Glacier Crews Torching Grassland Parts Of North Fork Prairie Burned To Protect Grazing Areas
Crews at Glacier National Park have been setting fires up the North Fork of the Flathead River for years, but they’re still behind the area’s first managers - the Kootenai Indians.
Earlier this month, park crews used drip torches to burn several hundred acres of grassland focusing on Big Prairie, north of Polebridge in the park’s northwest corner.
Before the 1990s, rangers kept a watchful eye on Big Prairie, quickly stomping out any wild fire. Because of that, the prairie went 70 years without a fire.
That absence allowed invading armies of lodgepole pine and sagebrush to encroach upon the grassland.
The grassland is important for grazing deer, hunting wolves and other wildlife. If fire were excluded altogether, the prairie would eventually become timbered.
So, each fall since 1991, when weather allows, the park has burned patches of the North Fork prairie.
Usually, the park burns a couple “units” of a few hundred acres apiece, for about $6,000.
“It’s still a new program, and we want to be careful and conservative with it,” said park fire officer Fred Vanhorn.
Under “natural” conditions, the prairie burned at least every 15 years or so, he said.
Kalispell fire ecologist Steven Barrett says even that’s conservative.
“It’s very possible that the prairies burned annually,” said Barrett, with the Kootenai Indians burning their campsites each fall for easier travel and better grazing.
Those burning habits probably predated the arrival of the European horse, and became part of the North Fork ecology, Barrett said. Plus, lightning started fires as well.
“They are on the right track,” Barrett said. “They’re definitely being conservative.”
The park uses about 20 people to staff each burn.
The burn boundaries are defined and defended, Vanhorn said. Crews try to leave as few scars as possible, so roads, streams and sprinkler systems are often used as fire lines. If necessary, lines are dug with hand tools to keep fire in its place.