In an effort to restore and maintain wildlife habitat, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission conducts prescribed burns across tens of thousands of acres of state game lands each year.
To find out whether smoke you’re seeing on state game lands is from a prescribed burn, check out the commission’s prescribed burns dashboard mapping system.
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To help support wildlife on most of the 2 million acres of state game lands used by hunters, anglers and wildlife watchers throughout the state, the agency sets about 200 to 300 prescribed burns across 20,000 to 30,000 acres ever year.
“Most of the prescribed burning on game lands occurs between January and March because the cool, humid air with minimal wind provides conditions for low intensity fires,” Commission Forestry Program Leader Casey Phillips stated in a release. “However, we will still conduct burns well into spring and summer, because growing season fires provides for better control of young hardwoods in certain habitats.”
Prescribed fires are more cost efficient than mowing and spraying because they reduce the use of hazardous fuels, such as leaf litter and pine straw, and improve biodiversity at a significantly larger scale than chemical or mechanical methods alone, according to the agency.
Maintenance burns are typically conducted in multi-year cycles to open groundcover for quail, grassland birds, deer and turkeys. Prescribed fires are also crucial for many of the state’s habitat-sensitive or rare species, including red-cockaded woodpeckers and Venus flytraps, which are adapted to fire or found only in fire-dependent habitat.
“Fire is a natural occurrence that native wildlife has adapted to,” Phillips stated. “We also use burning techniques intended to give animals time and room to escape. After an area is burned, we typically see new vegetation within a few weeks, which means the animals won’t be far behind.”
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For additional information, view No Cause for Alarm and visit Prescribed Fire: What NC Citizens Need to Know.
