Prescribed burning at Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge

Each spring, columns of smoke can be seen across the landscape in northwest Minnesota. These smoke columns are the result of landowners burning drainage ditches, farmers and ranchers burning agricultural stubble, pastures, and piles of brush and trees. Another originator of these spring "smokes" across the landscape is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The carefully planned prescribed burns that are conducted on federal and state lands are needed to maintain critical habitats for both game and non-game wildlife species that call northwest Minnesota home.

The historic year of wildfires across northwest Minnesota, in the spring and summer of 2021, served to increase the emphasis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducting prescribed fires regularly in an effort to manage vegetative fire fuels like grass, brush and trees across the landscape.

On the other side of the prescribed fire management tool are the species that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages public lands for and the habitat that they depend on. Fire removes dry, dead plant matter that has built up over years, opening up space for new plant growth and providing better cover for wildlife. The burning also recycles important nutrients that are locked up in dead plant matter, which returns them to the soil where growing plants can use them. At the 61,500-acre Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge, located in Marshall County, some of the target species are migrating waterfowl and songbirds, grassland birds, moose, wolves and white-tail deer. All these animals coexist on the varying habitats found across the refuge and all of these habitat types are fire dependent; meaning that it requires some sort of fire disturbance over time to stay viable. Another benefit of conducting prescribed fires is to set back woody vegetation, like willow and aspen, that has encroached upon open grassland areas.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with its partners are planning several prescribed burns at Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge in the spring of 2023. One burn in particular is a large, landscape-scale prescribed burn that involves both U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lands, along with Department of Natural Resource lands. More information will be distributed as we get closer to springtime.

For more information about prescribed fire activities on Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge, contact Fire Management Specialist Eric Mark, at 701-425-9080 or eric_mark@fws.gov.