If you see gray and white smoke plumes rising to the east and south of Cheney, don’t be too alarmed. It’s not the start of an early wildland fire season, but prescribed burns being carried out on the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge to meet refuge management objectives.
In an April 2 news release, Refuge officials said the burns are aimed at “improving wildlife habitat, reducing hazardous accumulations of vegetation and forest debris and decreasing the number of unhealthy and overstocked stands of ponderosa pine seedlings and saplings.
The burns will take place from now through mid-May, Turnbull fuels specialist Ken Meinhart said. The areas targeted for burning are in the northern portion of the refuge between Cheney-Plaza Road and the Columbia Plateau Trail as well as the southeastern corner around Cheney-Spangle Road.
“It really depends on the weather,” Meinhart said. “Right now we’ve got smaller stuff, between 10-20 acres.”
Meinhart, who is also the fuels specialist for the Little Pend Oreille and Kootenai wildlife refuges, said there are larger tracts of land between 100-200 acres that might also be considered should conditions be favorable for burns.
According to the release, the fire operations will take place in accordance with the state’s Smoke Management Plan. Burning will only occur when weather and smoke dispersion conditions are favorable.
While burns during the fall are contingent on weather conditions favorable to reducing the possibility of fire leaping from controlled environments to nearby vegetation that is very dry due to hot summer temperatures, burns in the spring have different weather conditions to deal with — namely too much moisture.
“If (vegetation) greens up, we can’t really burn,” Meinhart said. “We need 2-3 days of sun for spring (prescribed burns).”
Spring burns also have to take into consideration wildlife nesting seasons, which can take place at this time.
If weather conditions prove favorable, Meinhart said they will examine and survey targeted areas to determine the location’s ability to “carry” fire. On the day of the burn, a test portion of the area varying from 10 feet to 10 acres will be burned and then examined to see if objectives of the burn can be met. If so, the burn will continue.
Fire management staff at Turnbull and other nearby wildland refuges will be on hand to monitor and control the burn. Also taking part will be crews from other fire agencies who have helped with prescribed burns in the past such as Spokane County Fire District 3, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Park Service.
Prescribed burning activities should have little to no impact on access to most of the Refuge’s public areas. Disruptions to traffic are possible because of smoke and to provide for firefighter and public safety, but are also expected to be minimal.
Turnbull has also been the site of another form of forest management since last fall. Bailey Logging of Loon Lake, Wash., was issued a permit to thin stands of ponderosa pine on three forest units on the Refuge, two locate on either side of Cheney-Plaza Road near the entrance with the third between Cheney-Spangle Road and the Refuge’s vehicle loop.
While the total amount of timber was never divulged, Bailey Logging officials said in a Dec. 13 Cheney Free Press story that they had bid for the project based it producing approximately 1.7 million board feet of timber.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)