The Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank Commission unanimously voted to continue the discussion about implementing prescribed burns on its properties during a Monday afternoon meeting.
Land Bank biologist Julie Russell and land superintendent Harrison Kisiel reported to the commissioners about the wildfire mitigation planning they heard from the Dukes County Fire Council. According to Russell, Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) special projects planner Dan Doyle talked about doing “a unified burning program on the Island,” which was discussed during a recent meeting.
“We, Harrison and I, attended a meeting, and they had a table of acreage that … potentially could be burnt on Land Bank property. It was kind of a high number,” Russell said. “Harrison and I went to the meeting and expressed our concerns, but from that meeting, it seems possible they need some guidance from the commission in terms of how the Land Bank Commission sees itself being involved, because right now it seems like they consider the Land Bank a yes.”
The memorandum Russell and Kisiel sent to the Land Bank commissioners stated that the collaborative effort was so that resources, such as staff and funding, could be shared. The proposed plan would outline the number of acres of Land Bank vegetation to be burned: six acres every two years, 179.8 acres every three years, 1,989.5 acres every five years, 141.1 acres every eight years, and 325.4 acres every 10 years.
The Times reached out to Doyle to ask why the five-year mark has a much higher acreage to burn compared with the other years, who said the numbers were based on the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife’s (MassWildlife) fire return interval, the time between fires in an area, and the type of vegetation in an area.
“There was a small working group that identified at a really high level what type of vegetation there are,” Doyle said, which included The Nature Conservancy and MassWildlife.
Doyle said at this stage, the numbers “reflect a very, very, very preliminary” assessment of the vegetation burning to take place. He said they were provided to start a conversation, particularly with the drought making people interested in exploring more fire mitigation options.
“I don’t want people to get stuck on these numbers,” Doyle said, adding that the discussion can help gauge how much interest there is from landowners (e.g. towns, non-governmental organizations) for a resource-sharing program like this and better understand which land is best suited for prescribed burns on the Island.
A controlled burn is a “key recommendation for reducing our wildfire risk through the creation of healthy, robust, fire-adapted landscapes,” based on the Dukes County Community Wildfire Protection Plan. However, Russell and Kisiel raised two points of concern. One was that “much of the proposed acreage for prescribed fire is either not at risk, or is not suitable for prescribed burns due to density of abutting development, rare species (box turtles, orchids, etc.), or topography,” and “controlled burns on the Island have generally occurred on large tracts of land without public use trails weaving throughout the habitat …. Harrison and I are concerned with the impact prescribed fire would have on the public’s use of the properties in terms of visual and passive recreational effects.” Other concerns from within the council included “liability insurance, proximity to developed real estate, funding, and staffing.”
“Despite the obstacles to the program, we both see the value of using controlled burns as a management tool on Land Bank properties not only for hazard mitigation and habitat restoration but for tick control as well, especially the lone star tick,” Russell and Kisiel wrote in the memo.
Russell recommended the commissioners consider how the Land Bank will be involved in this process “before it gets too out of hand.”
“I know that even though you have those concerns, you think there might be properties in the future … that we might be able to use for controlled burns,” Aquinnah Land Bank commissioner Sarah Thulin said. “I was a little shocked when … you wrote Poucha Pond and Southern Woodlands and Sepiessa and Squibnocket Pond Reservation, but you didn’t have a detailed area.”
Thulin said the council should be told about the Land Bank’s concerns, and “I wouldn’t be able to support this until we know more about the whole plan for the burns, and I just think it’s premature at this time for us to put forth those specific properties.” Thulin said she would like to “double down” on the concerns Russell and Kisiel mentioned, and that the commission has the management plans for Land Bank properties, “some of which are still at the state level,” so more discussion would be necessary.
“At this time, I would like to put a motion on the table, just for conversation to continue, but at this time I’d like to continue this until we have much more information and thorough study,” Thulin said. She suggested Russell and Kisiel take their concerns back to the council.
Tisbury Land Bank commissioner Nancy Weaver agreed with Thulin, but wanted clarification about the burn amount. “The burn frequency, like every five years, do they want us to burn basically half our property?” she asked.
“That is what drew Harrison and I to actually really jump on going to the meeting, is when we saw that table. That seemed like an excessive number,” Russell said. Russell said when she discussed the plan with Doyle, she was told the amount was “an overlay of habitat that could be burnt” based on a “habitat map that hasn’t been ground truthed,” that did not take anything into consideration other than burnable vegetation. She said it seemed Doyle had flexibility regarding the amount of acreage to burn.
Land Bank Commission vice chair Wesley Mott said he was led to believe during a prepandemic council meeting “a lot of overhead photography [would be] done that would help the Land Bank determine where there genuinely are fire hazards on our property.” However, he has not heard anything about that. Kisiel said the group has not reached that point, but Russell said Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation executive director Adam Moore did bring a group from Woods Hole to get LIDAR data based on aerial photography.
“I don’t know to what extent that is going to be usable,” Russell said. “Ultimately, the Land Bank will determine what they thought was suitable for burning, I would think, based on staff recommendations. We have enough data of our own to look at what’s actually on the ground.”
Weaver later added that it is hard to do prescribed burns on Martha’s Vineyard because “the weather’s never quite right,” based on her experience with Polly Hill Arboretum.
“I’d say I didn’t really have a favorable impression of prescribed burns,” Weaver said.
Thulin said the proposal “puts a big umbrella over everything,” and she thinks the various parts of the Island need to be looked at “piece by piece by piece.”
