Conducting Prescribed Fires: A Comprehensive Manual

Preface

Preface In the past twenty years I have conducted over seven hundred prescribed burns, and Conducting Prescribed Fires is the result of that experience. Many of these burns have been enjoyable, whereas others have been very educational and memorable, to say the least. It has been an honor to teach private landowners, college students, and agency personnel how to burn and a privilege to be associated with and learn from some of the best fire ecologists in the country, all of whom have greatly increased my knowledge and understanding. I wrote this book to fill a gap in the current fire literature. Several books have been published on fire history, fire management, and fire ecology. But no book is totally devoted to an in-depth explanation of the requirements for conducting prescribed fires. A few fire books devote a section or chapter to conducting prescribed burns, but more information than can be found in a single chapter of a fire ecology book is necessary for someone to properly and safely conduct a prescribed burn. A prescribed burn entails more than just a fire plan and proper equipment. It incorporates law, policy, public relations, meteorology, safety, technique, smoke management, and numerous other elements. As mechanical and chemical land management practices increase in cost or are determined to have negative environmental impacts, prescribed fire is viewed as an economical and viable method for ecological restoration and land management. Over the past decade the amount of federal funding has dramatically increased for wildland fuel reduction through the use of prescribed fire on public lands, cost-share programs for prescribed burning on private lands, and funding for fire research.With this increase in the use of prescribed fire and the public’s greater awareness of fire throughout the country, it is important that the personnel implementing these fires have a comprehensive and up-to-date instructional guide. I planned to write a practical, how-to book, accessible but technical enough to be used as a reference by natural resource professionals at all levels. All who read it, whether they have never conducted a prescribed burn or have been burning for years, should come away with newfound knowledge of and understanding for the use and implementation of prescribed fires. I would like to thank my wife,Theresa, and children, Luke and Ashley, for their love, assistance, and understanding, and for tolerating the long hours, dirty clothes, and smell of smoke and diesel. I am also indebted to Dave Engle,Terry Bidwell, and Sam Fuhlendorf for their assistance, encouragement, oversight, and, most of all, their friendship. Finally, to everyone I have burned with over the years: thanks; I enjoyed it. —J. R. Weir Conducting Prescribed Fires ...