Fire and Invasive Plants
Doing ecological restoration work because it is fun and no other reason!
A week ago today I took off of work to go volunteer with the Clifton Institute in Warrenton, VA. The folks at Clifton Institute perform controlled burns across dozens if not hundreds of acres of their property every year in an attempt to restore native habitat. In the case of last Friday's burn, we were attempting to control for woody and invasive plants along a scrubby hillside parcel. Staff at Clifton Insitute hope to bring back native meadow and prairie ecosystems relied upon by birds, insects, and mammals, but that are sorely lacking in the Northern Virgnia Piedmont region.
That is why Clifton Institute is burning, the reason I come along is because it is a whole lot of fun and good hard work.
As a relative outsider to this field (the group of volunteers and staff ranged from grisled wildfire veterans to first timers, I'm was a fourth timer), this is how I understand what is going on at one of these prescribed burns— a burn boss and their crew leaders direct a small army to consume an area in fire in as controlled a manner as possible. Each crew will have sources of water (either hand-pump backpack sprayers or gas-powered pumps on the back of UTVs) to lay down a wet line, an igniter to burn from that wet line into the bulk of fuel being ignited (the field of grass or scrub), and a bunch of folks with specialty tools meant to put out fire encroaching past the fire break/wet line. The crew leader is communicating between the crew doing all those things and the burn boss and any spotters to ensure that ignition is well-paced down a the line and that no flare ups or changes in weather mean everyone needs to drop what they're doing.
As someone on the crew, you are most likely to be someone watching the fire line to ensure it does not encroach into the fire break. This job is so interseting, as you quicky come to inuit the safety of black, burned grass and soil and the risk presented by smoldering, smoking grass. You watch your crewmates as they watch the ground and watch you, to ensure that they also see the smoky grass and catch it. The danger of heat and smoke heightens your senses and focuses you on the fire at hand. While a controlled burn can get out of control quickly and create lots of dangerous situations for lots of people, most of the time, you are just mopping up small embers and keeping your eyes peeled. But you likely weren't there, and if you were, you may not agree with me telling you that you felt that way.
Because I foolishly offered to drive in the first few minutes of the day, I ended up stuck with driving around the UTV on steep roads and away from the fire for much of the day. Despite not being the hottest job, I had a whole lot of fun. The best part isn't the fire or the work or any of that though, it is hanging out with the restoration ecology nerds that do this because they care about the plants and animals being fostered by the flames. The kind of people that volunteer on a fire in upstate Virginia are the kind of folks who know about how to best germinate a thistle you've never heard of or how fire stimulates tree growth hormones. The debates get spicy too, like, what is the difference between restoration and conservation? Why the hell would you want to preserve that red cedar in the field and not let it burn? ("Some bird is only seen there every year, and anyways, cedars don't ruin field here like they do in the Shenandoah Valley"). But this is all to say, I'm no botanist, birder, or entymologist, I just like hanging out with them doing something that feels inately good. Someone said last week that "fire is man's oldest tool," and that's pretty cool.
Besides Friday's fire, I helped out on a City invasive plant removal and nerded out with the local state forester a bit. Much like being on a burn, joining a big group of people on an invasive plant removal is supposedly a huge win for ecosystem restoration, allowing native plants to move back in where bush honeysuckle previously shaded them out, but it also just feels good to do. While some folks might see invasive plant removal as being somewhat of a waste of time or resources, with invasive plants maybe being poorly or improperly defined, if a City is contributing resources to getting volunteers together to work outside, just about anything is worth that, probably.
I just wish that the suburbanites of the world obsessed with lawns and gardening would take a minute to think about why they like it-- for me its because I like working with my hands and making a tangible difference in my surroundings. I hope more people think about it and realize they could be making that difference in public spaces with people they may call a friend some day.
pictures to come eventually