Prairie Fire!

At first I thought it was a fog Saturday night, from the haze around the lampposts.  But there was an acrid smell that tipped me off to the fact that it was smoke.  Smoke from fires burning and that had burned scores of miles away from Lubbock.

Sad of think of lives burned up and destroyed.  Why?

Observations.  
*Fire -- forest fires, prairie fires--are normal.  What is not normal is the absence of fire.
*The absence of fire makes fire worse when it does come, and it will come, sooner or later.
*Fire kills and destroys but it also renews.
*Periodic burns favor certain species over others.  Part of what we think of as natural ecology is a product of periodic fire.
*The Indians used to set grass fires to aid in the hunt.  
*Lightning can start grass or forest fires.
*Fires can be started any number of ways.  A few years ago there was a line of fires following the progress of an old diesel locomotive on the Seagraves-Whiteface line.  A hot catalytic converter can set off a grassfire.
*A narrow fire road alongside the fenceline on most ranches does not stop a fire if there is wind.

I am all for the old CREEP program, which rewarded farmers for planting grass on highly erodible land.  A lot less blowing dust than we had years ago, in the 1950s-1970s.   But that grass is highly inflammible.

Overgrazing is bad.  Any argument there?  However, undergrazed ranchland or pasture or CREEP land is a prairie fire waiting to happen.

In the old days, you didn't see a lot of wasted fodder.  If there was good growth on the roadside, farmers would stake out cows or goats to take advantage of that food source.  Mowing not needed.  Farmers had big families, and there were always kids around who could be told to go stake out the livestock and mind them.

Now, we all live uptown, or think we do, even (and perhaps especially) farmers and stockmen.  Labor costs are high.  And nobody takes advantage of grazing opportunities.  Nobody gathers twigs and limbs off the mesquites for firewood.   Nobody cuts or plows over dried up weeds.

So the brush collects.  Dry grass collects, especially on roadsides where a thrown-out cigarette can set off a multi-acre conflagration.  Last year's roadside mowing has left some dry thatch on the ground.   And so conditions are just right for fire, if drought and some wind is added in.   Wind is rarely in short supply around here.

So what to do?  It is too labor intensive (labor-expensive) for ranchers to go around staking out goats or mowing and sawing. 

The only solution I see is to practice preventive burning, preferably when winds are calm and before a drought hits.