Crews work to help maintain landscape by fighting fire with fire

RAPID CITY, S.D. — The Black Hills area isn’t any stranger to fire.

In reality, fire has at all times been a component of pure environmental upkeep.

“For us to exclude fire from the ecosystem is the unnatural state,” Fuel Specialist with the Black Hills National Forest, Chris Stover stated. “Fire needs to be right here, it belongs right here. So we’ve got administration ignited fire, prescribed fire below the climate circumstances we would like to have out right here.”

There are 21 components that go into finishing up a prescribed fire, which embody issues comparable to climate, humidity ranges and sorts of fuels being burned.

In this case, crews are targeted on the dry grasses on the bottom and enormous logs left over type the Jasper Fire in 2000.

Over 2,400 acres, crews from the Forest Service walked the perimeters of the burn space, letting the vegetation burn and making a border for aerial ignition introduced on through helicopter. Aerial ignition was carried out within the central elements of the burn space. Ignition gadgets smaller than a ping-pong ball had been dropped over the landscape, every containing a cloth that when punctured and injected with antifreeze created a chemical response that began a flame.

The fires work to additionally help stimulate new progress. In reality, a prescribed burn within the space final week has already help carry out new grass progress, which in flip helps draw extra wildlife and exercise to the realm and shield the landscape.

“The bushes are a useful resource for us,” Stover stated. “We need to shield these bushes and by decreasing the floor fuels, we’re defending a useful resource.”