Tamarac NWR Prescribed Fire

US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is located at the intersection of the two ecological provinces, the Laurentian Mixed Forest Province and the Eastern Broadleaf Forest Province and is within five miles of the Tallgrass Prairie Province. Due to its size (42,724 contiguous acres) and unique ecological location, Tamarac NWR is an optimal landscape within which to maintain and enhance fire dependent forest habitats and maintain a dynamic mosaic of ecological communities through prescribed (Rx) fire treatments that emulate natural disturbance regimes. Historic fire regimes compounded with other disturbance factors once served to increase landscape-level and site-level heterogeneity throughout northern Minnesota. In addition to fire dependent communities, Rx fire is also extremely important to maintaining young forest or early successional habitat patches and healthy populations of associated wildlife species at Tamarac NWR.

Due to the relative reduction in low and mid severity fire events in recent decades throughout northern Minnesota and a limited ability to implement Rx fire operations at Tamarac NWR based on reduced or limited funding resources in recent years, canopy gaps, forest openings, adjacent grasslands/sedge meadows, and wetlands are often characterized by extremely dense shrubs, saplings, and pole-sized trees that reduce or eliminate the ability of herbaceous understory species and resident or migratory wildlife species to compete for resources and maintain populations. Often in subsequent years canopy gaps may disappear, native species compositions become less diverse, and hard edges can develop between forested and unforested covertypes that limit the ability of wildlife species to access life cycle resources. The loss of these habitat types and transition zones greatly limits the capacity of these areas to support robust populations of game and nongame wildlife species.