Officials from the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection outlined their plans to conduct controlled burns this spring in two tracts of Pachaug State Forest.
DEEP Forester Dan Evans described the process for local residents at a Feb. 11 meeting at Pachaug Town Hall. He said officials plan to set controlled fires to two tracts, consisting of 19 and 17 acres, respectively, in an effort to forestall wildfires and repair damage created by gypsy moth infestation. A map of the planned burn area, which is bordered by Lawrence Road, Trail II and Lee Road, can be found at https://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?A=2586&Q=607218.
Besides preventing future uncontrolled fires, officials hope that the prescribed burns will renew the forest by allowing for vigorous growth of new oak and pine seedlings.
Local fire departments will be invited to help DEEP oversee the process, which will be contained by ground control lines such as roads and brooks. The burns will be planned for dry, windless days, said DEEP Fire Control Officer Richard Schenk.
“We’ll have a lot of equipment there. If we have to change from lighting to fighting, we make that switch,” he said.
The past several years have seen severe gypsy moth caterpillar infestation that has been especially hard on the forest’s oak trees, said Evans. After the caterpillars stripped the trees’ leaves, the summer drought proved a fatal blow to many trees and stressed those that survived, he said.
The combination of dead wood and flammable understory plants like huckleberry, which are high in natural oils, heightens the risk of wildfire, Evans said. In addition, damaged trees drop limbs, making it hazardous for those who use the forest for recreation.
“This should change how people recreate in the forest,” said Schenk. “On a windy day, you shouldn’t be in that understory.”
DEEP staff members have already removed hundreds of dead, or dying, trees that were overhanging the campground at Green Falls, said Schenk. That cleanup produced approximately 80 cords of lumber, he said.
The state currently has 317 acres of the 27,000-acre forest under contract with commercial firms for salvage lumber, including what Evans called hazard trees. The income from sale of the lumber goes toward DEEP projects such as invasive species control, improving forest roads, and other forest enhancements, he said.
Pachaug State Forest is not a stranger to transforming fires, the officials said. Centuries before a 1930 wildfire that burned 5,000 acres of forest – one fifth of the area of Voluntown – humans were using fire to extract the forest’s resources or reshape the landscape for farming.
“A lot of our forest was once farmers’ cleared fields,” said DEEP environmental protection forester Emery Gluck.
Long before Europeans settled Connecticut, Native Americans burned forest to clear lands for farming, he said.
By the 19th century, pine tar distilled from the forest’s trees was being used in Connecticut’s shipbuilding trade, said Gluck. Wood was also burned into charcoal in the forest for use in blacksmithing and other metal manufacture.
“We’ve found evidence of colliers’ charcoal mounds in the state forest,” he said.
