The purpose of today’s prescribed burn was to help transform some scrubby brush area back to grassland, I guess in hopes of creating more diversity in the environments on a property called Long Point.  Combined with mowing in the fall, it is intended to eradicate small pitch pines, huckleberry, and god willing some of the poison ivy so that native grasses can populate the area again.

In order to take part in a prescribed burn, you need to be certified.  This entails a 40-hour class with a written test and some field training.  I am not certified, so I went along expecting to simply observe and take pictures.  I had never been to this property before and had never witnessed a burn so I had no idea what to expect.

Greg and I got to the barn and office at about 9:15.  I stapled some packets of maps together and Chris Eagan, the superintendent of the property, showed me on the aerial photo where the burn would be taking place.  He asked me if I was comfortable driving through the proprty and into town and observing the smoke, then reporting back to him if it was causing any problems.  If everything went right for the burn in terms of wind direction, all the smoke would blow at an elementary school and to the airport.  Obviously there is a visibility issue there, as well as the fear factor, that everyone panics when they smell smoke and don’t know where it’s coming from.  If we’re causing problems for the surrounding community, obviously it’s going to become difficult to get permission to have these burns in the future.

We drove a golf cart down to the southeast corner of the burn area, which they call the “unit,” and returned to the barn which is on the west side of a long pond that almost splits the proprty.  We took the truck over to the east side and waited for the crew to show up.

There were about a dozen people from The Nature Conservancy whose full-time (seasonal) job is doing prescribed burns on the island.  They had super jumpsuits or fire-resistant pants, cool equipment, fuel, hoses, rakes and shovels.  It was amazing how organized they are, of course they have to be.  Everyone was really nice and enthusiastic, but how could you not be when it’s your job to set the world on fire?

There is a lot of preparation and familiarizing yourself with the day’s procedure.  Everyone has to know what their job is, who their crew is, who has a radio, what and where the hard breaks (like bodies of water and parking lots, things that can’t burn) and soft breaks (mowed strips across the field, woodchip trails) are, and of course what the weather is doing. 

We waited all morning for the clouds to clear and the conditions to be right for the burn.  If there is no sun, then there isn’t enough lift to get the smoke up off the ground and it will just kind of crawl around instead of blowing and dissipating.  We also needed the wind to be blowing in a direction that wasn’t directly at the airport, and the relative humidity needed to be low enough.  All morning, everyone kept looking at the sky, trying to will the sun to come out.  There was very little wind, and what we did have was from the east, which apparently is too damp.  Finally, around lunch time, they had almost decided to call off the burn.  The group was really patient and took a walk around the border of the burn area, waiting for the sun.  Eventually they decided that conditions were right to try burning a small area between the large pond to the west and a very small on to the east.  If this went well they would continue north through the whole unit.

At this point, I could no longer see what was going on.  I wasn’t permitted to be in the unit because I’m not trained, so I sat in the truck in the parking lot and watched from the closest point.  People walked around setting points on fire, but I couldn’t see how, exactly.  Just as the line started to move close enough for me to make out the details, Chris sent me into Tisbury to see if the smoke was affecting anything.  I drove through the town and back, didn’t see or smell anything at all.  By the time I returned the small section was done and the crew had decided to continue and moved to the northwest corner.  They would begin there and work south toward the area they had just done.  Again, right as things started to get going I was sent out in the truck.

This time I could smell it, and there was a slight haze in some lower elevations.  As I sat in a parking lot, I could see a valley to the west slowly growing hazier.  The school bus came and as it emptied I could hear all the kids saying, “I smell smoke!”  I watched the valley fill to the point where I could no longer see the other side, and then the smoke began to creep up the hill to where I was.  I called Chris, and he told me everything had been lit so we should see a decrease in smoke from that point on.  I went back to the site just as everyone was finished, so I basically missed the whole thing after the initial ingition.

After a burn everyone has to sit around and talk about it, how it went, what they learned, etc.  I told the group I was really impressed by how easy they made it seem and that I was glad to be a part of it, which was true.  After this began the mopping up, which is extinguishing anything that still smolders.  I got to take part in this, which involved walking across freshly burnt field and through poison ivy up to my armpits with a tool I don’t have a name for, and whacking at anything that smoked.  The first thing I came across that was smoking?  Two goose eggs.  Fully cooked.

Which brings me back to the ecology aspect.  Theoretically, this burn was going to eliminate the shrubs from the area so that the grasses could grow again.  During the mopping up it was painfully clear that this is not going to be effective.  For instance, the pitch pines and oaks were seemingly unaffected by the fire.  Even a lot of the huckleberry was barely damaged.  What did burn?  The grasses.

Another thing that burned was turtle shells.  A girl on the crew pointed one out to me, and when I picked it up I found it to be an eastern box turtle shell.  Box turtles are a “species of special concern” in Massachusetts and probably the rest of New England, partly due to overcollection for the pet trade.  It’s also suspected that breeding with introduced subspecies has weakened their genetic stock.  If someone finds a box turtle on the island, they are supposed to call our office and Greg and I get to go see it.  There has been no record of box turtles on this property, so the shell was an exciting find.  It’s possible that the turtle itself was killed in another location, and the predator somehow carried the shell to this location.  I find this unlikely, as when I showed our find to the rest of the group someone said, “Oh yeah, I saw like three of those over there.”

You’re probably wondering if the fire killed the turtle, and the answer is no.  There were no bones or any other remains around the shell, and it wasn’t singed inside, so the turtle didn’t ignite or anything.  The man who saw the other shells told me they were old and bleached out so they had probably been there a while.

The question now is, did we just destroy prime box turtle habitat?  Who knows!  None of us know that much about the species, so I’m going to make it my job to become an expert.  If there had been evidence of turtles before the burn it’s really unlikely we would have allowed it to happen.  It’s not like they can run out of the fire to safety.

One species that could escape the fire was the osprey.  Right near the eastern edge of the unit was a pole with a pair of ospreys building a nest at the top.  We watched them all morning, bringing tufts of grass and arranging them.  Nobody knew what would happen after the fire was lit.  Would they return?  When?  Would the pole burn?  Would the fire climb it and destroy the nest?

Just as I came back from smoke duty, the pair of birds came flying in over the pond.  The circled the nest repeatedly, and finally landed.  They stood on the edge and looked around and finally one of them seemed to settle in.  I was really relieved because I was thinking about how much energy went into building that nest and how bad it would be if they had to find another location and start all over.

I’m really curious to see the results of this burn.  What’s going to grow first, other than poison ivy?  Did we clear the way for box turtles or destroy their habitat?  I also had questions about the effects on other species, like rabbits and mice.  There weren’t any stampedes out of the line of fire, so I assume there wasn’t much in there or they were safely underground.  If underground, though, are they safe or do they roast in their burrows?  Could a box turtle survive a fire?  Probably not, since the goose eggs were cooked firm all the way through.

Apparently ecologists have a reputation for killing things.  I plan to delve into this a little further as the summer goes on.  Remind me to tell you about the dragonfly larvae from yesterday.