In some parts of Michigan this time of year, you might see billowing smoke on the horizon for several minutes and wonder, "what was that?" There’s a chance it was a prairie fire.
We recently followed a crew of volunteers as they burned off the tall, dried grasses and flowers on private properties.
The first fire had been lit at the bottom of a small hill. At the top of the hill is the property owner’s house. Everyone was given very specific duties and instructions about managing the fire.
That house belongs to Todd and Julie Losee.
Julie had just used a drip torch to start one area burning. A drip torch is a specially-made can full of diesel fuel with a torch at the end. It basically drips fire on the grass.
She was walking away from the fire line and I noticed she was wearing a jacket that obviously had caught on fire at some point.
“Well, I had a little experience last year, I hope not to repeat it. I got a little too close to the flames that I had just lit. And it caught on fire, had to be sprayed out with the backpack,” she said.
I noted that she was starting the fires while most of the rest of the crew were busy putting it out.
“I get the fun part, I got a little pyro in me I guess, so I like to see it burn.”
Todd Losee is the fire boss for the day. Nearly all of his crew are former or current employees of conservation agencies and all of them have experience with prairie fire management.
I stopped him as he was driving by on an all-terrain four-wheeler with a tank of water on the back. I had one quick question: Why do you want to burn down prairie grasses and flowers?
“Just to rejuvenate the prairies. You want to burn them every three or four years. So we burn this one every year because it's in front of the house and we like to have the wildflowers come up every year; really can see them well. It really looks nice if [it's] burned and then growing throughout the summer,” Losee said.
Firefighting backup
There were two volunteer fire departments standing by. Gene Tidd was overseeing a crew of younger volunteers who were dressed in full gear. Tidd is a former Fire Chief for Onondaga Township near Eaton Rapids. He’s been a volunteer for decades and this was not his first prairie fire.
“Yeah, we've done this every year for I don't know how long. So, this isn't the first go around. It's just getting to be a kind of a routine thing,” he said.
I asked if this prairie-burning crew had earned his trust.
“Oh yeah, yeah we're good. They could probably handle it without us even being here but it's a good drill for us and helps him get everything under control.”
A guy with long white hair and beard and wearing a red hoodie was sometimes taking photos and sometimes helping to manage the fire. Bob Gwizdz is a former Michigan Department of Natural Resources employee and worked with some on the crew. He currently writes for the Outdoor News. He’s a regular at these prairie burns and knows that humidity, dew, wind and other factors play into how the fire behaves.
“Well, I would say every fire is unique, but they're well organized and there's always a crew chief who sets up the parameters and there is always enough staff on hand to make sure things don't get out of control,” he said.
Prairies evolved with fire
Millenia before there were the warm-weather grasses and forbs here, there were cool-weather grasses that mastodons and mammoths grazed in what is today southern Michigan.
As the climate warmed, the grass landscape changed. Because of lightning strikes, what seemed to be endless warm-grass prairie would burn, killing invasive trees and shrubs that otherwise would have taken over.
Some hardy kinds of oaks could survive the fire and that would create oak savannahs, that is, clumps of oak trees surrounded by prairie.
In some prairie areas in the mid-section of America, the Indigenous peoples would start prairie fires because the tender grass that would spring up afterward would attract bison. There are conflicting reports about bison herds east of the Mississippi River, but one 1933 article claimed “Remains of bison have been found in southern Michigan, more adapted to their grazing habits than the pine-covered areas of the north…”
One of the concerns about burning prairies is the threat to wildlife. There is — what conservationists call — “a take.” Some animals can’t scurry away or burrow down fast enough to escape the heat and flames.
The burn also temporarily eliminates habitat and places where the animals can hide. Because of that, some property owners only burn half of their prairie every three to five years, rotating burns for the other half. That way there’s always some habitat available to wildlife.
The dilemma is without the burns, the prairies would eventually be overtaken by underbrush and then trees, eliminating the habitat for the many kinds of animals that have been using prairies for thousands of years.
Conservation colleagues work together
A wildlife photographer I follow on Instagram, David Kenyon, invited me to this day of colleagues traveling from one prairie to another to help with the fires.
He used to be a photographer for the popular DNR Michigan Natural Resources Magazine (archives here) which was ended by Governor John Engler in 1999 after 68 years of publication.
Kenyon carved out a couple of areas of his land for the tall grasses and flowers.
“I decided to plant a prairie just because I like to look at wildlife, basically. I mean, it's the birds, the pollinators, the butterflies, hummingbirds, all kinds of stuff that come into these things,” he said.
Concern for pollinators was mentioned by some of the other landowners as well.
“And it's just a very satisfying feeling, knowing that if you put that in there and you're able to enjoy everything that's coming into it, that's a good thing, for me anyway,” Kenyon said, laughing.
Most of the people who owned the prairie property were concerned about preserving nature and this fairly unique habitat in Michigan.
In the last 20 years, I’ve observed several prairie habitat areas established on what was marginal farmland in the region around my home.
At least one of owners on the prairie burn tour had turned erosion prone farmland into a prairie, under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program, which requires vegetative cover and maintenance such as prairie burns.
Back at the Losee property, Julie Losee said she and her husband Todd have their individual reasons for keeping the prairies on their land.
“I like them because they're beautiful. They have the tall grasses and then really abundant flowers, really tall yellow flowers and pink cone flowers and purple flowers. But I know Todd likes them because they're native and they're good for Michigan and the resources and the habitat and our animals and all that good stuff," she said.
BONUS: Listen to this prairie burn audio postcard from Mark Brush from 2005.
