Really Really sad discovery. WARNING: GRAPHIC

Recently my friend Tim had told me about prescribed burns and them hurting fauna, i dint believe him. In one day spent at a area that isn't know to have too much fauna i had found more than 25 dead snake ( i stopped counting at 25) 18 dead turtles countless dead frogs which died from the smoke of the prescribed burn likely more than 300 dead frogs and toads and many other atrocities. BTW forest fires in my area only would naturally happen once every 15 years but prescribed burns happen every year.My camera died after 14 photos but here are a few pics hope this will give u guys an idea of what im talking about:
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...b6c9220bf5.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...8974caf5b3.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/herpm...sps/media-view
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...de30f9801d.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...9421baae8c.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...6e2c02d8a2.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...7b7d123da7.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/herpm...sps/media-view
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...defb2bf6e8.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...defb2bf6e8.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...1a34e3b090.jpg
http://www.uscconlinealbum.com/photo...2a5ad1398a.jpg
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Damn, that sucks! I'm assuming prescribed burns are used to prevent fires in the dry season?

Theyre used to "stimulate" plant growth

Yeah, they are used to stimulate plant growth. They do them here all the time in Fl.

They are done to maintain prairie areas as well.

Its done by my house every spring to help growth and keep certain populations of species down.

They do those (we call them "controlled fires") a LOT here in California, and it's a major necessity since we're in fire-country. I never thought about the animals being killed, though... how sad. :(

We do prescribed burns in Arizona when the humidity is up to prevent uncontrolled wild fires during low humidity seasons when they're more damaging to the the trees and harder to control. I'm sure plenty of wildlife doesn't escape the fires, but I'm sure even more die during the uncontrolled multiple-thousand-acre wild fires.

i understand the logic behind it but every time i hear it i go "huh? :confused:"
they CAUSE a big fire...to PREVENT fires...
to me there's no difference between that and intentionally spilling oil in the ocean and then saying "this will prevent future oil spills!"
i mean...really? :weirdface
god those poor critters. :tears:

Sad, but necessary.

That really stinks!!!!

:tears:

the problem with all of this is humans. we stop fires before they do their job naturally. areas that are prone to fires (cali and florida) need to fires to clear out built up brush and to stimulate growth of certian flora. for example, most pine tree seeds can't spread without a fire to open up the seed cones. by doing a described burn, you limit the amount of brush that has built up on the ground and reduce the amount of hot burning flora. so when a natural fire breaks out, it will burn cooler in temperature and will spread less.

as for the animals in these areas. their populations have developed to cope with frequent fires. even though some have died, they will repopulate later.

as a reference point......i went to USF and studied ecology under a professor that has been studying the effects of prescibed burns to detail their benifits and damages. the research has pointed to florida needing fires every 5 years to prevent large, hot fires and that the flora and fauna bounce back in time.

Lucas I'm going to have to disagree with you. There was a fire in the early 1900s here in MN near Kettle River. It was pretty big, but it burned SO hot that it basically sterilized the soil. Pine trees can't grow there anymore, and nearly a century later the entire flora makeup is basically trash species and limited amounts of 15 foot tall aspen, and the fauna is also pretty much nil because of it. This was a fire that ran its course "as nature intended it", and both humans and the local flora and fauna are worse off for it.

Fires are often bad for the non-human life as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mommanessy247

i understand the logic behind it but every time i hear it i go "huh? :confused:"
they CAUSE a big fire...to PREVENT fires...
to me there's no difference between that and intentionally spilling oil in the ocean and then saying "this will prevent future oil spills!"
i mean...really? :weirdface
god those poor critters. :tears:

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Please read up on why they do these fires. There's a huge difference and as a herper, you should be able to understand why they do controlled burns and why they don't "Spill oil into the ocean on purpose". :)

tell that to the researches who have been studying it for 20 or so years....not me.

Although in CA and AZ and NV and places like that fauna knows how to deal with fire. Here in IL or most of the Midwest fauna cant cope with that because in my are it naturally occurred once every 15 years. so a fire every year destroys plants and animals. in TX or AZ or NV or CA the fauna know exactly what to do here theyre clueless and even if they could run from fire there still smoke( thats what killed the frogs and toads) and if the snakes found the water they would die of hypothermia because in WILL county, the av. temp in march is really really low.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jeremy Browning

Although in CA and AZ and NV and places like that fauna knows how to deal with fire. Here in IL or most of the Midwest fauna cant cope with that because in my are it naturally occurred once every 15 years. so a fire every year destroys plants and animals. in TX or AZ or NV or CA the fauna know exactly what to do here theyre clueless and even if they could run from fire there still smoke( thats what killed the frogs and toads) and if the snakes found the water they would die of hypothermia because in WILL county, the av. temp in march is really really low.

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Is your local natural biome prairie?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie

While a periodic fire cycle is undeniably hard on wildlife, native prairie wildlife can't exist at all without its ecosystem. And the prairie ecosystem can't exist without a fire cycle.

They do controlled burns here all the time. Every year. We even started our "fire season" early due to lack of moisture. It sucks knowing that there may be some animals that get caught up in ti and die.

It is really sad, and I wish wildlife like the snakes and turtles didn't have to suffer, but, like others have said, fires are an integral part of many ecosystems. I agree that in some areas, doing a prescribed burn every year is a bit extreme and probably does more harm than good for the native wildlife, but I can also understand why it's done. For the most part, I also agree that natural fires are probably the best, since they're... well... natural. I'm sure there are some natural fires that actually end up being detrimental to the ecosystem, but normally nature has its own cycles that care of themselves. If I'm remembering my classes correctly, there are some species of conifer whose cones open at higher temperatures than others as well, so if prescribed burns are done too frequently and not allowed to get too hot, when a natural fire happens there won't be enough brush to get it hot enough to propagate those species.

In short, prescribed burns are unfortunately necessary in some areas, but in others they are usually only done to protect ourselves, which of course is understandable :P I wish we could just leave it up to nature, but as long as they aren't done to the extreme where the ecosystem can't bounce back, I don't see too much of a problem with them. Those pictures are still awful though :( necessary "evils" are always hard to deal with, no matter if they happen all the time in nature or not. Just part of being human I suppose.