How Big Should Wildlife Habitat Burns Be?

[kootenaihunter]

..... far more habitat than wildlife .

depends on what you consider habitat. Definition: the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism. Not much natural about things any where nowadays (cut blocks, road density, unnatural replanted forests/mono-cultures, flooded valleys, wildlife management, recreation tenures, etc. etc. etc. ). Animals should thrive in habitat, not just survive. If the habitat is there, animals will come back and thrive.

[rocksteady]

Making habitat burns is not as easy as you may think... Spring burns, low intensity, best recovery in short time frame. Summer wildfires, high intensity, takes longer to recover and create suitable habitat. Fall burns, can vary intensities, so may be low or high intensity.

With the spring burns, one of the key factors is the short time frame of the temperature being warm enough to meet objectives and low enough relative humidities to consume slash and carry fire. Around the East Kootenay, our window in the spring for something to be in the right parameters, we may have a 5 or 6 hour window. Once the sun starts to dip, temps go down, rh go up, fire slows and dies.. We have found, through experience, that burning with the psd machine that we can ignite about 100 has per hour. So max block size is usually around 600.. Unless we go with 2 helicopters or more...

Low elevation burns are easy in the spring, doing larger scale burns outside of valley bottom is difficult due to snow levels and drying...

There is a lot more to it than what some may think by just looking at it for face value...

[Dannybuoy]

depends on what you consider habitat. Definition: the natural home or environment of an animal, plant, or other organism. Not much natural about things any where nowadays (cut blocks, road density, unnatural replanted forests/mono-cultures, flooded valleys, wildlife management, recreation tenures, etc. etc. etc. ). Animals should thrive in habitat, not just survive. If the habitat is there, animals will come back and thrive.

example ...I was shown a huge natural meadow this winter , where in previous winter's hundreds of elk would winter ..... according to guy that showed me ( he has lived here for 70+years) and a few spots in the same valley where there has traditionally been approx 30 moose .... the wolves moved in killed almost everything and moved on .... habitat is still there maybe better than ever due to some logging ...
I am not against burning just saying it isnt going to fix whats wrong...and killing the females isn't a step in the right direction either

[boxhitch]

Killed everything? Good, must have been some bad genetics, don't need that spread around

[Dannybuoy]

Killed everything? Good, must have been some bad genetics, don't need that spread around

you are a shit head ....nuff said

[boxhitch]

I'm smilin, hope you are too )