Burns planned for Wayne Forest

A wildfire on the Wayne National Forest this past week wasn't part of the plan when the U.S. Forest Service announced that as many as 1,850 acres of the land would be subject to prescribed burns this month.

But with the wildfire in Lawrence County contained at this point, officials are saying that they are looking to go forward with some of the prescribed burns, though one planned for Athens County has been delayed at this point.

Critics, meanwhile, question why any fires have to be set deliberately, and dispute the reasons for them as set forth by the Forest Service.

The planned burns originally included a portion of Athens County in Dover and York townships amounting to about 650 acres. The designated burn space was announced as the Utah Ridge area north of state Rt. 33 between Coal Run Road and Middle Bailey Road, southeast of Nelsonville.

Other prescribed burns were planned for about 1,000 acres in Lawrence County and about 200 acres of Starr Township in Hocking County.

Reports of the wildfire came in on Nov. 10, with the cause reported as unknown. The wildfire was contained by Nov. 11, with about 25 firefighters from the Ironton and Athens ranger districts of the Wayne, along with a couple of bulldozers, having completed building a line around the 90-acre blaze. Resources from West Virginia, Indiana and Illinois arrived late last week to assist the firefighters in mop-up operations.

No homes or any other structures were threatened as of Friday in the Lawrence County fire.

Athens District Ranger DeVela Clark said that the wildfire prompted officials to reconsider the prescribed burn in Athens County.

"This weekend, we will not be burning," Clark said Sunday. "We will meet again tomorrow (Monday) and look at the forecast for the rest of the week."

Clark said that officials would look for a window of time to conduct the burn. He said that if the weather doesn't cooperate, the burn might be postponed until sometime in February, March or April.

"We have some pretty short windows and we're just trying to take advantage of one that we have right now," he said.

Forest Service spokesperson Gary Chancey has said that controlled fires help rid the forest of invasive plants, consume dead wood that could help fuel uncontrolled wildfires, and encourage growth of oak and hickory, the once-dominant tree species in Ohio forests.

The reasons given for the burn in Athens County include helping to control non-native invasive species, maintain or improve herbaceous and shrubland habitat, regenerate oak and hickory, and reduce hazardous fuels.

But Glenn Matlack, an assistant professor in forest ecology at Ohio University, disagreed that the prescribed burn would help to meet any of those goals. He said that he had walked the area planned for the burn just recently.

"I have questions about most of those reasons," Matlack said. He pointed to his own research, which he said shows that fire actually promotes the invasion of non-native species. Also, he said, fuel loading is an issue in the American West, but not in the East. In the West, he said, nutrients are trapped in fallen trees and need fire to release them. In the East, however, rotting serves the same purpose as fire, he said.

"We don't get the same accumulation of fuels here, simply because it's wet and everything rots," he said. "I think this is a goal brought in from the West without adequate question."

As far as regenerating oak and hickory, Matlack said that the thinking is that fire provides a natural seedbed favoring recruitment of the commercially valuable oak and hickory.

"I have not seen those data," he said. "I think the jury is still out on that. I'm not sure that's true. On the other hand, I'm not sure of any evidence to the contrary."

With regard to maintaining or improving herbaceous and shrubland habitat, Matlack said he doesn't understand that reason at all.

"I actually study... forest wildflowers and have done some research looking at what happens when you burn them," he said. "You tend to convert to weeds and grasses and ferns. And that doesn't sound like maintaining to me. That sounds like a pretty important structural, compositional change."

David Maywhoor, executive director of the Buckeye Forest Council, which opposes the use of prescribed burns in public forests in almost all cases, warned of another incident like that in Shawnee State Forest last spring, where a prescribed burn of 250 acres ended up consuming 2,960 acres of the 63,747-acre forest.

"Wayne National Forest officials have apparently not learned any lessons about how easily these man-made burns can get out of control," he said. "These prescribed burns are dangerous to the public and to our public forested lands."

Following the wildfire last week, the Wayne National Forest public affairs office urged Ohioans to be aware of the state's outdoor-burning regulations and take necessary precautions if they are planning to burn debris. Ohio law states that outdoor debris burning is prohibited from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. during October and November, as well as the months of March, April and May, the office said. Violators of Ohio's burning regulations are subject to citations and fines.