Loess Canyons: Fire Restores Grazing Ground  
- BGWT 208


This episode is made possible by support from the Oklahoma Conservation Commission
Oklahoma Prescribed Burn Association

Great Plains Fire Science Exchange


In Nebraska’s rugged Loess Canyons, eastern redcedar has changed the economics and ecology of ranching. As trees spread into grassland, they replace forage, close formerly accessible country and create a management problem that can be difficult—and expensive—to solve mechanically. Nebraska rancher Scott Stout and Prescribed Fire Coordinator Brian Teeter join the Blazin’ Grazin and Other Wild Things crew to explain how landowners responded by rebuilding something that had largely disappeared from the region: a working culture of prescribed fire.


The change did not happen overnight. Stout describes early burns with limited equipment and little local fire experience, followed by years of experimentation, cooperation and improvement. Burn units grew from a few hundred acres to several thousand acres, neighboring landowners became partners and techniques such as cutting and stuffing cedar trees and using experienced internal igniters helped improve fire effectiveness. Just as important, the burn associations learned that successful fire starts long before ignition. Firebreaks, equipment, burn plans, crew organization, communication and a willingness to walk away from an unprepared unit became essential parts of the process.


The payoff reaches beyond cedar control. Restoring open grassland helps ranchers recover forage and protect the long-term productivity of their operations, while the resulting plant communities also provide habitat and food for elk, deer, turkey, quail and other wildlife. The episode shows why prescribed fire is not simply about burning acres. It is about keeping grasslands functioning, giving ranchers an economically realistic management tool and creating communities capable of putting the right fire on the right landscape for generations to come.