Virginia Landowners Have Opportunities to Learn to Burn

By Bruce Ingram

Photos by Bruce Ingram

If you’re curious about conducting a prescribed burn to improve wildlife habitat on your land, just what should you do? Stephen Living, habitat education coordinator for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR), offers this advice.

“First, decide what your specific goals are,” he says. “A DWR private lands biologist could help with that, as could a private consulting forester, or a forester from the Virginia Department of Forestry [DOF]. Those individuals can help a landowner decide whether fire will help achieve those goals or not.

“Many habitats in Virginia would benefit from a prescribed burn. Fire can keep grasslands open and free from encroaching trees and shrubs and help improve forest structure by opening up the forest and enhancing groundcover and shrub layers. In many areas, we have closed canopy forests with fire-intolerant species such as beech, maple, and sweet gum. Fire can benefit species that are more adapted like many oaks, which are really valuable for wildlife,” said Living.

Learn more in Why Use #GoodFire?

In short, fire is an effective way to manage early successional habitat like native grasslands and can enhance our woodlands too.

Living also recommends that landowners take DOF’s free online course, which he describes as a great place to start. It covers the history of fire and its uses, burn planning and implementation, fire effects, and smoke management. The need to keep fire “in between the lines” and smoke away from inhabited areas are crucial parts of the class, too. Even if landowners don’t follow through with a burn, Living adds, they will benefit from the knowledge gained from taking the class.

The habitat education coordinator also suggests Learn and Burn Workshops as it is critical for individuals to have hands-on learning and experience before deciding to try a prescribed burn on their own. Landowners can learn from professionals; the programs are a partner effort between Virginia Tech Extension and the Prescribed Fire Council (VPFC). The VPFC offers a number of resources as well. Of course, other organizations, such as the National Deer Association, offer courses from time to time, too.

A new organization has formed to promote prescribed burns. In spring of 2024, Suffolk’s Kyle Mallas was recently retired and looking to do something to benefit Virginia’s wildlife when he met Surry’s Lee Jones on a VPFC call. The result of this coming together was the Southeastern Virginia Prescribed Burn Association (SEVAPBA).

“We saw a need to help Virginia landowners get more fire on the ground,” Mallas says. “So, we became volunteers for the organization we created and registered as a 501-(c) (3). The only reason we were founded was to create a community of landowners and people interested in prescribed fire to help each other by volunteering time, tools, equipment, and vehicles needed to conduct a prescribed burn. Our motto is ‘Neighbors Helping Neighbors’ with the concept of I help you and you help me.”

Mallas emphasizes that every landowner who wants to do a prescribed burn should write or obtain a prescribed burn management plan. The DOF website is a great place to start the overall learning process:

Lee Jones notes that Virginia is a right to burn state. However, it is prudent to become a certified prescribed burn manager, write a plan for every burn, and check your fire breaks before a burn. Jones further suggests that interested individuals should visit nearby landowners who are conducting burns before they themselves attempt to do so. He also strongly feels that numerous hours of participation will be well worth the time invested.

Also of note, from February 15 to April 30, people can only do prescribed burns if they complete a series of requirements established by the DOF and state code. Prescribed burns can only be done by Certified Burn Managers who have applied for and obtained an exemption through DOF, or conduct the burn after 4 p.m.

At this writing, SEVAPBA has conducted six prescribed burns on a total of about 70 acres with the assistance of 40 volunteers. The organization operates in seven counties east of I-95 and south of the James River but hopes for a much bigger environmental impact. Mallas says the organization’s main goal is to grow the program so that something like the SEVAPBA exists in five or six regions throughout the state. Eventually, there could be even a full-time person to oversee and coordinate operations in the entire state.

Mallas touts the many benefits of prescribed burns. “The reduction of fuels to prevent wildfire is so important,” he says. “But burns also improve the understory for native species and reduce or eliminate invasive species which benefits all wildlife, whether game or nongame. Of course, this practice helps improve hunting, but it also benefits songbirds, insects, and the whole gamut of species.”