Florida’s National Forests: A Revolution in Prescribed Burning

Abstract

On a fine day in March 2011, the longleaf pines stood at attention like sentries on Apalachicola National Forest, which radiates south from Tallahassee to the Gulf of Mexico in Florida’s panhandle. Those stately pines, spaced twenty to twenty-five feet apart, created a park-like landscape in which three-feet-long blades of wiregrass waved gently in the breeze (figure 8.1). The grass blades were mostly brown, but some of them were speckled with the green of approaching spring. Steve Parrish, the zone fire management officer whose friendly, even-keeled temperament drew other people to him like a magnet, made his way through the forest of pine and remarked with obvious pride, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? We did a prescribed burn in this part of the forest about a year ago.”¹