Using prescribed fire to restore habitat and promote native species on WDFW-managed lands
From Western Washington prairies and meadows to Columbia Basin wetlands and Eastern Washington pine forests and shrubsteppe, many ecosystems throughout the state benefit from prescribed fire.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and partners use prescribed fire in Eastern Washington to reduce wildfire fuel and severity. Statewide, including where wildfires are less frequent, the team uses prescribed fire to improve habitat, control invasive plants, and promote native species.
“It’s the most natural tool we have,” said Fiona Edwards, a statewide planner for WDFW’s prescribed fire program. “Plants and animals have adapted to it, and they need it. You can see the results almost immediately. It’s changing the molecular structure of the land in a good way.”
For example, burning forage for deer and elk can help those plant species regrow with more nutrients, instead of becoming woody and inedible or crowded out by trees.
“If you don’t burn an oak savanna or prairie regularly, it becomes too thick,” Edwards said. “We’re opening the space for deer to browse, ground-nesting birds to build nests, and butterflies to reach the flowers they need to pollinate and eat. We’re also putting nutrients back into the soil with the carbon released during our prescribed burns. It’s a huge, interconnected web.”
Prescribed burns in wetlands improve habitat for amphibians and waterfowl. They also allow for enhanced wildlife watching and hunting experiences by clearing reed grasses and cattails that can reduce visibility.
First-time burn shows promising results
This year, WDFW prescribed burn sites included Cowlitz, Johns River, Methow, Scatter Creek, and Sherman Creek wildlife areas, covering nearly all regions statewide.
September marked WDFW’s first prescribed burn on a Johns River Wildlife Area unit located in a private neighborhood near Long Beach. The primary goal is to restore habitat for Oregon silverspot butterflies, which are listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and believed to be locally extinct, also known as extirpated, in Washington.
“Before we began managing the property in 1990, the entire Long Beach Peninsula was surveyed for potential Oregon silverspot butterfly habitat,” said Nick Bechtold, Olympic-Willapa Hills Wildlife Area manager. “They found that this 7-acre property had the largest, most intact coastal meadow ecosystem on the peninsula and the greatest potential to support the butterfly.”
Eventually, the Department hopes to release an experimental population of the Oregon silverspot on the property, but not until the habitat is improved.
Land managers use other methods — including mowing and hand-pulling unwanted plants — in conjunction with burning to maintain WDFW-managed wildlife areas. For instance, Sitka spruce and shore pine surround and encroach into the meadow near Long Beach, so Bechtold and his team pull any conifer seedlings they find.
Bechtold said burning is an ideal method because it removes plant material that accumulates between the soil and grass.
“With the rotary mower, we only mow at a height of about 5 or 6 inches,” he said. “All that cut material decays over time and creates a thatch layer that covers the soil. Wildflower seed just drops on a bed of cut grass instead of the soil, so it doesn’t really germinate.”
Bechtold and his team monitored vegetation on the property over the past year and will continue checking next year to compare pre- and post-fire conditions. They burned about 3 1/2 acres, avoiding areas with early blue violets, which serve as host plants for Oregon silverspot butterfly larvae.
Next up is seeding native grasses and planting wildflowers, including violets. Early blue violets are a few inches tall, meaning other plants can outgrow and outcompete them. Now that prescribed fire has opened the meadow for them, Bechtold expects to see many more violets by spring. Additional plantings will likely take place in late summer or early fall 2025.
It doesn’t take long for plants to start growing back after a prescribed burn. Just a few weeks after the Long Beach meadow fire, Bechtold was already seeing grasses popping out of the ground.
Recovering the original landscape
Josh Cook, Scatter Creek Wildlife Area assistant manager, has seen similar results in the Scatter Creek Unit near Rochester. Roemer’s fescue, a prairie bunchgrass, showed substantial regrowth a few weeks after the team there burned about 13 acres in late August.
“Indigenous people have used fire to manage prairies since the last glacial recession,” Cook said. “They would harvest camas and other food plants. It was much more a part of the landscape. Post-colonization, wildfire suppression became the management tactic and cultural burning largely went away. That has changed ecosystems, especially for prairies and the oaks in the area.”
Problems facing Scatter Creek include over-abundant species like Douglas firs outcompeting once-prevalent oak trees, as well as invasive plants like Scotch broom and tall oat grass crowding out native species. Controlling Scotch broom, which spreads quickly, was a main objective of the recent prescribed burn.
“We try to get to original or near-original prairie cover with what we have available,” Cook said. “We’ll get a mix of seeds from different species that historically occurred in these areas but have declined or become extirpated as prairie quality degraded. After seeding, we often buy native prairie plant plugs that are a year or two old, so they’re already established and not starting over again.”
By removing invasive plants and restoring native ones, land managers hope to improve habitat for Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies, whose historical range has decreased from 45 documented locations in Washington to eight known populations in the state. Extreme weather events in recent years, such as the 2021 heat dome and several years of heavy snow, further affected the Scatter Creek population. One of the butterfly’s host plants, the narrowleaf plantain, disappeared from the unit but has since reappeared.
Other threatened and endangered species benefiting from prescribed burns include streaked horned larks, found only in southwest Washington and western Oregon, and northern leopard frogs, whose last known Washington population is in the Columbia Basin Wildlife Area.
Though grant funding is often tied to projects involving threatened or endangered species, Cook said prescribed fire benefits a range of animals, plants, and fungi, both common and rare. This biodiversity serves as an indicator of an ecosystem’s health.
“The prairie is home to a lot of different species,” Cook said. “While managing to improve habitat for imperiled species, we try to improve things for an assortment of other species as well.”
Protecting the future: fighting fire with fire
Prescribed fire helps reduce the potential for large wildfires, especially in Eastern Washington’s dry forests and shrubsteppe. This land management practice, along with selective forest thinning, can allow firefighters to gain control of wildfires in sections of WDFW-managed wildlife areas that have previously received prescribed burns.
“By thinning forests to reduce fuels and introducing low- to moderate-intensity fire, we strengthen these ecosystems to become more resilient in the event of a wildfire,” said Matt Eberlein, WDFW’s prescribed fire manager. “Fire knows no boundaries, so we work cooperatively with other governments and communities to address this concern on a larger level.”
Along with preparing landscapes for wildfire, prescribed burns improve habitat for big game species such as deer and elk. The Methow Wildlife Area, which often experiences wildfires and is one of Washington’s largest areas for mule deer migration and winter range, is one site where prescribed burns both increase wildfire resiliency and improve habitat.
In March, WDFW conducted a prescribed burn of the Methow Wildlife Area’s Golden Doe Unit south of Twisp, which the Department manages for mule deer habitat and the biodiversity of its large riparian areas on the Methow River.
“Many of the plant species in Eastern Washington need fire to improve development and regeneration,” Eberlein said. “Heat opens seed pods, the excess burning material releases nutrients, and decaying plant parts drop off to allow for new growth. Deer and elk need the vegetation for winter forage and the nutrients it provides when other food is harder to find.”
Prescribed burns require planning and preparation
The timing of WDFW’s prescribed burns depends on ecosystem type, climate, and weather. The burn team considers rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind, and air quality, as well as the season and how fire may affect wildlife and plants during that time of year. It must be hot and dry enough for fuels to burn, but not so much that the fire scorches the soil.
Although prescribed burns may occur as frequently as annually in the same wildlife area, there could be years between burns at the same unit. This helps ensure enough ground fuels remain and allows time for seeds to establish and plants like moss to return. Burns typically take place more frequently on prairies than in forests, as grasses grow more quickly than trees.
“For a prairie, it could be three to five years,” Edwards said. “It could be 10–20 years for a pine forest, or even every 50–150 years for a cedar forest.”
WDFW’s prescribed burn planners work closely with wildlife area managers and district biologists to develop burn plans based on the goals for that site. The agency also works with partners such as the state departments of Natural Resources and Ecology, local fire districts, and the Washington Prescribed Fire Council, and obtains permits before burning.
Anyone participating in WDFW prescribed burns follows standards set by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. They must undergo years of training to be able to lead prescribed burns.
The burn team continuously supervises a prescribed fire before extinguishing it. The team monitors wind direction to avoid smoking out surrounding residences and ensures the fire doesn’t get too hot and that there are enough resources on hand to extinguish it if needed. Other considerations include protecting snags — standing dead and dying trees — used by birds, bats, and other wildlife and avoiding disturbing animals living or nesting on or underground.
WDFW manages more than 1 million acres of land and hundreds of water access areas throughout the state. By actively managing lands, restoring habitats, and preserving wild places, the Department serves as stewards for Washington’s natural places, protecting the state’s land and water for wildlife and people.
