1-18-25 - Guest Jacob Stewart, President of the Kentucky Prescribed Fire Council and KDFWR Fire Management Officer.

Tonight's show highlighted the importance and benefits of controlled fire for wildlife and habitat management. Our guest was Jacob Stewart, President of the Kentucky Prescribed Fire Council and KDFWR Fire Management Officer.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
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(01:25):
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Speaker 2 (01:31):
Good evening, everybody. Jim Straighter here. It was my co
host Scott crowlingin and we've got a special guest tonight,
and I hope you don't mind the pun, but we've
got a red hot program. And the reason I'm mentioned
in that we're gonna talk about prescribed or controlled fire
as a tool in wildlife management practices and our land

(01:54):
management and timber management. There's a lot of aspects to
why fires an important tool and the enormous benefits that
come from the use of fire. And our special guest
tonight is Jacob Stewart. Jacob is the president of the
Kentucky Prescribed Fire Counsel and he's also the Kentucky Department

(02:18):
of Fishing Whileiffe Resources Fire Management Officer and Private Lands coordinator.
So we're going to talk tonight and try to educate
folks about something that is such a valuable tool. We're
going to talk about why burning is good, and where

(02:40):
are the types of habitat where burning is effective, and
why it's so beneficial to wildlife. We're going to talk
about when you know the best time of a year,
and then Jacob's also going to talk to you about
classes and places you can go to learn about this,
and in that regardless, we'll talk a little bit about

(03:01):
how and explain that it is not dangerous at all
if it's done properly. So Scott, you and I are
super excited about the program tonight because we've seen the
benefits over multiple states. Jerry are Year's manage in law
Life and it's going to be a very interesting program.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
Anytime that you can make habitat better and increase the
species and a population that folks are in demand for,
and sometimes even possibly put money in someone's back pocket,
it's a winning combination. And this is going to be
a fantastic program because there's a lot of folks that

(03:43):
own property that don't hunt.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
There's a lot of folks.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
That own property that do hunt. And this is something
that comes on to the private and the public land
management perspective with goals and outcomes. And our biggest goal
through this program is for us to help educate people, Jim,
so that some of the misconceptions and stereotypes that have
been out there with fire can somewhat be put out.

(04:10):
But what's really important for people to understand is this.
Anyone that you can speak to to reference what prescribed
fire has done for them on their properties will always
come back with either one or both statements, and that's
going to be they wish they would have done it

(04:31):
twenty years ago, and the next statement will be when
can we burn again? Because the return on investment of
what they get out of doing this, once all the
precautions are taken in place and a management plan is
put into practice, it is a return on the investment,

(04:51):
not only for their satisfaction, but also the wildlife that
utilize the land that's been burned.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Very well, said my friend, And we're going to talk about,
you know, some of the misconceptions about the danger. But
most importantly, Jacob's going to dive deep into the benefits
and why you should do it, which is something I'm
really looking forward to hearing myself. So without further ado,
I'm going to go to break here real quick. This

(05:18):
break is presented by Massey Property's Heart Realty. Check out
all the current listing. He's at MOLP h r Trealty
dot com. All right, folks, again, tonight we're talking to
Jacob Stewart. He's the president of the Kentucky Prescribed Fire
Council and he's also the Kentucky Department of Fishing, Wildlife

(05:38):
Resources Fire Management Officer. Jacob. Welcome aboard. Tell folks a
little bit about yourself, and while you're so passionate about this, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
Jim, thank you for having me. First off, and really,
my passion always comes back to the idea of managing
wildlife as far as how fire interacts with that. Out
my twenty year career with the agency, I've worked from
the coal mines in East Kentucky and all the way
to West Kentucky doing burns run w may on the
public side, and currently as the Private Lands Program Coordinator

(06:12):
and fire management Officer. My real passion is is the
idea of getting across to landowners the importance of fire
and how that role could be played in meeting their
management goals, and also trying to spread the word on
the idea of their management goals all the State of
Kentucky management goals on a broader scale on the private

(06:34):
lands side of stuff. So really, throughout my career the
passion has come from the idea of seeing how fire
is truly a inexpensive, all encompass and habitat tool.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yes, sir, I guess to start out, let's tell folks
a little bit about why fire is so important, and
you know, the Native Americans utilized it all the time.
Gift folks little history of that and why they need
not be afraid of it.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah, yeah, Jim. So as far as the history of
fire in the State of Kentucky, it goes way back
to the Native Americans when we you know, ten thousand
years ago, people came here. They kind of moved around
and hunted all over the place, and they eventually started
about three thousand years ago, settling down, building camps, staying
in one place, and fire turned out to be a

(07:25):
wonderful tool for them to do a number of different things.
From the idea of burning off camping sites to the
idea of the benefits for game species and them seeing
that and really, you know, if when it really comes
down to it, what Indians saw was was we burned
something and something happened, We gained something, and you know,

(07:48):
ticks went down, you know, number of deer were there.
We were able to survive on the landscape better utilizing
fire as part of that. All habitat management comes back
down to the idea is how we utilized the land,
and Indians found that fire was a wonderful tool to
get that started. If you look at maps from the

(08:10):
seventeen hundreds when settlers came here, they actually say savannah
across Kentucky. What happens in Kentucky if you don't manipulate
a field, Jim, what happens to that field? Trees grow
up instantly in first year they grow up. So for
somebody to come here and say that across the state
of Kentucky and down into Tennessee was savannah land grassland

(08:33):
that had to be being manipulated somehow. What did they use, Well,
they didn't have a tractor, they didn't have a dozer
to push it out of the way. Fire was the
management tool that that was being used to get it
there as you go. So there's evidence there that fire
was being used at a wide landscape and that's what's
really formed you know, Kentucky and the idea of what

(08:56):
kind of wildlife flourished. I mean, you know, you know
where the buffalo roam, you know in the in Kentucky.
I mean, all that comes back down the idea that
there was major grasslands here and fire was the tool
that was being used at that point in time. You
even turn around and you go to the next stage
of the idea of all right, seddlers came the Indians

(09:17):
kind of you know, stepped away, seddlers came in. Well,
they timbered, they burnt for livestock, they burnt for the
same other reasons. The idea of clearing off stuff. Fire
was just a tool that was used in everyday life.
So you know, you keep stepping forward. In nineteen twenty four,
there's a USD Accents this that was done and the

(09:40):
question was asked, how many one if you burnt your
farm to clean out the underbrush to grace cattle, and
then how many acres did you burn? Well, in nineteen
twenty four, all the way across the state. There's evidence
in most of every county that there was that someone
reported using fire to manage their cattle, And Pike County

(10:01):
had the most acres burnt in nineteen twenty four at
fourteen thousand acres and two hundred different landowners were burning
in that one year. So you can imagine that that
was just a snippet in time. If you go backwards,
I'm sure it wasn't much different. Now, if you go forwards,
that's where we really started getting into the idea of

(10:22):
where there's fire. Now, why do we know, why aren't
we burning one hundred and forty two thousand acres across
the state of Kentucky. And so some of that comes
goes down in the history of how fire got pulled away.
So in early nineteen hundreds, there's a major fire that
happened out west. It kind of comes of the same
kind of stuff that's going on now. Well, their answer

(10:43):
to that fire then was stop fire altogether. Let's quit fire.
It went overboard, it went way over one way, and
so they went one way. You know. The best, I'd say,
the best campaign that's ever happened has been Smoky the Bear.
He snuffed the fire out, literally snuffed it out.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, I'm mad it's smoking about that.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
Yeah, you know, and yeah, because it go ahead.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
Well, because prescribed or controlled fire is one thing we
need to get across that it is not something people
need to be afraid of.

Speaker 4 (11:18):
No, No, if done right and and and through through
a system and manage correctly, it's not something that you
need to be scared of. It's something that you need
to respect but not be scared of. And that's with
a lot of things in life, and you need to
respect it. But if done correctly, it's it's a safe
and effective tool.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Absolutely. Tell folks a little bit about why they should burn,
you know, some of the obvious benefits that the Lord
knows you've done. I don't know how many acres have
burns in your career. Uh, tell folks a little bit
about that.

Speaker 4 (11:52):
So the idea behind burning and the importance of it,
there's there's a wide array from the grassland aspect of it,
from that of managing those systems to the fore side
of it. So we'll kind of separate this out in
a little bit. For grassland aspect of it, you're doing
it to those systems, those native systems need some kind
of scarification thinning, they need some kind of disturbance to

(12:15):
keep them there. And also the idea of what I
mentioned to you earlier, what happens to the grassland in
Kentucky if you don't.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Mow it, it grows up.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
So is the idea of keeping those trees knocked back
periodic fire run through it, keeps it actually a grassland,
keeps it actually functioning as a grassland as what you're
trying to if that your management goals.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
And in the grassland aspects, which a lot of our
listeners probably are aware of or have been involved with
warm seas grass plots, for example, explaining to them the benefits.
You know, the only ground benefits that burning does for
those plots.

Speaker 4 (12:53):
So the on the ground benefits is the idea that
most again, disturbance for the trees is one of the
huge ones. The other side of things is the maintenance
of thinning those stands out because the grasses can get
too thick. And as far as the thinning aspect, there's
different times of year that you can do that to
go one way or another with encouraging the grasses or

(13:15):
trying to set the grasses back. So if you burn
the spring you're encouraging them. You're trying to thicken them up.
If you burn later in the growing season when they're
actually growing. So you're talking about the end of July
and August, you start burning that even into September. Some
you're gonna start knocking the grasses back and encouraging your wildflowers,

(13:36):
your Forbes. If anybody is a deer hunter, those Forbes,
that's what they're that's the kind of the idea of
what you want to encourage that. If you're a bird hunter,
the Forbes bringing the insects for the brooding aspect for
turkey's quail, the seeds later on in the fall in
those aspects.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
And Forbes for some of our listeners perhaps still identify
you basically talk about what most people call weeds.

Speaker 4 (14:01):
Yes, yeah, yeah, broad leaf weeds, that's yes, yeah yeah.
Tell people all the time. One of the you know,
most weeds, if the best, some of the best stuff
for quailing turkeys out there are your stichtites or your ragweed,
the two things that all of us cuss and hate
the most. So, but that's something that you know always
benefited by burning that laid in that fall, Yes, sir,

(14:24):
A lot of folks, and I want to lace this
in and we're gonna talk about extensive later.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Are scared to death of burning and woodland habitat. However,
they need not be unbelievable benefits there.

Speaker 4 (14:38):
Yes, uh so burning in the woods is something that
uh uh you know, people get in their mind that
is just blow up that they see from our west.
I will talk about the state of Kentucky. Uh you
know that the fuel was different each each each like state,
each scenario is a little bit different. Kentucky doesn't have

(14:58):
the explosive stuff that you have out west or sometimes
even in Florida, the real explosive fire adapted vegetation. You know,
your leaf litter burns are more calm. I will say,
if you have ever burned native grasses, it'll never be
as exciting as that. It's always going to be, you know,
a nice mild burn if done correctly. Again, this is
all have caveats with it if you don't it with

(15:21):
the right conditions. But no, woodland burn is something that
can be done very controlled and method that to keep it,
you know, for management of oak, make sure he keeps
going on the idea of browse. If again, if you're
a deer hunter, or even for bruton habitat for turkeys.
Keeping thatself knocked back along with some other management practices

(15:45):
to help manage your old woodlands.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
It's a long time wildlife manager in addition to being
an expert in the use of fire.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
In our talks before the problem, you mentioned how out
important is for people to understand that for long term benefit,
it greatly can exceed the benefits of a single food plot.
For example, roll that idea at so people can understand them.

Speaker 4 (16:16):
So, yeah, So a typical food plot you're talking about
playing from a half acre to five acres maybe at
the most, and you put a whole lot of time
and effort. If you're going to do it right, you're
gonna fertilize it, you're gonna see that, you're gonna you know,
manipulate it, maybe even spray the weeds out of it,
keeping going. So there's a whole lot of working effort
into five acres. Well if yours, let's let's just take

(16:37):
deer for example. Uh, you know, they're they're main food
products and brows. So your your broad leaf weeds and
your trees or what these saplings that come up fires itself.
You take a twenty acre woodland unit, you put on
some kind of rotation, you burn it off. You've turned

(16:58):
around and created a twenty acres burn in an hour
that's going to produce you know, a whole lot more
tonnage over a whole year than your one little food
plot that's sitting out here on the landscape. The one
thing I always tell people, though, is if you sit
down and actually manage your farm to the full extent,

(17:20):
you could truly be making it harder to hunt because
the deer don't have to move, or the game species
doesn't have to move. The whole idea behind good management
is to make it so they don't move, because what
happens when a praise species moves they get killed. So
the whole idea behind good management, if you do a
good management across your whole property, it could actually make

(17:43):
it harder for you to connect with that animal at
some level.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, but that's the part where good wordsmanship and all
it's about that right and all that you can come
into play in a big way. But I guess the
main thing that we want to part tonight is it's
an effective tool. It is a safe tool, and the
benefits to it long term are tremendous.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
Oh for sure. I mean you're talking far as the
benefits of this. Going from that idea of you know,
just general habitat management to specific stuff will cover hand
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Okay, very good, sir. All Right, folks, gotta go to
break this breakfast presented by S M My Marine. They're
gonna be out at the Sport Boat and Recreation Vegical
show here at the end of the month, so looking
forward to that. And remember we never get sold by
my friends at S in my Marine, Thacob. I think

(18:47):
it's important we talk about reasons why folks should burn,
you know, benefits.

Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, thank you, Jim. There's lots of different reasons. Again,
we kind of hit the grass and aspect of you know,
trying to keep maintained the native grass system on the aspect,
but there's kind of a broader aspects of reasons to burn.
You know, you have your habitat and we'll go into
a little more specifics on on woods and everything. But

(19:13):
there's some other ones, like the idea tics ticks are
a terrible thing that you know, when I was growing
up or growing up in you know, in the eighties
and Kentucky. You might have a dog tick on you
every so often, and now we have a diversity of ticks. Yeah,
they're nasty. And there has been some research here recently
has come out that fire, repeated fires at the right time,

(19:35):
you know, helps set them back and knock them back
at some level. The idea there's actually been research. You know,
predators is a huge kind of topic as far as
the game bird type you know, being an issue. There
has been some research out there that shows that sometimes
you know, like raccoons don't utilize the areas that have

(19:55):
been burned as much as they do if they have
not been burned. You know. So you know, I can't
really speak speak specifically why that is, but there has
been research that shows it. You know, I got some assumptions,
but I want to go down that road right now.
But the idea of covering food both again, you take

(20:15):
a woodland, take a woods and you go to burn it.
And there is something to keep in mind when we
talk about woodland burns or forest burns and trying to
get to the habitat to where we need it. I
kind of brought up here earlier the idea of the
way we utilize the land can be shown on the
type of where fire is or not. So if you

(20:39):
look at in the nineteen twenties, we were burning quite
a bit across the state. As we're shown. You take
one hundred years of fire off now and you know,
all indications show that our woods have shifted or starting
to be called what we call a weather or being
more music, which means the idea that stuff like you're

(21:00):
your maples and more wet species are growing and that
turns around and makes the woods harder to burn. So
the idea is you're starting to see a shift. There
were fire. You know, if we let it go too
much longer, you won't be fire won't be as readily
as a tool. So in some situations to get your
woods where you need for fire, you may need TSI

(21:22):
timber stand improvement or forest and improvement, which is the
idea of taking certain species out to get light to
the ground. That light helps oaks filter, light helps oaks
come in. But another thing you need to do is
is you imagine if you throw your corn seed on
top of grass and say grow, it's not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
What do you need?

Speaker 4 (21:45):
What do you need? And when you're doing a food
pod that seeds the soil contact. It's the same thing
with the acorns. You know, if they land in a
big duff that's twelve inches thick, the likelihood of that
acorn becoming a tree and going off to the next
stage decreases, so the idea of removing that duff. So
you're trying to get everything lined up just right by
utilizing fire and other management tools to get there. Fire

(22:08):
is not the only thing, but it's a good management
tool to keep entering it into the woods and trying
to get your goals and objectives as you go.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Let me interject something, yeah, because I think this is
something that will ring truth for people. There's very few
things you can do for great oak and or mass
producing tree regeneration. After example, a timber harvest or an
old stage forest, then a burn because it's going to

(22:43):
regenerate and enable to your point, those effortens to flourish again.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
Yeah, no, yes, for sure. The introducing that fire into
it is very important, and we'll get in a little
bit later of you know, this is not abroad if
you have oak woods that you need to burn it
like today. Uh, we'll get into a little bit later
on the idea of who can come out and help you,
give you the information to uh to go down the
right road and making sure you're managing correctly, uh in

(23:11):
using fire correctly. It's not just it's not a fire
is a sledgehammer, it's not a scalpel. So when you
use it, you know you need to make sure you're
meeting your goals and objectives. And it's the right tool
to use when you need to use it. So as
far as you know it was, you know, the idea
of you know again where again the woodlands aspect, the

(23:33):
grassland aspect, that that stage in between, the idea of
keeping it uh you know what we call scrubby. You know,
the idea of uh uh you know good quill habitat
is not just pure grass and it's not closed campy woods.
You know. It's the idea of escape cover here or
in grass over here. You know, a mixture of everything. Again,

(23:55):
diversity breeds wildlife habitat. Wildlife habitat is diversity. Trying to
use fire to help you maintain that diversity, and fire
will help you do it itself. It'll burn in some places,
it won't burn another. The idea that just because it
has vegetation doesn't mean it's gonna burn. I can take
you to a lot of stuff in Kentucky and say

(24:15):
you can try in a drought and that won't burn,
you know. And then other times you gotta wait for
just the perfect weather to get something to burn, but
you can get it to burn. So again we'll dive
into kind of how here in a little bit on
how this stuff works a little bit down through this

(24:35):
as we go as far as when it can be again,
most of the time Kentucky fish wildlife, the big The
best window for us to burn is Valentine's Day through
tax Day, so the fourteenth of February to the fifteenth

(24:57):
of April is usually where our window hit. Your grasslands
are gonna be the first thing you're gonna be able
to burn because you don't have to burn quicker. You
don't have to have your when I say relative humidity,
as that's a really important thing with fire. Your relative
humidities don't have to be as low as long, and
you don't have to be as dry as long. So
your grasslands are gonna come first, and that aspect of

(25:19):
being available, and then you're gonna slowly work into your woodlands.
You can take your woodlands later up into, especially your
oak woodlands, you can take those up later in because
they haven't leafed out yet. It's amazing to see how
fire changes once you get a canopy closed over, and
how the humidity changes in a system that makes it

(25:39):
so fire is not available. And again, trying to understand
all that stuff, it's it's it can get complex, and
we're not gonna try to get you there today, but
you know, uh, each one of these things is something
to keeping in consideration of what you have in Kentucky.
You've an old field here, golden Rod. If you ever
you know you can walk through you know, last fall

(26:01):
and you walk through Golden Rod and you're like, man,
this thing would burn like crazy. And then I promise
you right now, if you go back out there, it's
just a bunch of stems and it may not even burn,
or you may have to have such low rhs and
when to push it through it before you can get
it to burn. So just the idea of knowing all
that kind of stuff and as you go it is

(26:23):
pretty important things.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
And towards the end of the programs and I'm gonna
hammer on this several times, you're gonna tell folks how
to attend classes where you all do classes so they
can educate themselves and know that they can safely do
this themselves for sure.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
Yeah, we're going to go all down that road and
kind of introduce that idea stuff kind of The first
thing first is like what is the laws in Kentucky?
You know, there are laws about fire and when you
can do it. And then that also brings up other
aspects that we can talk about later too, But really

(27:03):
in the state of Kentucky, for prescribed fire, you know,
there's what we call you do have a legal right
to burn on your property. But to burn on your property,
the legal right is is you have to have a
fire break and you have to stay until it's extinguished.
That's the gist of the law. It's uh so, and

(27:26):
those two or two are very very important things to do,
and we go more detail on the ins and outs
of the process of fire and why those are important.
So in Kentucky you can't burn on your own property
if you follow those two things. And that's with anything.
So again, a brush pile that you're going to burn,
you need to have some kind of break that keeps

(27:47):
that fire from going from where you're burning to outside
of it, and you have to stay until it's extinguished.
So or a campfire, same thing to burn on your property.
So so burns just a bigger yeah. Yeah, yeah. So
that's why I tell people all the time if you
look at Kentucky and then this is where the fear
part comes into. Uh. The majority of people would say,

(28:08):
I'm scared to burn. Do prescribe fire? I'd love to
do it, and I'm scared. Uh. But if I turn
around and ask him, I say, hey, have you ever
burnt a brush pile on your property? Are you scared
of that? And they'll say, oh no, I'll do that
all the time. Well, the second leading calls of fires
in Kentucky, Uh, wildfires in Kentucky are brush piles burning

(28:29):
nonto the brush piles. So the idea of it being
scared of being scared of it, you don't. You don't
need to be. And kind of go down the road
here in a little bit on how you make sure
that you don't need to be scared of it and
the planning process of that.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
All right, very good, I'm gonna got a quick break here.
It's presented by Mossol Properties, Heart Realty. Paul Thomas is
a broker. He's got all kinds of farms, wildlife management
areas and vacation homes for sale. Check out all the
current listings at mopt realty dot com.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
Jacob.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Anytime that you stand back and watch a farmer or
a gardener do their thing, they all have a rhyme
or a reason for what they do. And one of
the greatest parts about farming for wildlife is what fire
can release in that native seed bed that's out there,
and how it can trigger germination. And a lot of

(29:25):
times you can look at areas that have set idle
and not served wildlife very well for a number of
different reasons of that.

Speaker 4 (29:35):
Big focus of habitat.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Explain to us a little bit as I was listening
you and Jim talk what scarification is and how fire
can help trigger the germination process of that seed bank
that's there, and how good fire does to create the
perfect environment for those seeds to release their potential and
develop into plants.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
So scarification is the idea that you know you've got
a sea coat over the seed and you're you're basically
trying to break that down to trigger germination aspect of it.
And there's a lot of speciespecially the wildfire types that
need some kind of scarification. It could be cold, it
could be fire, it could be a number of different

(30:20):
things that.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Trigger that bird dropping.

Speaker 4 (30:22):
Bird dropping to go through Hey, you can literally have
to go through a bird's digestive system before it'll grow.
So and again, all this kind of stuff is is
because the Indians found out that fire was such a
wonderful tool. A lot of the systems are pretty much
every system we have in the state of Kentucky is
depending on fire at some level, at some stage of

(30:43):
something to help be part of that cycle to keep
it going. It's all really good points. Is the idea
that you know that there's been a lot of times
with fire, and then again we kind of talked about
the idea of fire is a wonderful tool to get
you to either the front stage or back stage of
certain stuff. Most most of the time in Kentucky, an

(31:04):
old field, you just spray it and get the old
fescue off of it, the cool season grass is off
of it, You throw some fire to it, and you
get a you can get a really amazing response out
of that just by doing that you may not get
the same response if you just spray or you burn,
or you may not get the same response because another
thing is people don't necessarily grasp is the idea. Like

(31:27):
a lot of times people say, well, I got all
these trees in here or this grass in here, I
want to burn it, kill it all off. Well, most species,
you don't just burn it and kill it all off.
We talked about a kind of the idea behind farmers
utilizing fire. You turn around, you burn it. There's there's
a whole lot of good out of burning a cool

(31:49):
season grass field because it comes back on thicker, richer,
more nutrients to it when you burn it. So the
idea of using fire. And then again settlers learned that
the utilize fire a whole lot to get their pastures rejuvenated.
You know, the idea behind burning it before you frost
seed some clover into your pasture right now, before it's

(32:10):
getting ready to come in. There's all kinds of ways
that you can use fire in the idea and trying
to figure out how that fire hits that niche that
you're trying to in what stage of your management that
you're trying to look at, and what you're trying to do.
Just Yeah, does that get you what you were looking for? There? Scott?
Did that cover that?

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah? I think it did. I think it's important here
to talk a little bit about the fact that fire
does not hurt with habitat, it actually can help it.
And you touched on that a little bit, but I
don't think that can be overemphasized. I mean, what have
you seen through your years of experience? What are the benefits?

(32:56):
And talk about guys that have cattle in woods for example.

Speaker 4 (33:00):
Yeah, So the idea, the idea of you lesson fire
in the woodland system is is if done and washing
your weather parameters and everything go. So you know, you're
literally when we say prescribed fire, we're also going to
use a term called controlled fires. They're the same thing.
Debscribe fire and a control burn is the same thing

(33:22):
because that you're watching the weather and you're doing you know,
and you're getting all these parameters. You're literally controlling the idea,
is this fire going to burn fast and hot? Slow
and hot? What do I need to do to get
to get my results? You're literally controlling the fire based
on all the parameters of what that weather is that day.

(33:44):
You're controlling it, how the weather parameters, how you light
the fire, and all the researches, well, the research that
has been done and the majority of it that I've
read has been done on Missouri and Indiana have shown
on the idea of you know, people are saying, well
you you know, you burn and you're gonna burn up
all your timber value. You will if you do it wrong. Yes,

(34:05):
you will. I mean I've seen it where you kill
every tree in your woods if you burn it the
wrong day, too hot. But again you learn the idea
of burning nice slow fire. Uh, you set the fire
and nice low backing fire. What they found is you
a minimum about about six percent timber value loss is
about on average of what happens if on on a

(34:26):
just a normal cool season fire or cool fire burning through.

Speaker 2 (34:32):
The idea.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
Though behind that six percent loss is the management aspect
of uh the game.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
What you gained further down.

Speaker 4 (34:40):
The road of having open the system is.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Important, yes, sir, and uh you touched on the wump
that the sure provide better force for cattle for folks
that have cattle. Yeah, woodlins, yep, wood lots if you
send it out, yeah, yeah, all right, absolutely, all right,
folks gotta go to break here. This break is presented
by my marine. They're going to be out the sport

(35:02):
boat and recreation vehicles show here at the end of
the mud. Go see them out there, and remember you
never get soaked by my friends at SMI Marine.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Jacob, You've got a great opportunity for individuals if they
want to begin to learn how to burn on their
own property and follow regulations that are set forth and
in place. And I was fortunate enough to reach out
and provide an area for that to be hosted at

(35:35):
where the Kentucky Prescribe Fire Council come in. And I
want the listeners to know that the class was very
well attended. This is not something that is just a
handful of individuals are wanting to do fire and being
educated on it is growing and I would like for
you to explain, and I would like to take a

(35:55):
minute to brag on what yourself and the council has
done order to put together the crew member course so
that folks can come in and get that basic information
to begin to take the next step into not only
utilizing fire as a tool, but also getting themselves more

(36:15):
informed to where they can more or less become into
a fraternity of individuals that they can pull upon and
work with in their surrounding community.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Yeah, thanks, got the key. We've been talking about the
history of fire. The Indians utilized it, the settler used it.
Then why was it you know, knocked back and not
used as much? So it kind of here in the
In the first of the two thousands, the state of
Kentucky started taking strides. And when I say the State

(36:51):
of Kentucky, I'm not talking about just just Kentucky Fishing Wildlife,
not KDF, but anybody who's a fire practitioner and this
and in our only two thousands that was TNC, Kentucky VISHWANAF, KDF,
Kentucky State Nature Preserves. A bunch of different partners across
the state came together to form what you call now

(37:11):
the Kentucky Prescribe Fire Council, which is a five O
one C three nonprofit And within that, the whole goal
of the Council is to get that culture back, the
importance of the culture and the idea of understanding fire
and I'll be scared of it and again trying to
it to create it. So neighbors come together and help

(37:35):
each other burn because this is not something that most
people should go do by themselves alone. So the whole
idea behind the council was formed is to try to
find ways and knock down barriers to make it a
cultural thing on the landscape of Kentucky. Again, so we
formed a class, so we call it the crew Member

(37:56):
slash Landowner Course. It is eight hours. And when we
talk about eight hours, yeah, it's it's eight hours of
some boring stuff, what's exciting stuff. And it's done in
such a way to trigger the idea of one explain
to you all about the factors that that that control

(38:19):
the burn. Uh, and then you take it and you
walk into the idea how you create the burn plan?
So uh, and this is those two things that burn plan.
People talk about, well, is there insurance for prescribed fire?
And I said, well, the best insurance you can possibly
have is a well laid out plan that you plan
for failure at every step so you have the tools

(38:42):
and resources to handle the situation that you're getting ready
to jump into. So this is what the color course does.
It lays out, It puts it all out on the
table and shows you how the topography impacts fire, how
your fuels impact fire, how the weather impacts and you
start putting all that together to form a good laid

(39:03):
out plan. So by time it's all said and done,
you know where you're going to start the fire, what
kind of breaks you need for that fire, what kind
of resources you need from, how many water tanks, how
many shovels, how many rakes, all the contacts you're going
to call before you do it. That is the insurance
policy and the most important insurance policy, because that's how

(39:24):
you're going to keep it where you want it, so
you keep the fire or where it needs to be.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
And going back to those tools and resources, part of
being engaged in that class was I believe there's some
trailers that are available depending on where you're at that
would have some equipment that could possibly be used.

Speaker 4 (39:44):
Is that spot on? So yeah, in a very limited
capacity at this point, we're trying to build those resources.
The Kentucky Department Fishwileite Resources has their Private lands program
with seventeen bollogies across the state who support put these
glasses on along with other partners in the council UH
and each one of those areas has some a little

(40:06):
bit of cash and then there's a few other trailers around. Uh.
And most of it is is you have to take
the course before we can give you the equipment.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
And really that's again an insurance policy to make sure
you understand what you're doing before we hand you over
the drik.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Well, yeah, that's proved.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
Yeah, yeah, and so and so the idea is you
get that another thing once you take the course. Once
you have taken the course, we do what we call
learn and burns. Uh. And the learner burn is you
are set up and you come. You know, we we
have one to say in Muhlenburg County. We tell all

(40:42):
of the people who took the course, here, we're gonna
burn this Saturday, show up and we're gonna walk you
through the plan. We're gonna walk around the unit, and
we're gonna light the fire with you. And we try
to make that so it's grassland, woodland, so you can
see all aspects of it, so you can try to
see where you actually take it from paper to real life,
so you can fill that fire, you put it out,

(41:03):
And honestly, we try to make it so you do
all the work. We have all the resources there as
far as mampire to actually run the fire if we
need to. But the goal is for you to take
the hands on approach and learn how to actually do
the fire. And the hope is is to one you
get to see the fire. The next hope is is

(41:24):
that you get to meet five or six other landowners
that are interested in fire, that have done the courses,
that we can try to speak, get a relationship built
there that you all can help each other out, you
can get some equipment, you can help each other out.
And the COUNTS over the past five years has trained

(41:45):
over six hundred people through this course to actually be
ready to go. I did a survey of those six
hundred people and there was I don't one hundred and
fifty of them that said they're willing to help other
people through the council. Are now going down another road
of we got a gentleman who's standing up a committee

(42:06):
prescribe burn Association. What a prescribe burn association in other
states is is the idea that it's another group that
gets together and works together to burn. They work on tools,
A lot of them end up being a different five
oh one c three, and they work together to get
accomplished fire. And that's a good all round thing to

(42:27):
have as far as a culture building aspect of it.
So we're working our way down that road and hopefully
I've heard the rumors of one possibly starting in the
Bluegrass area over the next year twelve months. But again,
it all takes time.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
And folks, if you've got interest in these things, please
get a pencil and paper, because at the end of
the program, jacket, it's gonna tell you places you can
go for these classes. You know, the various locations and
the dates and we'll we'll flesh all that out for
it and the website you can go to to learn

(43:04):
more about this, and again we're gonna do that at
the end of the program because obviously we got a
lot of information to share. I'm gonna go to quick
break here. This break is presented by Mosci Old Properties
Heart Realty. Paul Thomas is a broker there. Check them
out at m O p h a r T Realty
dot com. Uh, Jacob, we talked about some of the classes,

(43:25):
what are some other aspects of things, and I know
you want to also talk a little bit about the
legality so people know, you know where they stand.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
With that and so you know the coursework lays out
how to do fire safely and to make sure that
you know the ins and outs of the legal aspect
of doing fire safely. You know, I mentioned that idea
of doing fire from Valentine's Day until tax Day. You know, well, uh,

(43:57):
that is actually right in the middle of what we
call the fire hazard in season in the state of Kentucky,
which states that a landowner cannot burn from six am
to six pm within one hundred and fifty feet of
a woodlot. That's all the same rules in the fall
fire season, which is October one through December fifteenth, which

(44:18):
if you think about what happens in October, all those
leaves start falling off the cheerioffs, so you have that
nice kindle there that's there, and if you ever see
a bunch of big wildfire stuff happening, it's always going
to be in those time frames more likely, because that's
when RHS is starting to warm up, your rhs are
starting to fall, which means your relative humidity's starting to

(44:39):
fall get low, and it gets dangerous. So you can
understand that if if it's able to burn and be dangerous,
then it's probably the best time that you know, naturally
something would burn, So that timeframe it gets a little hard.
But for most circumstances with landowners, you know, it's hard
on the WMA side or while that managementary side. If

(45:00):
I'm trying to burn three thousand acres in a month's time, Uh,
it gets hard if I have to stay outside that window.
But as a landowner, uh, you know, if you have
ten acres twenty acres, there are some windows you can
hit after that six pm window. Uh. But that is
the legal aspect of what is now. So I just
want to bring that up.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
To everybody that will break if you will simplify that
a little bit about saying when you can burn.

Speaker 4 (45:28):
So when you can burn is anytime of day outside
of those windows, like tomorrow, if the weather was right
and you wanted to, you could burn anytime a day
outside those windows, as long as you follow the rolls
of having a break and may and stand by the
fire until it's extinguished.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
So you know.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
So and the really you know, the whole idea behind
prescribed fire, and this is the thing is I go,
I cannot. The planning process of prescribe fire is the
most important thing. So the idea of being a weekend
warrior of showing up to your farm and I'm burned
on Saturday no matter what because that's my time doesn't
necessarily fit the mold to prescribe fire. The likelihood of

(46:09):
that happening, it probably ain't very good. I've tried it before,
trying to plan some of these events and random picking
random saturdays to burn doesn't hit that hard. Just for example,
since twenty fourteen to twenty twenty five, you know, Fishing
Wildlife burns twenty nine out of those you know, throughout

(46:30):
the year, twenty nine days throughout the year. So there's
certain days that you can burn. Either it's too windy,
it's too wet, it's too dry, there's something there, you know,
there's something there that doesn't fit the mold. And that's
the thing with the planning aspect is once you have
your plan set up, you don't burn outside that because
you've laid out to be successful by following that plan.

(46:52):
And that's the important part of it. So in some
of this idea back this summer, the KDFW, you are,
Kentucky Fishing Wildlife and Kentucky Division Forestry actually sit in
front of a joint intersession committee in front of the
legislators in Kentucky and talk to talk to the legislators
about the importance of fire, prescribed fire and the need

(47:15):
for the idea of some clarity in the laws and
the idea of being able to to get prescribed fire
and importance of that on the on the landscaping, on
the ground and supported with the council. So I'm sitting
here with two hats, you know. Uh, like I said,
our director of Wildlife was there and uh, the state Forster,
Brandon Howard was there talking to the legislator, you know,

(47:38):
telling them how important prescribe fire it is and the
need for some clarity on on on regulations.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
What times of regulations are an impediment right now? So
what problems would you like to see addressed? Well, so
you know, and this is you know, the exact specifics.

Speaker 4 (47:57):
You know, you turn around and like you know, you
got your window of winning and burn when you can't.
There's actually a law that was passed in twenty sixteen
that the Council got pushed that if you're a certified
burn Boston, State of Kentucky, you can burn in that
window as long as you follow plans in certain legislation

(48:17):
aspects or certain laws to do it.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
So there are some.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
Abilities to burn outside that the Prescribe Fire Council has
gotten the ability for landlers to do It's just a long,
combersome process on that. But the idea of just you know,
in our laws, it's not spelled out really clearly what
prescribed fire means in the state of Kentucky. It'd be
nice to have some clarity on that. And some ideas
is if you do this stuff, you've got some liability taken,

(48:45):
you know, like some freedoms if you follow all these
rules in the way it said.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
You've mentioned burn Boss explaining that.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
All right, So to be a certified burn Boston, State
of Kentucky, you have to be on five burn. There
is a national standard that you have to be trained to.
It's all can be done online. You take a three
day course with the council that we put on and
then you apprentice under somebody for three burns. All in all,

(49:14):
it takes about one hundred and fifty to one hundred
and sixty hours to get it all done. And then
once that's done, all you have to do is have
a plan written some minute. It's a division of Forestry
and you can burn anytime you want.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
All right to that point, how many burn bosses are
out there and what would you like to see happen
and what can help facilitate that. Yeah, so as far.

Speaker 4 (49:36):
As burn bosses out there, So when this law came
into place, we adopted. When I say we state agencies adopted,
is this is what the standard we're going to hold
ourselves to. So all the state agency there, So this
number is going to seem high. So it's about one
hundred and fifty burn bosses, but you got to keep
in mind it's all of FISH and wile, AFE, burn bosses,
all KDF, all OK, and P all these people falling

(50:00):
eight of it. So the majority of those people I
can give you exact numbers right now, fall into the
state agencies. But we do have a bunch of contractors
we had. We have at least three landowners that have
went through it and of going down that process to
get their burn balls certification. So we're getting there again.
We're trying to get that culture back, that's what we're
trying to do. We're trying to build it and we're

(50:21):
working towards that. So anything we can get as far
as legislation goes to help support the idea of taking
roadblocks out of the way. We'd love to have conversations
about exactly what that is with you know, with legislatior aspects,
to figure out what that is, to give that tell
them to lay it out. So there's yeah, so so

(50:43):
there's a there's legality stuff here. But the best thing
to do is again come to one of these courses,
get laid out on the idea of what it means
to be a crew member on a burn and then
take the next step to be at the burn balls
and then taking that on and when you're a burn boss,
you're in charge of in charge of everything and the

(51:04):
whole aspects of the fire.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Okay, so bottom line, you'd like to see a whole
lot more bone bosses after it.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
I would love to see a lot more burn bosses
out there. That right there says you've trained yourself up
to a higher level. And again, once you get to
burn boss aspect, that opens the door up to we
haven't started talking about too much yet, but the idea
there is cost share money through federal cost are money
to do habitat management, not just fire but other stuff,
but fire specifically, there's a huge shortage of contractors willing

(51:34):
and able to do fire in the state of Kentucky
as we sit right now. You have to go through
our training. We don't recognize other states burn bosses, so
you have to go through our training to be certified.
And right now we probably have no more than half
a dozen that are on a contractor list that are

(51:54):
trained up to do the work. And trust me when
I say this, there is a whole lot of people
who want fire put on the ground. They can't go
through all these steps or don't want to do it themselves.
So there is there is opportunity there. And I assume
these folks charged to do that, Yeah, they do charge.
What What's what can someone expect there?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
You know?

Speaker 4 (52:18):
And that's it's a really good it's a really good question.
That's a really good question. Varies on size. So if
you know, you come to if you're a contractor and
you come to one acre burn, it takes the same
mobilization as it does one hundred acre burn most of
the time to get there and do it. So the
more acreags that you have that someone can come and burn,
the lower that price is going to be. So there's

(52:41):
a scale. So I can tell you, you know, in
the state, I can tell you. I can tell you
that in RCS contracts, which Natural Resource Conservation Service has
a rate of like sixty dollars an acre of pay
And we can.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Jump in that after break sixty dollars an acre. And
on the backside, that is so minimal compared to wildlife
management like food plots. Yeah, that's the thing, and it's
an ongoing long term benefit for sure. All right, very
good sir, great information there, folks, got to go to break.
This break is presented by SMI Marine. They'll be at

(53:14):
the Boatsport and Recreational Vehicle show here at the end
of the month. They'll have some great new boats to
show you. And of course just get out there and
meet and greet them. You'll find them to be very friendly.
And remember you never get soaked by my friends at
S and my marine.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Hey, Jacob, what are the first steps that the average
person needs to take whenever it comes to wanting to
start burning on their property?

Speaker 4 (53:46):
And a great question, Scott, I do believe you know
the best place to start is with somebody who can
come to your property and kind of talk around make
sure fire is the right tool for you, those people
are out there. The Kentucky Fish and Wilife has seventeen
private ans biologists who all I think at this point

(54:07):
there all went at least went through the burn boss
training and the majority of our burn bosses in the
state of Kentucky. And then KADF Kentucky Division Forestry has
twenty three foresters out there. So if you're on the
forest side of things as far as timber management and
that aspect of stuff, they have foresters willing to come
out and look at your property too and talk to

(54:27):
you about this stuff. That is the best thing to
do is get them out there. Let them know that, hey,
I'm interested in fire. For one. They may say fire
is a wonderful tool for meet your objectives, and they
may say, you know what, fire is not the best
tool to meet your objectives because again, fire is not
the end all all the time. So that's that's the

(54:48):
first thing to start to do is is to bring
a biologist in or forestry in. Let them know, let
them see what you have to work with. They can
talk you through the idea of the fire is what
you want. So the idea behind putting in a fire break,
I'm going to kind of jump in here and hit
some high points of what you need before you put
a fire in. But don't take this and just run

(55:08):
with it until you talk to somebody or please come
to the class. We're gonna tell you here in a
little bit. But the idea behind firebreak, what's a firebreak
need to be? Well? The best thing I would say
is is the wider the better, The bigger the better.
As far as getting a fire done. The whole idea
behind prescribed fire is for it to be boring. Everybody

(55:30):
in your mind is thinking, I want to do prescribe firing,
and it's gonna be crazy pictures and this and that.
We do get some pretty cool pictures, but every time
I've ever taken a picture, it's when I'm bored. When
it's far enough away it's safe, I can take some
pictures and videos. So the idea behind making you know,
what's the minimum. The idea behind this is is you
take your vegetation heighth. So say you have two foot

(55:52):
tall grass. You multiply that times two and you get four.
So then you turn around, you take that and you
multiply times three. So what the two gets you? So
two foot tall vegetation multiply at times two is what
your flame length would be if you start to burn
it and it's really hot and then you turn around.
You take the idea of it wind blowing it and

(56:14):
putting that flame horizontally on the ground and pushing sparks out.
So you multiply that three times the flame length to
get what your break needs to be, how wide it
needs to be. And again, so you go two foot
vegetation times two gives you four times three gives you
twelve foot from the edge to the end of it.
So that's just kind of a good place to be there.

(56:37):
And then the idea of having nice dirt in place there,
or a gravel road or something that want the fire
can't creep across. You want ninety percent or eighty percent
dirt so that fire cannot creep. Because the whole idea
is you're making something that will stop the fire from spreading.
Another aspect, anytime you're getting ready to light a fire,

(56:58):
you want the wind in your face or looking downhill.
A wind in your face looking downhill is the best
place to where you start to fire at. And keep
the rule in mind. Uh, you know, this is just
a good general rule. This ain't all again comes to
the classes. We'll teach you specifics on this stuff. You know,
temperature no higher than sixty r h, no lower than forty.

(57:22):
Those two things together and make it for a nice
safe controlla will burn again. You can go lower and
higher on that stuff. But just me talking general. It's
just some general terms. So if you feel like this
is something you want to do, these are some general
terms on that kind of stuff. Another thing I didn't
mention that in.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
Our h is relatively human relative many people. You know,
you're used to dealing with it. But that's what that means.
And that's the.

Speaker 4 (57:47):
Humidity that you see on your weather right or whatever
the humidity says. And another term that you know, the
thing we didn't talk about is the idea of fuels reduction.
So the idea of everything you see out west is
the idea that fuels are built up and it becomes
a bomb. Well, that's kind of another term. Another way
that you can use fire as a tool is you

(58:09):
plan it so you control when that fire is going
to burn and that you can keep it where it
needs to be instead of a wild fire getting away
from you. So it's it's a it's a safe and
productive way to take care of that problem before you
get surprised by the problem. So again, it's a it's
a recognized tool to use to help reduce those fuels

(58:30):
and to keep stuff safer and and as far as
you know, help everybody out across the landscape of if
the weather gets bad, you've already taken care of the
issue before it can become an issue.

Speaker 2 (58:43):
I want to measure something here, and I'm not meaning
to interrupt the folks. We will be giving you information
about contacting these folks, about where the classes are held,
and contact information on the websites and all the places
you go to learn more about this before the program's over.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
Go ahead, Yeah, yeah, thank you. That's uh so. The
idea behind playing this again is the idea of thinking
through everything as you go and and again. Once you
get your mind wrapped around the idea that you're literally
controlling how the fire goes. This is not something that
you're doing willy nilly. You have thought through the process.

(59:25):
You're taking it step by step. You have all the
resources on hand to control even the idea you've planned
for if it escapes, where you're gonna go and what
you're gonna do also when we go, when you when
you do this, uh, I would suggest every one of
you because you're gonna if you're gonna burn your property,
you're gonna have to have a conversation with your neighbor
one way or another saying hey, I'm gonna burn, so

(59:47):
they don't freak out and see what happens the fire department.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
Yeah, the best thing you can do is say, hey,
I'm gonna burn. Would you like to burn your place too?
And we can help each other, you know. Again, get
back out to that that neighbor type deal of working together.
You know. I don't know about you, Jim, but growing
up for myself, we always help neighbors plant tobacco, working hay,
do everything together. I've seen that kind of wane away.

(01:00:12):
And you know, in the in the past twenty years,
you know, people, you know, you've gotten to the point
where everything's done by a tractor, singly or this has happened,
and this happened, and neighbors don't really know each other anymore,
you know. And I'll preach on this on the wildlife
management side of things, too. Very few people own enough
property to make a difference by themselves. It is truly

(01:00:35):
important on the idea of if you want to manage
a wildlife population is for other people to be along
with you in that on the landscape as a whole.
So trying to build those connections is really important on
multiple different levels, not just the fire but as a
wildlife management aspect too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Yes, sir Scott, do you have anything here you need
to add or quit us for Jacob that's rattling around.

Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
What I want to add is how.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
Quickly it is for you to see the benefits and
the rewards of burning your property.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
No matter if.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
You've been able to hunt on public or private land
that has had burning take place, there's no doubt that
it's just not that species that you're going after and
hunting for that particular season.

Speaker 4 (01:01:32):
I'll just give you an example. If you're in a
big national.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Forest and you're there during the spring turkey season or
fall deer season, you're just going to see more wildlife
in general. And I think that's the really big important
part of this program and why I was so passionate
to get Jacob on was that our game and our
non game species are going to benefit from this, and

(01:01:58):
it's something that people need to unders stand. Both I
want to advocate for what Jacob does and I don't
want to put them in a bad spot. But you know,
public lands border a lot of private land, and we
need to support our public land burning when it takes
place if we're a landowner that borders to it. If

(01:02:20):
anybody at all is going to take the time and
the precautions and make sure that every eye is dotted
and every tea has crossed, I can guarantee it's going
to be Jacob or somebody that's part of a crew,
no matter what state you're in, to make sure that
they've got that taken care of. And before we had
went into the break to jim It, i'd sent you

(01:02:42):
a text message. So many people have killed gobblers in
fire breaks, and they've shot their venison and provided your
family with food and fire breaks, and a lot of
times we look at these things and we think that
they're just roads or public access places, and we may
allow them to be our infrastructure.

Speaker 4 (01:03:04):
But when you start.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
Looking at bigger tracks of land that people would be
familiar with. In the state of Kentucky, you know Taylorsville
Wildlife managementary land between the lakes. You may not know
who's truly in charge of running or operating those pieces
of property, but those properties could be burned and be
burned more often. In my opinion, if legislative people in

(01:03:29):
the general public had just a better appreciation and understanding
of how good fire is, well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
That was the big reason that I was so super
excited about the program, as we you know, formulated tonight's show,
because Smoky the Bear had its place, but it also
scared people. And in the South, for example, it's part

(01:03:57):
of the culture. People down there been burning forever. And
you can argue whether we're in northern state or a
Southeastern state. I lean towards Southeastern personally, But the point
is it is a such an effective tool. A for
cleaning up the land, b for providing habitat and seed,

(01:04:19):
for maintaining forest integrity, you know, the regeneration of oak.
There's just so many aspects where it's a big positive
and hopefully tonight we've we've covered enough ground to let
people understand that this is this is really, really a
beneficial thing. It's no different than food plots or any

(01:04:42):
of those things you want to talk about.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
It is very beneficial and you mentioned forced kind of
forced health there I did. I did kind of glazed
over the idea of if you live in central Kentucky
and you know what bush honeysuckle is, it's it's plumb
taking over our forest. It's horrible. It's horrible, and fire
in itself at certain stages won't knock it out. It

(01:05:04):
won't take you away from that hard work, but it's
truly important for the idea of maintaining that system. Fire.
I have seen, and I've seen it work of introducing
fire back into it keeps it knocked back and manageable
at that point. So the idea of making it part
of your system again, fire is a wonderful tool to

(01:05:24):
keep maintaining and get habitat to a certain place that
you want it to.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
And additionally, it helps in a big way release native
seeds to regenerate where they've been suppressed in the past. Fires. Well,
that's one thing the Indians understood real quick, okay, very good.
Got to go to break here. This break is presented
by most silk properties heart realty again. Coming back from break,

(01:05:51):
Jacob's going to share all the contacts and places that
you go to learn more about this will stick with us.
We'll be right back. Okay, Jacob, if you will. We've
talked about the importance, we talked about the benefits. Let's
talk to folks about these classes and websites and contacts

(01:06:13):
that they can utilize.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):
Please, yeah, thank you, Jim. I am going to jump
in here and we're going to talk about First off,
we're going to have three courses over the spring for
the category's right Fire Council crew Members slash land on
our course and these are purposely across the state. February
seventh in Hardin County, March seventh in Christian County, April

(01:06:39):
tenth in Rockcastle County. And to register for those courses,
you'll need to go to kyfire dot org. Then go
to the training tab and the eight hour slash I
think it's crewmember course and you'll see flyers for registration
and those are QR codes and hopefully maybe I can

(01:07:03):
get some links up there by Tuesday, but uh, they're
there to register and if you have any problems, Uh,
I'll give you my email here in a minute for
myself that you can get to reach to me. Actually,
I just go and give you that is Jacob dot
Stuart at ky dot gov. Slow down, sorry, Jacob dot
Stuart at ky dot gov and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
Stewart is s T E W A R T yep UH.

Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
And so you can email me if you have any
problems with those. Another way for you to get a
hold of one of the biologists that work for me, UH,
work for the department UH is to go to u
f W dot ky dot gov. You'll click on the
wildlife tab and then you're gonna click on the improve

(01:07:47):
your land for wildlife and then there'll be an application
for assistance that you click on. You fill out and
it'll email me actually, and I'll send it out to
the biologists to reach out and call you and set
up a media to go over what your goals are.
And this ain't just part for fire. This is for
anything on the wildlife side of things. As you go

(01:08:08):
as far as Kentucky Division and Forestry. If you go
to their web page and look up there your district
and reach out to them, they can get you the
forester's number. So really, the importance of all this is,
and I just real quick on this stuff, Jim, is
the idea that fire is a safe and effective tool
if done correctly. It is Kentucky Prescribed Fire Council does

(01:08:32):
have resources and multiple partners have resources to support to you.
This is not meant to be the idea that you're
just taught something and dropped off and go do it.
The idea behind this is we're trying to get that
culture back in the state of Kentucky, that fire culture
where it's not you know, if anybody drives to Florida,

(01:08:53):
I mean you'll see fire in the middle of the Medians.
They're burning off the middle of the Interstates. I mean
there's I mean, there's a culture there that people that
it's just they smell smoke, it's another day of fire.
It's nothing big. And again, the idea behind this is
is to make it that culture. And the way we
make it that culture is one to learn how to
do this responsibly, come to the courses, come meet people

(01:09:15):
to help you and support you to do this well.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
In your experience, in all the yearsers you've done this,
I would suspect that there's been very few glitches anywhere.

Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
So there's actually some numbers that put out that I
didn't jump into that. But you know, throughout my twenty years,
I know of two fires through our agency that have
gotten off, gotten away, you know, outside the unit that
we that you know, we addressed and took care of. Nationally,
it's less than like it zero point two five percent

(01:09:49):
of fires that actually escape and escape fire doesn't mean
you've burned down a house or do anything else. It's
just the idea that it got out of control and
you had to get a new ridding, more resources to
come in and help support that. Right, So the idea
of like the the odds of this, you know, if
you're taking gambling odds gamble on it, you know it's
it's effective tool and it's worth it to be on

(01:10:10):
the landscape in the state of Kentucky.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
I've got a question. It may be a stupid one,
but I've heard of this in my past. I was
a fireman, Okay, so there's a good reason for me
to ask this. Isn't it true that some of the
volunteer fire departments will come and actually do burns as
a training exercise, especially on warmseason grass plots and.

Speaker 4 (01:10:34):
Things like that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
Not all will, But is that? Is it that a possibility?
And there's no reason not to ask? Yeah, And then
the same breath, it's important to let them know you're
gonna burn if you're in an area where there's large
neighborhoods adjacent.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
Well, just in general, it's important to let the Knductivearment,
Cookie Division, Forestry, and your local fire department know you're
going to burn, because if someone calls and they don't know,
they're going to trigger someoney to be there and they
may have someplace important to be. Actually, that's not your
place for them to get there.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Yes, sir, before we call, give folks how to contact
you directly again, if you would again, Jacob JCLB dot
Stuart S. T.

Speaker 4 (01:11:16):
E W A R T at ky dot gov.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
Brother, I can't tell you how informational this problem was
for me personally. And I hope the audience and Jordans
as much as I did. And uh, I really appreciate
you visit with them, Jacob. Well, thank you for having
me and thank you for everything you do. Yeah, all right, folks,
be careful out there. God bless everybody.