Control of Eastern Red Cedar Prescribed Fire Program

Prescribed burns like these are the most cost-effective way to reduce eastern redcedar encroachment. Not only do they clear out large cedars and open up more space for nutritious forbs and grasses, they also consume the seedlings and seeds that other control methods miss. The NGLC prescribed burn program supports burn coordinators to assist landowners with burn planning and implementation on private lands.

Partnerships between the NGLC and landowners help build capacity for putting more fire on the ground and allow groups like the CPRA to innovate and advance new techniques for reducing cedar. This is important to landowners like Mark Alberts, president of the CPRA, who has witnessed eastern redcedar encroachment transform the Loess Canyons ecoregion over past decades, something he and others refer to as ‘the green glacier’.

The CPRA and the neighboring Loess Canyons Rangeland Alliance are landowner coalitions putting in the work to stop the green glacier and reclaim grasslands lost to encroaching woody species, like eastern redcedar. Since 2002, these groups have burned more than 100,000 acres in the Loess Canyons and have halted a regional transition towards woodland dominance.