07/13/2026
John Herbert :
I had an epiphany as mentioned in the President’s Message, regarding our management of habitat for wildlife. We routinely use prescribed fire to enhance the environment for wildlife that we want to see more of on our property, deer, turkey, quail, gopher tortoises, amphibians for example.
On the flip-side, I had never given much thought to the fact that we can also use fire to bend a habitat toward characteristics that certain animals avoid. Feral hogs and ticks are two animals that few of us want to see on our property. It turns out that we can use prescribed fire to alter the habitat in ways that discourage one, and possibly both, of those animals.
I was unaware that our friends at Tall Timbers have, for several years now, been conducting research on how feral hogs use land, or avoid it. Kim Sash is a Biological Monitoring
Coordinator with Tall Timbers and author of an article discussing their research. The article is linked below. Kim Sash says in the article “The more you increase time since fire, the more
you’re creating pig habitat – and honestly reducing deer habitat.” Kim goes on to say “When fire is suppressed, you get a mid-story shrub and hardwood layer, and pigs love those kinds of areas. It’s open enough underneath that they can move freely, but there’s
dense overhead cover to shield them from the sun and keep them cool.” Lanie Carter (FWC LAP Biologist) says of the statement quoted above “I think this is the main driver of why frequent fire works to keep pigs out of certain properties." The article is linked here: Fight Feral Hogs With Fire The July 29 meeting of the NCF CISMA will provide an opportunity to learn about the biology and control of feral hogs. The Feral Hogs & Wildlife Impacts Workshop will be held at the UF/IFAS Levy County Extension Office, 625 North Hathaway Ave, Bronson, and will run from 9:00 until 2:30. Please call Lanie Carter, or any other FWC Landowner Assistance Program staff for further details. You can reach Lanie at: (386) 754-6245 Office or
[email protected].
Now, regarding ticks - Joe Vaughn (also an FWC LAP biologist) has told me that Rx fire helps control ticks, not only by consuming them during a fire, but also by reducing the
relative humidity of the habitat. A publication by IFAS - Prescribed Fire as a Tool for Controlling Tick Populations in the Southeastern United States; Jennifer M. Fill, Hope M.
Miller, and Raelene M. Crandall, can be found here: https://ask.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/
FR469 The authors state “Fire also changes tick habitat. By burning off or reducing vegetation,
especially the humid litter layer, fire can promote hotter and drier conditions, decreasing available shelter and questing habitat (Callaham et al. 2003; Rosendale et al. 2017). Such
conditions can negatively affect eggs, nymphs, and larvae of ticks that need moist conditions to survive (Schulze et al. 1995).“
So now we have even more incentive to use
frequent Rx fire to enhance our habitat for certain animals, and to the detriment of others.
