Spring Burning

In case you’re wondering about the pungent smell of burning leaves in the air, it’s burn season for land managers across Northern Illinois.

Controlled burns by experienced professionals are crucial to the restoration of natural habitats. Burning helps reduce non-native vegetation that can crowd out native plants. Accumulated dead plant material, whether native or non-native, can prevent sunlight from reaching very young native plant seedlings.

Our healthy local habitats are fire-adapted, meaning that historically they have thrived on occasional natural fires to help release seeds from their hard seed covers and to open the understory of woodlands to more sunlight.

As human populations have expanded, such natural fires have been suppressed. But the prairie plants have not changed their need for fire.

Enter the restoration ecologist. Training and experience are essential to managing a burn. Conditions have to be just right: not too wet, not too dry, and definitely not too windy. Wind direction is an important consideration, too. For these reasons it’s difficult to announce a firm date for a burn.

Unlike a natural conflagration, a controlled burn looks like a thin line of flame as it works its way across a field of dead vegetation. Monitors stand guard and pay close attention to changing conditions. The fire department is always notified and on hand, and nearby residents are informed as well.

Generally no areas are burned two years in a row. The spring burn season starts in March, as soon as conditions are favorable.