Recorded Talks

Communities across the central United States gain a wide range of benefits from prescribed fire, including improving forage quality, reducing the intensity of wildfires, restoring habitat for game species and rare species, and renewing a positive relationship with fire.

The panelists addressed barriers to prescribed fire, from state liability laws to agency policies, with an emphasis on ways that barriers to prescribed fire have been reduced for private landowners and those  providing technical assistance to landowners.

Panelists Include:

• Charles Stanley, Rangeland Management Specialist, Central National Technology Support Center, Natural Resources Conservation Service
• Carissa Wonkka, Assistant Professor, University of Florida
• Wes Bucheit, Missouri Prescribed Fire Coordinating Wildlife Biologist, Pheasants Forever, Inc. and Quail Forever

Abstract

Humanity’s relationship with fire continues to rapidly change and influence the distribution of grassland ecosystems. In this paper, I discuss the progression of four distinct fire eras that have epitomized people’s relationship with wildland fire in the Great Plains since the last glacial maxima. These cultural fire eras include the now-extinct coexistence era (indigenous fire use), the suppression era (extermination of wildland fire occurrence), the shadow era (localized prescribed burning groups), and the current wildfire era. I draw connections between these eras and how competition among the cultures that identify with suppression, prescribed burning, or wildfire management are likely to further influence the distribution of grassland ecosystems into the future.

Presenter

Dirac Twidwell is a Professor and Rangeland Ecologist in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at the University of Nebraska and a Science Advisor for the USDA NRCS in the Great Plains. 

Grasslands in the Great Plains and Midwest are at constant risk from invasion by woody species. Conversion to deciduous woodlands and forests is already widespread in the Midwest and the southern Great Plains. This discussion focuses on the many ways that fire is essential to grasslands and the people who live there. Panel members will address:

• the role of fire in resisting invasion by woody species;
• managing reconstructed prairies;
• promoting diverse plant communities and healthy wildlife populations;
• and relevance to people from ranching communities to urban areas.

Panelists include:

• Pauline Drobney – Prairie and Savanna Zone Biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (retired)
• Matthew Garrett – Natural Resource Manager, Johnson County Park & Recreation District, Shawnee Mission, Kansas
• David Londe – post-doctoral wildlife ecology researcher at Oklahoma State University
• Doug Spencer – State Grazing Specialist – Kansas, Natural Resource Conservation Service
• Amy Symstad –  Research Ecologist and Chief of the Climate and Land-use Branch for the USGS Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center