by Phillip Trammell Not long ago it was an unstoppable force. A force to be reckoned with and feared for any who chose to forge their way westward to build a life on the central plains of America. Just 150 years ago wild grassfires were destroying homesteads and uprooting the lives and farms of settlers from the plains of Texas to Montana, sending clouds of smoke into the atmosphere and blacking out the sky for hundreds of miles. A natural force as destructive and deadly as the tornadoes and floods that frequented the area. For decades inhabitants of the plains, farmers, ranchers and range land managers fought to stamp out any fires before they could reek the havoc of the widespread prairie fires of 150 years ago. That is unless they have had anything to do with Texas Tech University’s range, wildlife, and fisheries management department, where people are taught to do exactly the opposite, build fires. Dr. Carlton Britton and Dr. Rob Mitchell, professors in the department of range, wildlife and fisheries management, are training people in better ways to set fire to grass and range land to improve species diversity, manage the landscape and clear growth. Since 1988 the range, wildlife and fisheries department at Tech has been training Natural Resource Conservation Service personnel in the usage and application of prescribed burning, or the purposeful use of fire to clear range land. This program evolved from the work of Dr. Henry Wright who came to Tech in 1967 and has been continued by Dr. Britton, professor of range improvements and fire ecology. Prescribed burning which is today an approved method of clearing range land has not always been favored by the NRCS. "Back when (Dr. Wright) first started, fire was universally looked upon as devastating and damaging. I was Henry’s third graduate student and can remember being down in the field in Baird and the NRCS, when the Soil Conservation Service at the time, called and said they were gonna arrest us and throw us in jail," Britton said, "and it’s taken a long time for that attitude to change!" In 2001 the NRCS sent 19 people from programs across the nation to Texas Tech to learn prescribed burning from Britton and Mitchell. The individuals attending are professional natural resource managers employed by the NRCS. Those attending the 2001 school came from Colorado, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan, Tennessee and Washington. The fire school consists of four days of training. Half of the course is classroom training with focus on plants, conducting a safe burn, importance of relative humidity and air speed and the impact of weather patterns. The other half of the class is spent in the fields during the afternoon hours. The course ends with a test and evaluation. For his or her involvement in the burn school, each NRCS employee is recognized with a certificate of participation. According to Britton this is not a license of any sort, just recognition for what is considered part of the continuing education for the NRCS employees. "I learned so much about the importance of fire safety and the proper way to conduct prescribed burning," said Kindra Brandner, range land management specialist for NRCS from Fort Morgan, Colo. "The most valuable part of the course was getting to the field and the hands on experience with a prescribed burn. The best training is hands on training. Becoming familiar with the equipment and knowing how to correctly use it is a very key lesson that we were taught." Prescribed burning is one of several tools used to control brush and renovate range land, along with mechanical and chemical controls. The advantage of prescribed burning is that it costs $3-$7 per acre to clear land, as opposed to $75 per acre with a root plow or up to $33 per acre with chemicals, said Britton. The economics of prescribed burning is one of the primary reasons for its use. "Fire, that’s the least expensive. Primarily it is an environmentally friendly, naturally occurring event. It’s a natural cost effective tool. That’s why we use it," said Britton. Britton said, however, that it is important to focus on safety and fire control and that the course focuses on maintaining control of the situation. "It’s hazardous. Anytime you light a match, the potential for it not to stop when you want it to is always there. So that’s why we go through all this training, so we can give them procedures that provides them with the highest likelihood of not having some sort of trouble," he said. "There are very strict rules that we follow in wind speed, temperature and humidity, and we just don’t cross those lines." Britton’s partner in fire is Rob Mitchell, Ph. D., assistant professor of range improvement and fire ecology. Mitchell said the greatest asset of the Texas Tech fire school is that it involves actual hands on burn management. "You can read a lot about fire, and learn a lot of good things in books, but when you start talking about prescribed burning, the best way to learn about it is to get out and do it," he said, "So we think its important to get these people outside, get a torch in their hand, get a backpack sprayer strapped to their back and get them to work." Another advantage said Mitchell is the size of the burns that are conducted at Tech. Most of the students will be applying burns to areas no larger than 50 acres, whereas the burn school routinely works with burns of 3000 acres or greater. "One of the most important reasons we bring people out here and get them experienced to burn, is that there is a lot of interest in using fire as a range management and wildlife management tool," he said. "Fire is a very natural component of all our grassland ecosystems. It is the most natural management technique that we can apply to the landscape. Most people probably have heard of wildfires that have started with lightning, and that’s what we’re trying to do is replicate what nature has done historically." Mitchell noted that the most important aspect of range land burning is time. "Some grassland systems that might be burning every three, four or five years, others that might that not need burning but every 10, 15 or 20," he said. "God created these areas to burn very regularly and what we try to do is apply fire to the landscape on what we believe is a very good fire return interval, what happened historically, naturally."