N RANCHING
atural Resources
see a prescribed burn. They think in terms of 10-15 foot fl ames, with everything blowing up and moving really fast, when it’s just a gentle kind of fi re that you can jump across in most cases.”
Prescribed burn schools Armstrong, Taylor and others teach prescribed burn
schools, and Taylor says support also comes from groups like the Edwards Plateau Prescribed Burn Association (EPPBA), which he founded in 1997. “It’s kind of like neighbor helping neighbor,” he says.
“When one of them decides to do a fi re, the neighbors show up, bring their equipment and help that indi- vidual. A nonprofi t 501(c)3 organization, the EPPBA has grown from 30 members to about 200 in 15 coun- ties, and has spawned like-minded groups elsewhere in Texas and a half dozen other states. Taylor isn’t downplaying the threat posed by fi re.
An intense wildfi re, he acknowledges, can burn down structures, fences and homes, and even kill people. “What we really need is a lot more fi re, but it needs
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to be prescribed fi re,” he says. “What I like to say is, ‘We need to take the wild out of fi re’; if we’re using a lot more prescribed fi re, and re-integrating livestock grazing and browsing with that, then we will be tak- ing the wild out of these big wildfi res, making them a lot tamer and easier to deal with.” His schools are geared to private landowners for
the most part, many of whom have viewed fi re as something that is detrimental. Taylor says that’s due to a lack of fi re culture in Texas. “I was taught by my dad and granddad that you had to be really careful with fi re — that fi re really wasn’t an option to use to manipulate the vegetation,” he says. “You don’t change that mindset overnight. It takes a long time, but I think we are really making progress now, and more and more landowners are interested in the use of fi re. To be honest about it, before they use fi re they need to understand how to do it correctly, safely and effectively, and that’s one reason why I started teach- ing burn schools about 12 years ago.” Armstrong notes that there is more to the schools
than just teaching how to burn a fi eld. “When you’re working with a prescribed burn program with profes- sionals,” he says, “they will get you into other programs such as rotation grazing systems and deer management programs where you’re reducing numbers of deer and causing other plants to grow. It’s just the proper man- agement of land altogether; fi re is just one part of it, but it’s a major part of improving your land.”
46 The Cattleman January 2016
thecattlemanmagazine.com
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