Endorses landowner firebreaks
In the aftermath of the brush fire on Nov. 24, several residents of Still River have charged that the fields at the Oxbow National Wildlife Refuge are not mowed often enough for safety. Paul and Wendell Willard said shortly after the blaze that more frequent mowing would have prevented it. Deborah Skauen-Hinchliffe made the same point at the Dec. 3 selectmen’s meeting, saying that the field “hasn’t been cut in years.”
The refuge is under the jurisdiction of the National Fish and Wildlife Service. Refuge manager Libby Herland oversees the Oxbow and the seven other areas that make up the Eastern Massachusetts Wildlife Refuge Complex. Herland said that she is aware that there is strong interest in seeing that the former hay fields in Still River are mowed.
Mowing timed to protect wildlife
When a field is used for hay, Herland explained, it is usually mowed two or three times a year, because new growth has the greatest nutritional value for animal feed. However, such frequent mowing destroys eggs or kills young birds, she said.
To protect grassland birds, whose populations are in decline across Massachusetts, fields in wildlife refuges are never cut before Aug. 1, according to Herland. In recent years, she went on, mowing has often been delayed until late fall, to allow late-blooming plants to provide food for dragonflies, butterflies, and honeybees, all of whose numbers have been decreasing sharply.
Some of the fields at Oxbow, including the area that burned, were mowed in 2012, Herland said, contradicting claims that the field had been left uncut over several years. She acknowledged that fields in wildlife refuges are not usually mowed every year, though.
Herland said that Still River residents had done exactly the right thing in maintaining wide, mowed areas as a fire break on their own property. “They’ve made the perfect defensible space,” she said, comparable to the kind of clearing that people who live near forested areas in the western United States are advised to do.
Fire chief will comment on new plan
All eight refuges in eastern Massachusetts have burnable acreage, Herland says, although each presents different conditions. For example, the refuge on Nantucket has beach grass, while the one in Mashpee has pitch pine and oak.
Whenever the federal government has burnable acreage, Herland explained, it must develop a fire management plan. The Eastern Fire Management Group–which includes the Department of Defense and the Bureau of Indian Affairs as well as Fish and Wildlife–is currently seeking public comment for revisions in its plan.
The deadline for such comment is Dec. 20, and the Board of Selectmen has made clear that Harvard’s concerns should be heard. At their direction, Fire Chief Rick Sicard is writing a letter to send to the fire management group.
The plan, available at the Oxbow website, addresses fire management in broad, generic terms. Current practice includes using prescribed or controlled burns, which use up available fuel, reduce the risk of wildfire, and preserve grassland habitat. Mechanical practices such as mowing and felling trees serve a similar purpose. In rare cases, chemical agents are used on highly inflammable vegetation such as phragmites to make them less likely to catch fire.
