Land Management and Wildfire
Understanding Land Management
If you could somehow combine all of Austin’s parkland natural areas – our greenbelts, nature preserves, and other conserved natural lands throughout the city park system – into one contiguous land mass, it would cover about 20 square miles. That’s roughly the size of the area from 183 to Mopac between 51st Street and the Colorado River. It’s over 7% of the entire incorporated area of the city. That’s a lot of land!
These lands are beloved by our residents and provide us with vital ecosystem services such as recreational opportunities, improved mental health, clean air and water, climate regulation, wildlife habitat, and many economic benefits. However, while our natural lands take care of us, they, in turn, also need care. Without active management, most of our parkland natural areas have become degraded to various degrees by factors such as fragmentation, altered natural processes, reduced biodiversity, invasive species, poor water quality, and other environmental challenges that make them particularly vulnerable to unthinkable outcomes such as widespread tree mortality and destructive wildfires. The sort of climate change we know is coming in the next couple of decades will further exacerbate these stressors. For our natural lands to be able to continue serving us into the next century, we must start taking action now.
In 2020, in response to an audit of Austin’s wildfire preparedness the Austin Parks and Recreation Department created the beginnings of a Land Management Program to help restore natural areas and mitigate wildfire risk. The Program’s strategy is two-part:
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Active Ecological Restoration
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Targeted Fuel Mitigation
Restoration Strategies
The quality of ecosystem services is dependent on how well ecosystems function. Ecosystem functions are complex and interdependent. This is why land managers approach systems holistically to address specific issues such as wildlife habitat, water quality, and wildfire risk. Healthy, functional ecosystems are also resilient to stressors such as extreme heat, drought, storms, disease, and wildfire.
With respect to wildfire, most causes of wildfire ignitions – outdoor burning or other activity on private land, vehicle or equipment fires, fireworks, careless human behavior, arson, powerline arcs, lightning strikes,1 - are out of the direct control of public land managers. That is, land managers have little ability to prevent wildfires from starting. There is an old adage in the wildfire world: “Available fuel will eventually burn.” Land managers can, however, influence how wildfires burn once they start.
Ultimately, the goal is to keep fire out of tree canopies and on the ground. Widespread canopy fires are usually damaging to natural resources, produce the large embers that cause most home ignitions, and are basically unmanageable, meaning that firefighters can’t take direct action to put them out. Conversely, surface fires – those carried by grass, low shrubs, leaf litter, and dead wood on the ground – tend to be beneficial to natural resources, present much less risk to homes that have been treated with basic Firewise strategies, and are much more manageable, which means that firefighters can more easily put them out.
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We can help keep fire on the ground using a few different approaches. Where appropriate, we can restore native grasslands such as prairies, meadows, or savannas. Native grasslands are most resilient to extreme heat and drought and, obviously, cannot carry canopy fire. In woodlands, we can use selective techniques to move communities towards the mature or old-growth structure that is inherently resistant to canopy fire. Woodlands and forests with old-growth-type structures have a community of trees in a range of size classes from small to large, often lower tree densities to allow enough resources and space for larger trees as well as growth of younger ones, and understories that are highly diverse as well as more open than those of younger or unmanaged systems.
At very large scales, we really only have a handful of techniques that are both cost-efficient and effective for achieving these goals. These include removal of invasive species, planting and seeding of native species, fuel reduction, and selective thinning of small trees and shrubs, all to ensure remaining trees have the resources to be resilient to climate stress and to help keep potential wildfires on the ground. In a few locations we can also use prescribed burning as a very effective tool for reducing fuel loads and dramatically improving native biodiversity. These are strategies that have been used by park managers across the country for decades to maintain proper ecosystem function in human-altered landscapes.
Prescribed Burns and Fuel Mitigation
Prescribed burns can be one of the most effective and cost-efficient methods of restoring ecosystem health and wildfire resilience. Last year, in coordination with other land management agencies and fire departments, Austin Parks and Recreation completed seven broadcast burns across 576.6 acres at Decker Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and Louis René Barrera Indiangrass Wildlife Sanctuary. Additionally, five pile burns at Onion Creek Wildlife Sanctuary and Blunn Creek Nature Preserve, removed 109 tons (794 piles) of hazardous wildland fuels.
Figure 2. Fire-qualified Austin Parks and Recreation staff ignite a portion of the perimeter of a prescribed burn at the Louis René Barrera Indiangrass Wildlife Sanctuary in September 2024.
In addition to their ecological benefits, prescribed burns provide invaluable training and experience for land managers and firefighters from local agencies including Austin Parks and Recreation, Travis County Parks, Austin Fire Department, several Travis County fire departments, Travis County StarFlight, Austin Police Department, Texas A&M Forest Service, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and others.
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Figure 3. In 2024, prescribed burns on Austin parkland provided one-of-a-kind training and development for 85 land managers and firefighters from 13 local organizations.
Fuel mitigation projects also play a crucial role in reducing wildfire risk. These projects include the creation of shaded fuel breaks — areas where understory woodland fuels are reduced, typically in areas 60 feet wide near neighboring homes and businesses or in other key locations. Since 2021, Austin Parks and Recreation has implemented or maintained 7.4 miles of shaded fuel breaks along park boundaries adjacent to neighboring homes.
Community Involvement
Parks are community resources, and we certainly couldn’t do all this work without you. Engaging our community is essential to the success of land management efforts. Depending on the activity or issue, staff actively involve community groups, volunteers, and park neighbors through volunteer opportunities, planning meetings, and direct outreach.
We also work with local artists to create unique audiovisual products in natural areas. The Audio Wild series, which features short audio pieces narrated by local storytellers, is available for Red Bluff Nature Preserve, Colorado River Nature Preserve, and Goat Cave Karst Preserve. Listen to the stories here, or better yet, scan the QR code at the trailhead and listen to the stories as an “appetizer” to your hike.
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Figure 4. Where Audio Wild pieces have been created, visitors will encounter original signage at the trailhead and can scan a QR code to listen to a short story about an interesting aspect of the preserve.
We Can Do This!
Aldo Leopold, regarded by many as the father of the modern conservation movement, wrote:
The individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate. The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
Managing natural areas to reduce wildfire risk involves more than just picking up dead wood. Elevated wildfire risk is really a symptom of a broken ecological community. And when we break something, it is our responsibility to repair it. Thus, the ultimate task is to start putting our natural systems back together. That is no small task, but we have done it before in other places and we can do it again here. It also cannot happen quickly, and indeed we may never be truly finished with our task. At a basic level, this is about how we view our relationship with land. If we can enlarge the boundaries of our community to include the lands and waters upon which we depend, then everything else will fall into place.
Our public natural areas have taken care of us faithfully for almost a century without much attention in return. Let’s work together to make sure they are healthy and ready to face the next hundred years.
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Figure 5. Students overlook Red Bluff Nature Preserve and the Austin skyline beyond.
For more information on the Austin Parks and Recreation Land Management Plan, visit austintexas.gov/LMP. More information about prescribed burns can be found at austintexas.gov/ParkRxFire.
1 Ahrens, M. 2013. Brush, grass, and forest fires. National Fire Protection Association: Fire Analysis and Research Division. 74 pp.