This
week is Prescribed Fire Awareness Week in Florida.
Prescribed
Fire Awareness Week is a time the state uses to draw attention to the state’s
practice of doing controlled burns on Florida's nearly 17 million acres of
public forestland.
Prescribed
fire uses slow-moving, low-grade fire to reduce the brush and overgrowth that
would otherwise serve as fuel for a dangerous wildfire.
Besides
cutting down on hazardous ground fuels, prescribed fires return nutrients to
the soil, provide better forage for wildlife and livestock, and help control
certain plant and tree diseases.
People
who own forest land and are interested in adding prescribed fire to their land
management practices can get state assistance in doing so.
In 2023, the Florida Forest Service administered
the largest and most active prescribed fire program in the nation, issuing
85,000 open burn authorizations for public and private land managers to treat
more than 2.2 million acres with prescribed fire.
In
addition, there are currently more than 1,600 certified prescribed burn
managers in Florida that manage more than 2.3 million acres of agricultural and
natural lands annually with prescribed fire.
And
Florida has an app that lets you keep up with controlled burns around the
state.
Floridians
can download the Florida Forest Service’s “FLBurnTools” app to access an
interactive fire map that shows prescribed burns, smoke dispersion models,
drought information and wildfire conditions in real-time.
Prescribed
burn practitioners can also use the app to plan and submit authorization
requests.
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