treatment. In the spring of 2025 (right), the reed canary grass was mostly dead but some of the marked plants were re-sprouting weakly from the edge of the former clump.This treatment of 1.5% Intensity (clethodim) to reed canary grass was done on 6/19/2024, when the grasses were setting seed (left, view a few weeks after treatment). The herbicide concoction included Choice WeatherMaster AMS (0.5%) and Activator 90 surfactant (1%). During the fall of 2024, most of the marked grasses had re-grown (center). The herbicide crew was in the area spraying reed canary grass during the fall of 2024, and the marked plants may have gotten a second treatment. In the spring of 2025, many of the marked plants were re-sprouting weakly but were still alive.Reed canary grass in this wetland area was sprayed with 1.5% clethodim on 5/17/24, when the plants were in flower (left, view a few weeks after treatment). This crew’s herbicide concoction included 1.5% FS AMS Max DR surfactant, but did not include methylated seed oil (MSO). There was some regrowth during the fall of 2024, primarily in the top of the plants (center). This area did not receive a second treatment during the fall of 2024. During the spring of 2025, the marked plants were re-growing vigorously and appeared unaffected by the previous year’s treatment (right). This treatment appears to have been unsuccessful.
In general, the spring clethodim treatments that were more successful in reducing reed canary grass and increasing native coverage had some of these traits:
Post-burn treatment when the grasses were 3-4 inches tall,
Treatment to younger/smaller reed canary grass newly invading a natural area, not an established stand,
Received a follow-up treatment during the fall, and
The herbicide concoction contained a surfactant with ammonium sulfate and MSO, in addition to the clethodim herbicide.
After tracking the spring 2024 clethodim treatments to reed canary grass, it seems that the two best windows for effective treatments are: 1) in the spring after a prescribed burn when the reed canary grass is short, and 2) during the fall (late October – November) when the reed canary grass is green but other vegetation has started to senesce. Treatments during the late spring or early summer are useful to target smaller, scattered reed canary grass that are difficult to find until they send up their flowering stalks. Using a combination of fall treatments (for effectiveness) followed by spring treatments (for visibility of missed or young individuals) may be the best option for reducing reed canary grass and allowing the native matrix to recover.
Spring beauty are one of the early wildflowers to come up in our oak woods. They are crazy beautiful making us thankful for spring.
Spring cleaning. Above is old junk dumped in a ditch that we are cleaning up this week. In our grandparents time it was common to have a ditch on the back acreage to dump your abandoned old fence wire, broken implements, household appliances, tires, and in this case thousands of bottles and cans. We shun this dumping today, but we have sanitary landfills and recycling services our grandparents did not have.
Bill Nordman worked wonders with his excavator to pull all the big stuff out of the ditch. We set aside tires to have ground up. We scrap ironed what steel we could. Some junk went to the landfill, and some was buried. This old trailer could have been yours.
With the big stuff gone, we then had 15 volunteers come out and start picking up the little stuff. In two hours we filled up 30 large trash barrels of litter. Not the yellow 5 gallon buckets, but those big green barrels.
The ditch is now rather clean.
Birdsfoot trefoil is an invasive weed, also used as a pasture plant. Invasive weeds are a biological pollution. Their pollution stays a long time. Annually we search for the occurrences and treat the ones that emerged from the seed bank. For decades we track and treat this pollution. We keep after the weeds, we are happy weed warriors most of the time; but it is satisfying to just pick up some litter.
Burning hubris: It is as if fire gathers our small errors, our shortcuts, our complacencies; and gives us trouble for our hubris. Did we fill all the gas tanks on all our pumps? Did we check the water filters on the piston pumps this morning? Are the fire breaks well prepared? Is the layout of the burn unit too complicated?
Redundancy: We have multiple UTVs so any one UTV can go down. We have a support truck with various tools and a big tank of water to refill. We have a fire scout whose job is to help us watch the back lines. We build in redundancy to increase safety and get more fire on the ground.
We need more than fire: Degraded habitats that we burn, often need seed and brush management.
Holland Prairie burn March 12. 165-acres
The bottom line:
Number of burn days was 20, which is a limiting factor.
We burned 2,225-acres of Nachusa on 22 burn units
We assisted on 596-acres on 6 units.
Average size of a burn unit was 101-acres with a unit as small as 4-acres and big as 300.
Average crew size was 12.
The Soderholm/Vassallo fire on March 13. Paul Soderholm delivers us an order of Esmeralda’s tacos. We burn for tacosAfter the burn boss gives the general briefing, each Line Boss meets with their crew to discuss logistics.Kevin has been a volunteer burn crew member, and land steward, at Nachusa for about 35 years. He knows prescribed fire.Community: A burger and fries at the end of a long day is more than a meal.Nachusa’s Tyler Pellegrini is our new Restoration Ecologist at Nachusa. Here with DNR’s Russ Blogg who was our burn boss on two days of fire at Franklin Creek Natural Area.This March it appears an arson started a wildfire at Green River Conservation Area, which is 25 minutes south of Nachusa. Bill and Molly responded to a request for help from DNR’s Russ Blogg. The winds were strong and dry, but we worked safely from interior lanes for several hours. This untouched photo is as the sun set and the glow of the fire dominated the lens.For dual wood power posts we often do something as above. We park between the posts and soak a circle of the grass. Then use a drip torch to slowly ignite a circle of fire, letting the fire move away from the circle.
I have been walking around units we have burned this year to see how effective the fires were. I assume you all do the same. Some areas blacken, the exotic shrubs will be set back, the floristic quality will improve a bit. And then you walk through some of our natural areas that are in very poor condition. Yesterday, I ran a brush mulcher through one such site and opened it up so easily, but there are so many such sights. Let us be bolstered by Aldo Leopold’s summary, “That the situation is hopeless should not prevent us from doing our best.”
grassland restoration network 