Fire Management
The Friends of the Apalachicola National Forest recommend that the Forest Service should endeavor to burn 200,000 acres on average each year in the Apalachicola National Forest with an emphasis on burns during the historic “natural” (i.e. non-anthropogenic) burn season. Based on tree-ring fire scar data in particular, the natural burn season in the longleaf pine ecosystem in north Florida primarily spans the period June through July with fewer fires in late May and August. The peak natural burn period as identified by fire scar data coincides with the transition period between spring drought when fuels are still dry and drainages are not yet flooded and do not act as an impediment to fire spread and summer with typical afternoon thunderstorms. It is presumed most organisms in the longleaf pine ecosystem are adapted to fires in this season.
According to the Florida Natural Areas Inventory map [link to FNAI map] of historic natural communities (FNAI 2012[link citation]), Apalachicola National Forest (ANF) had approximately 340,000 acres of acres of pyrogenic habitat (flatwoods, sandhills, wet prairie, and upland pine) and 232,000 acres of habitat that rarely burned (freshwater forested wetlands, marshes, lakes, and sinkholes, and hardwood forested uplands). However, these typically non-pyrogenic habitats—or at least the margins—will burn when conditions allow. Maintaining these margins or ecotones is an important aspect of fire management in ANF.
Currently, when the FS applies prescribed fire to a burn unit[link to burn unit map], it counts all the acres—both burnable and rarely burned habitat—within the burn unit. This means that the total area to be burned in ANF is the area of the entire forest, approximately 600,000 acres.
To maintain the target of a 3-year burn interval as established in the 10-year management plan (USDA FS 1999)[link to citation], the Forest Service should endeavor to burn 200,000 acres on average each year in the Apalachicola National Forest with an emphasis on burns during the historic “natural” burn season, which is the period June through July with fewer fires in late May and August.
We appreciate the phenomenal effort by ANF fire personnel to maintain the needed fire regime in the face of numerous challenges. The Friends of the Apalachicola National Forest will work with the Forest Service to address the bottlenecks of funding, person power, and regulations that may impede achieving and maintaining a fire regime that will enhance the ecological richness of ANF.