The prescribed fires began last week and could continue into early October, if the weather permits.
About 15 fires over approximately 250 acres are scheduled on several prairie preserves in south county, including Thurston County’s Glacial Heritage Preserve, Wolf Haven, Nature Conservancy property near Rainier, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Scatter Creek Wildlife Area, and the state Department of Natural Resources’ Mima Mounds and Rocky Prairie areas.
At Lewis-McChord, 35 to 45 fires over about 3,000 acres could be intentionally set this burn season, according to JBLM fish and wildlife biologist Jim Lynch. This includes three fires Monday and one last week that sent a plume of smoke into the air that was visible from Interstate 5.
The controlled burns help to return nutrients to the soil and keep nonnative plants at bay. Fires are part of a long tradition on South Sound prairies, used by Native Americans to encourage the growth of prairie-dependent flowers with bulbs or roots that were harvested for food.
The burning also created browsing habitat for overwintering elk and deer, which allowed Native Americans to hunt closer to home.
Today the fires are used to keep the native prairies intact for endangered birds, butterflies and plants.
“Fire is essential to this diversity and to the prairies’ ecological health,” said Mason McKinley, a trained firefighter and project manager for the Center for Natural Lands Management.
The Natural Conservancy and Center for Natural Lands Management fire crews are supported by crews from DNR and local rural fire districts, which have the equipment and supplies on site to keep the fires under control.
The south county fires range in size from a 90-acre blaze last week at Glacial Heritage Preserve near Littlerock to one-acre research plots to study plant and wildlife response to fires.
John Dodge: 360-754-5444
jdodge@theolympian.com
