Prescribed Burning for Oak Savanna

For over 25 years Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge has used fire as a tool to enhance and restore both wetlands and oak savanna, but with increasing costs to conduct prescribed fires and a rapidly decreasing budget, it has become nearly impossible to recreate the historical levels of fire. Without fire, functionality and diversity of these habitats would be lost to monotypic stands of invasive species and tree encroachment. Using adaptive management, the manipulation of the best known practices for prescribed fire will be used to determine what creates the most structurally diverse habitats to increase populations of plant and wildlife species on the refuge.