MISSOURI Summer 2023 • nature.org/missouri
Building Partnerships Through Good Fire A TREX in the Ozarks offers lessons that will travel around the country
In a Boy Scout camp mess hall, members of a fire team gather to outline the day’s burn plan. They have come from agencies and departments across the United States—from Pennsylvania to California. For two weeks, they are based here, in the Ozarks of southwest Missouri, for one of The Nature Conservancy’s prescribed fire training exchanges, events known by the shorthand TREX. The course has included classroom time on fire behavior, the ecology of fire-dependent landscapes, how diversity strengthens fire teams, safety practices, monitoring weather conditions, characteristics of different fuels and more. But the bulk of the training is putting those lessons into practice. Participants will assist on 17 burns during their two weeks at the TREX in Missouri, training on sites owned and managed by a range of partners, including the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), TNC, Missouri State Parks and U.S. Forest Service. Acres burned will total 15,868 by the time they wrap up in early March. “It is well known that prescribed fire simultaneously reduces the risk of wildfires and enhances biodiversity,” says Ryan Gauger, TNC’s fire and stewardship manager in Missouri. “We also know that there is more ground to cover than any one agency or organization can do alone. That’s why these training exchanges and partnerships of conservation-minded groups are so important to moving the needle on restoring the land and water.”
Shane Tripp, Indian Boundary Prairies stewardship lead with The Nature Conservancy in Illinois, lights the side of the Lake Osage dam in March 2023 at Camp Arrowhead in Webster County, Missouri. © Doyle Murphy/TNC
Stewardship of nature is a key component of the Boy Scouts’ lessons, and that overlaps broadly with the aim of the fire teams to rejuvenate the land with low-intensity, carefully managed fires. Add in Camp Arrowhead’s facilities for the training’s 34 participants and the Boy Scouts of America’s Ozark Trails Council makes for an ideal host of the TREX. “Any time we can get a camp like this, oh man—on a scale of 1 to 10, it’s probably a 12,” says Kelly Martin, burn boss for TNC’s North America Fire Team.
The TREX is the first of three such trainings in Missouri funded through a Cohesive Strategy: Cross Boundary Grant from the U.S. Forest Service. The grant has also helped create two habitat strike teams, halfway to TNC’s goal of four teams dedicated to using fire and other means to remove invasives and protect biodiversity. The TREX participants in the mess hall will focus on the grounds of Camp Arrowhead, the oldest Boy Scout camp west of the Mississippi River. Since 1924, thousands of scouts have come here to hike beneath neck-craning pine tree canopies, hook bass in Lake Osage and generally learn from and enjoy one of the world’s unique landscapes.
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Grasslands Matching Gift Program Since The Nature Conservancy’s first controlled burn in Missouri 40 years ago, fire has played a big role in our efforts to conserve healthy grasslands. It is crucial that we continue to build our capacity for prescribed fire and other conservation strategies as we work to protect and stimulate diversity in these vulnerable ecosystems. Native prairies are the landscape of America’s heartland, but today fewer than 1 percent remain— making these habitats the most endangered on Earth.
TREX participants Shawna Gorman and Christopher Kopek (left) take a break at the Camp Arrowhead rifle range after a day of training on controlled burns. © Doyle Murphy/TNC
Boy Scouts administrators, staff and volunteers spent time with the TREX participants, trading information about prescribed fire and Camp Arrowhead. As the fire team ignited a corner of a wooded section of the campgrounds, they followed the low flames creeping across the forest floor. Fire can be misunderstood, but it’s necessary, says Mark Peterman, who leads the Camp Arrowhead Ranger Corps, a group of retired volunteers who meet weekly at the camp to help maintain the grounds and facilities. “We’re burning it to make it better, to help the plants that were meant to be here, to help the flowers that were meant to be here.” In the coming weeks, Russell, who teaches college courses in wildland fire and forestry, will photograph specific plots in the forest, tracking the progress as the ash gives way to a resurgence of native plants, for use in future scouting lessons. “This is a good thing,” he says. “We’re not destroying anything. The system needs this type of disturbance to stay healthy and sustainable.”
It is more than a good location, within driving distance of an array of public and private lands where land managers are eager to take advantage of the extra manpower to burn off overgrown parcels; Martin sees potential to introduce new generations of outdoors-minded youths to an industry badly in need of an expanded workforce. “We need more and more people to say, ‘This is a job I want to do,’” she says. Tim Russell, the Boys Scouts of America Outdoor Ethics and Conservation Advocate for the Springfield-based Ozark Trails Council, says hosting the TREX not only helps with conservation, it educates more people in the organization and the public about the benefits of controlled burns. “Here in our council, it’s really a win- win,” says Russell, who retired in 2022 from MDC as the Southwest Regional Wildlife Manager. “We get some prescribed burning done the right way and gain some knowledge with the volunteer base we have.”
A controlled burn at Dunn Ranch Prairie © Tom Fielden
The Grasslands Matching Gift program was created by an
anonymous donor to inspire new support for TNC’s grassland work, including at our flagship site: Dunn Ranch Prairie in northwest Missouri. First-time gifts of $1,000 to $10,000 will be matched dollar-for-dollar. To learn more about becoming a new champion of our grassland heritage through this matching opportunity, contact Mona at mona.monteleone@tnc.org or call 314-968-1105 for more information.
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