beef cattle – Prescribed Fire

January 16, 2020January 21, 2020

Using Prescribed Fire to Control Ticks

Prescribed Fire

Troublesome pests such as ticks can be controlled with fire. However, for most parasites, control by fire lasts only for one growing season post-burn.

Economic Loss

Many tourism areas suffer economic loss because of the public’s perception of ticks and other pests in parks, campgrounds, and other recreational facilities. Ticks pose a serious health risk to humans, pets, livestock, and wildlife because of the diseases they can carry. Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Lyme’s disease, and other infections can be transmitted to humans from ticks. Domestic animals can also contract fatal diseases from ticks. Decreased livestock production from insect borne illnesses can also cost livestock producers thousands of dollars each year.

Controlling Ticks With Patch-Burning

Current research suggests patch-burning (patch-burn grazing) significantly reduces ticks on domestic livestock. When a patch is burned, the livestock follow the fresh burned areas and camp out on those areas until another patch is burned. Burning the patch kills the ticks, removes their habitat, and limits the livestock’s contact with ticks because they are concentrated on the burned area. Since the livestock follow the burns, they remain in areas with fewer ticks.

January 16, 2020January 16, 2020

How does fire impact grazing?

Recently burned areas attract grazing animals because of increased forage quality and palatability. Recently burned areas also have fewer external parasites such as flies and ticks which influence habitat use. Grazing animals follow fires; thus, fire can be used to rotate animals across the landscape. However, animals tend to concentrate on these areas until a more recent burned area is available; thus, when a manager wishes to move livestock, fire is a good tool to achieve this.

January 16, 2020January 16, 2020

Historically, was fire important?

Yes. Fire shaped the plant and animal communities that we see presently on the landscape. The important factor is scale, both temporal (time) and spatial (size). Managers should attempt to mimic historic scale of fire to meet the needs of all native species. Even in areas that require very infrequent fire (e.g., 200 years) fire is still important to these systems.