By Jennifer Whitlock
Field Editor
Prescribed burns are a useful and beneficial land management tool. However, landowners often run into misunderstandings from county officials or neighbors as to how the process is controlled and why it’s necessary.
Now, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service has a kit to assist landowners in communicating the benefits of prescribed burns to others.
The idea came from a stakeholder comment made during last year’s virtual AgriLife prescribed fire workshop, which was led by Dr. Morgan Treadwell, AgriLife Extension rangeland specialist in San Angelo.
Mike Watson, a landowner in Lampasas, asked her after the session if there were any resources for prescribed burn education and advocacy.
“My wife and I began looking into ways to restore our land. and a big part of that is clearing brush,” Watson said. “We started doing our research, which led us to our local burn association, Burnet- Lampasas, a chapter of the Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burn Association. That, in turn, led me to AgriLife Extension’s educational resources on prescribed burns.”
The information in the seminar was good, Watson told Treadwell. But he was looking for a more condensed resource to share with prescribed burn association members.
“The virtual seminar was heavy on qualitative research, and the studies associated with it by graduate students were fairly dense,” Treadwell said in an interview with AgriLife Today. “In the past, other landowners had come to me also looking for information they could give to a newly-elected county or government official who wasn’t familiar with prescribed burns, so that confirmed the need.”
She took the idea to the Great Plains Fire Science Exchange, a federal agency that supports prescribed fires in the Great Plains states, including Texas. The group agreed a communication kit was needed.
A five-member committee, including Treadwell and Great Plains Fire Science Exchange Primary Investigator and Program Coordinator Dr. Carolyn Baldwin, developed the Prescribed Burning Communication Kit.
“We needed to create something that was landowner-friendly and landowner-driven,” Treadwell said. “A consolidated report that was essentially a one-stop-shop for prescribed burn information.”
The result is an eight-page document that includes talking points, communication strategies, advocacy tips, a sample burn notification letter and links to videos and other relevant information.
Landowners and prescribed burn professionals can incorporate what they learn from the kit to communicate more effectively with county commissioners, sheriffs, volunteer fire department members or other stakeholders as they prepare for their prescribed burn.
“We wanted members to be able to present factual information that would provide an accurate understanding of the many benefits of prescribed burning, including range management, livestock production, woody plant control and the benefits to nature and wildlife habitat,” Baldwin said.
Although the information was created for those in the Great Plains area, the information is applicable for anyone intending to conduct a prescribed burn.
“We want the support of our county, neighbors, volunteer fire department and officials when we do prescribed burns,” Watson said. “This provides us with a tool kit to present information on prescribed burns. These burns are key not only to restoring land but reducing burn loads, which better protects land from wildfires.”