BIODIVERSITY PROTECTION
Strike Team, Go! New team protecting the Osage River Hills
Since the early 1980s, The Nature Conservancy, the Missouri Department of Conservation and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources have identified the Osage River Hills as a high priority conservation landscape due to its biological integrity and the unique recreational opportunities it offers the public. The landscape features an exceptional ecosystem that is made up of dry oak savanna, and woodlands with glade openings. Now, thanks to a Cohesive Strategy Grant from the USDA Forest Service’s Eastern Region, a new collaborative initiative, the Osage River Hills Habitat Strike Team, is hitting the ground to increase fire management and stewardship practices that cross jurisdictional boundaries of state and private land ownership. “While this is not the first time each of our organizations have worked together to increase our restoration goals, this is the first time that we have attempted to coordinate our activities collectively utilizing an inter-agency planning methodology,” says Ryan Gauger, TNC’s prescribed fire and stewardship manager in Missouri. “Our goal is to step back and look at this landscape in a holistic manner as opposed to focusing within our respective boundaries.” In this landscape, high-quality habitat management and wildfire risk reduction are one in the same. “These savannas, woodlands and glades are overgrown and need to be thinned of eastern red cedar trees and excessive deciduous species to reduce future fuel buildups and the risk of a catastrophic wildfire,” Ryan says. Fuels include everything from pine needles, leaves and twigs to larger fuels such as shrubs, branches and downed trees. A buildup of fuels on the forest floor intensifies the threat of uncontrollable wildfires.
Expanding the use of prescribed fire as an integral management tool is a goal of the initiative. “We plan to create wildland fire management demonstration sites and work with interested landowners who want to engage in this practice to observe our fire operations and tour areas where fuels have been thinned,” he says. The group would also like to establish a Prescribed Burn Association (PBA), which is made up of private landowners who can independently conduct prescribed burns and simultaneously create a positive sense of community. The Missouri Prescribed Fire Council actively promotes PBAs throughout Missouri and has offered to help ensure that any efforts towards this goal is sustainable and safety oriented. For Gauger, partnerships are the backbone of this project. “When conservation partners, including private landowners, come together with a unified vision, the successful implementation of conservation practices at the landscape level becomes much more attainable,” he says. “No one organization has the capacity to adequately conserve at the landscape level. Each partner will bring its resources and expertise to the table, and in combination with this grant, we will be able to show significant conservation benefit within this landscape.” The Osage River Hills Habitat Strike Team will serve as a pilot project to test how a landscape-scale collaborative effort can increase the impact of individual organization or agency efforts. “Our goal is to test this within the Osage River Hills landscape and eventually launch additional Habitat Strike Teams throughout Missouri’s priority landscapes,” says Ryan.
14 MISSOURI : ACTION AND IMPACT
THIS PAGE Lighting a prescribed fire with a drip torch © Jason Houston
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