03/04/2025
Approximately 1800 acres were improved with prescribed fire last week in Anderson County on two contiguous properties, both of which were release sites for Eastern and Rio Grande wild turkeys. Let’s see what Dr. Michael Chamberlain has to say about prescribed fire on this turkey Tuesday!
“This Turkey Tuesday is about using prescribed fire to manage the landscape for wild turkeys. The use of fire as a management tool is always a hot topic, and in many areas we’re in the heart of prescribed burning season. Without question, prescribed fire is an important and critical tool in the toolkit of land managers who are seeking to improve habitat for wild turkeys. When used correctly, prescribed fire produces and maintains vegetative communities important to turkeys – early successional vegetation that provides forage, vision, and nesting/brooding habitat. Research has shown some important things to consider if you’re using fire to manage vegetative communities. One, scale matters – smaller is better – turkey use of burned stands decreases as you move from a few dozen to a few hundred acres. Fires consuming thousands of acres in a single burn unit during one day are not ideal for turkeys. Two, timing matters – ideally burns would occur prior to the onset of nesting activity, but if they must occur during times when turkeys may be nesting, go back to scale. A prescribed fire of a small-scale during nesting season is unlikely to impact many, if any, nests – alternatively, you could wait until after nesting season or even into early fall as prescribed fires can have positive impacts to vegetation well outside of early spring. Three, when prescribed fires are used consistently within individual forest stands, meaning the same stand is burned every 2 years, or 3 years (known as the return interval), research has shown that hens typically nest in stands not scheduled to be burned – this is why we find very low rates of nest loss from fire when return intervals are consistent. The take home is, prescribed fire is an important management tool that can improve and maintain high quality habitats for wild turkeys, just consider scale, timing, and how these factors interact when planning fires. If you’re interested in science on prescribed fires and wild turkeys, go to wildturkeylab.com and search on fire.”
