With years of experience under his belt, Bill Rivers looked to the rising smoke coming off the burning undergrowth at a longleaf pine forest in St. Tammany Parish and wasn’t pleased. “It wobbled,” he said, referring to the winds on Jan. 30 that seemed to take the smoke one way and then another as his crew continued lighting the test burn.
As the leader of this fire team from The Nature Conservancy, it was his job to make the determination if the prescribed burn of this 80-acre longleaf pine forest parcel was going to move forward.
It wasn’t. Instead, the crew burned a strip of land along the edge as a fire break between the main forest and an uninhabited trailer. They will wait for another day when weather will be more cooperative.
Unlike wildfires seen in the summer that rip through forests, endangering homes, businesses and leaving burned out wasteland behind, the fire The Nature Conservancy will set to this parcel will ensure the forest’s survival.
“This habitat evolved with constant fire,” said Latimore Smith, director of stewardship and senior restoration ecologist with The Nature Conservancy. Fire is as necessary to a healthy longleaf pine ecosystem as rain is to the rainforest. “Without fire, we’ll lose these habitats and the many special species that depend on them,” Smith said.
From The Advocate: https://theadvocate.com/news/11464086-123/controlled-burns-help-keep-longleaf