A Prescribed Fire for the Prairie at Devils Tower

Devils Tower rises behind the prescribed fire, October 2022. National Park Service photo.

In October 2022, fire crews finished the Devils Tower West Side prescribed fire project at Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. The burn ran from the park's western boundary east to the park road. Its aims were to clear out a build-up of dead fuels and woody herbaceous growth and to encourage native prairie grasses and forbs (flowering plants).

Who did the work

Crews came from:

• the Northern Great Plains Fire Management Zone;
• Yellowstone National Park;
• Black Hills National Forest;
• the city of Oelrichs, South Dakota, Fire Department;
• Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area.

Igniters set the fire while other firefighters patrol and hold its west edge along the park boundary. National Park Service photo.

Why burn

Prescribed fire restores a vital natural process to the land, improves the health of the ecosystem, and reduces the chance of intense wildfires.

Most of the monument is ponderosa pine forest of widely spaced trees over low grasses. That open, healthy forest is kept that way mainly by fire, and it has adapted to fire as a built-in part of the ecosystem. The park adopted its first fire management plan in 1991, the year it first used prescribed fire. It is divided into ten prescribed fire units, each burned about every 10–15 years.

Funding

The project received $160,000 from the Wildland Fire provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed on November 15, 2021, which the National Park Service calls a historic investment in restoring and protecting the environment.

Sources

• National Park Service, Devils Tower National Monument: "Bipartisan Infrastructure Law helps native prairie in Devils Tower National Monument." The source spells Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area as "Big Horn Canyon"; it is corrected here.