Members of the Fort McCoy prescribed burn team coordinate prescribed burns every year in the spring and fall.
The post prescribed burn team includes personnel with the Fort McCoy Directorate of Emergency Services Fire Department; Directorate of Public Works (DPW) Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch (NRB); Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security; and the Colorado State University Center for Environmental Management of Military Lands in partnership with the post.
While prescribed burns increase training safety for our nations’ warfighters training here at Fort McCoy, they also improve wildlife habitat, control invasive plant species, restore and maintain native plant communities, and reduce wildfire potential. Prescribed burns benefit the environment in many ways and are one of the tools to use on a large scale to improve wild habitat, said Fort McCoy Forester Charles Mentzel, a member of the prescribed burn team.
Mentzel said prescribed burns help set back invasive species, and they burn up their seed banks. Burns also give native species an opportunity to compete against some of the non-native species, as many native species depend on fire to help stimulate them and set back non-native species.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website includes benefits of prescribed burns for wild areas. It says that some specific advantages of prescribed burns include stimulating prairie grass growth and improve habitat for upland game and waterfowl; creating pockets of open water for waterfowl amidst cattails proliferating in low areas; stimulating the growth of wildflowers, which attract insects — a vital food sources for young game and non-game grassland birds; and improving cover type for grassland nesting birds such as pheasants.
Prescribed burns also “spur native vegetative growth for songbirds; and creates open pockets of bare ground, increasing diversity and richness of ground foraging, seed-eating small mammals and birds,” the website says.
Tim Wilder, chief of the NRB at DPW, said previously that prescribed burns are good for several reasons, including that they help maintain some areas as a prairie.
Prescribed burns can both allow for safer training and protect habitats, such as a 2023 event in which an area of one prescribed burn was an extension of the Badger Drop Zone where Soldiers either drop equipment or parachute onto.
“On the natural resources side, we have several rare butterflies at the installation, … and they’re all found in that Badger Drop Zone. We improve that habitat with prescribed burns,” said Wilder.
Fort McCoy leadership stated the post will continue performing prescribed burn operations where local conditions provide a safe and effective burn. Fort McCoy will also continue to carefully assess the most appropriate days to conduct prescribed burns, whether in the spring or fall.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on the Defense Visual Information Distribution System at https://www.dvidshub.net/fmpao, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”
Also try downloading the My Army Post app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” as your preferred base. Fort McCoy: We are IMCOM. The Army’s Installation Management Command handles the day-to-day operations of U.S. Army installations around the globe, including at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.