{"id":26856,"date":"2016-07-06T12:10:18","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T17:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=26856"},"modified":"2016-07-06T12:10:18","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T17:10:18","slug":"how-oklahomas-giant-spring-wildfire-helped-the-environment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2016\/07\/06\/how-oklahomas-giant-spring-wildfire-helped-the-environment\/","title":{"rendered":"How Oklahoma’s Giant Spring Wildfire Helped the Environment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Fire<\/p>\n

Joe Wertz \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Fire crews work to reduce wildfire danger by clear brush through a prescribed burn in northwestern Oklahoma in April 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Fire crews worked for nearly a week to contain a wildfire that started on March 22 and torched 574 square miles of land near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line, where it destroyed homes, killed livestock and damaged thousands of miles of fence.<\/p>

But the Anderson Creek fire<\/a> “cleared out more eastern red cedars in a week than local efforts to eradicate the invasive species could have accomplished in decades,” conservation experts tell the Associated Press<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an ecological cleansing for the environment,\u201d said Ken Brunson, wildlife diversity coordinator with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. \u201cThat\u2019s mixed-grass prairie down there. Prairie survives with fire.\u201d<\/p>

…<\/p>

Red cedars, also known as junipers, are fast-growing, drought-resistant trees that are useful for erosion control along canyon edges in the region\u2019s Red Hills. But they\u2019re a nuisance on prairie land because they crowd out native grasses, suck up moisture from the soil and reduce the amount of forage area for wildlife and livestock.<\/p><\/blockquote>

The prairie grasses rebounded quickly\u00a0thanks to spring and summer rains. Conservation officials estimate it would have cost property owners $56 million to remove the number of red cedars<\/a> eliminated by the wildfire.<\/p>\n

At current budget levels, it would take 17 years to get it done.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Conservation officials are now urging residents not to squander the wildfire head-start and work to keep invasive red cedar growth at bay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fire crews worked for nearly a week to contain a wildfire that started on March 22 and torched 574 square miles of land near the Oklahoma-Kansas state line, where it destroyed homes, killed livestock and damaged thousands of miles of fence.But the Anderson Creek fire “cleared out more eastern red cedars in a week than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":26857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[616,590],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26856"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26863,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26856\/revisions\/26863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}