The Roger Mills Prescribed Burn Association formed in 2006 and covers Roger Mills and Beckam counties. The group addresses the four common reasons people do not use prescribed fire: liability, training/experience, labor and equipment.

Oklahoma State University’s Department of Natural Resource Ecology and Management is researching effects of limited prescribed burning or “patch burning” to create a mosaic of patches across the landscape. Early research findings indicate better forage grasses and increased biodiversity.

Burning is a cost-effective method of controlling invasions of Eastern Red Cedar, but there’s more to burning than simply touching torch to ground. Prescribed burns follow a precise, multi-page “prescription” to ensure efficacy and safety.

Biologist Peter Berthelson of Pheasants Forever took action to educate land managers in Nebraska how to burn and created burn trailers stocked with all the hardware required to safely conduct prescribed burns. Rancher Tom Hartman talks about using fire to control an Eastern Red Cedar invasion in this episode.

Native Americans used fire to manage rangeland for thousands of years, but a 100-year burning hiatus followed European settlement of the North American heartland. Those decades of fire suppression allowed invasive plants to negatively alter the landscape. Now, rangeland researchers and managers are proponents of burning, when done safely and in a controlled setting.

The lack of fire on the Great Plains has permitted indigenous and foreign woody plants to encroach on prairie grasslands. These invasives dominate ecosystems by disrupting natural vegetation, changing watersheds and disturbing native wildlife, like the Lesser Prairie-Chicken. A suite of practices under the NRCS Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiative is assisting range managers with technical assistance and funding to remove or control those invasives while positively impacting the bird’s habitat.

The lack of fire as a management tool on the Great Plains has permitted indigenous and foreign woody plants to encroach on prairie grasslands, reducing Lesser Prairie-Chicken habitat. Through the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiative, NRCS can help producers and range managers remove woody invasive species — through burning, cutting and spraying. We tell one Oklahoma Panhandle rancher’s experience participating in the NRCS initiative.