National wildlife officials are preparing for what might continue to be a busy wildfire season in Florida. However, they are also dealing with deep funding cuts, which have complicated efforts to prevent wildfires.
Russell Priddy and his wife own a 9,000-acre cattle ranch just north of the Big Cypress National Preserve in Eastern Collier County. Every year he burns a good chunk of his property to stave off wildfires nearby.
“Controlled burns are one of the best management practices any landowner has whether it’s private or public lands,” he said.
Typically the public lands that surround him also undergo controlled prescribed burning— but this year, officials could only do so much.
Lands like Big Cypress and the adjacent Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge are federally-owned, which means the staff and resources have seen big cuts due to sequestration.
January and February are usually big months for controlled burns but looming sequestration cuts –which went into effect in March— prompted Fire Management Officer Jordan McKnight at Big Cypress to be conservative.
“There was a lot of uncertainty about how much we would have,” he said. “I think that affected us by making us be somewhat more selective in our treatments because we weren’t sure if we would have what we were expecting to go to all of the places.”
He said weather conditions also restricted the number of prescribed burns.
Now, McKnight is concerned that there weren’t as many preventative burns done and there are signs the rest of the year might be ripe for wildfires. He said it’s been a particularly dry year.
McKnight said he should have a small pool of money for prescribed burns in the summer—when it typically rains more and the ground isn’t as dry, but that funding is not a sure thing, either.
“There is that uncertainty that that money may disappear to go pay for wildfires or other prescribed fires somewhere else,” he said.
That uncertainty can also affect the ability of wildlife officials to prevent fires in the long-run.
“We’ve actually held three positions vacant here at the panther refuge so that we could absorb those potential reductions,” said Kevin Godsea, a manager at the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge. “So, that has a real impact on our ability to do prescribed-burning. It hasn’t as of yet, but it will as we go forward here through the rest of this year and into next where budgets are even predicted to be much less.”
Another problem: sequestration cut pay to his staff for overtime, which Godsea said also complicates prescribed burns.
“So we are looking at doing smaller burns, trying to get them done in an eight hour period of time so that we can avoid additional costs,” he said. “It’s not as effective-- it’s not as cost-effective to do it that way. It wears our staff down more because you are burning smaller pieces on back to back days, but it is something that we are having to do right now in light of the budget reductions.”
Overtime pay, however, does not affect wildfire management . Officials deal with wildfires around the clock and do not face budget constraints when seeking resources to deal with them.
Big Cypress has already experienced a big wildfire this year. At the end of March, 20,000 acres burned, shutting down access to I-75 for a day.
Priddy said he’s concerned.
“As a neighbor and landowner we certainly would encourage them to be as aggressive in doing prescribed burns as they can,” he says.
Officials warn as spring continues, conditions within the Big Cypress National Preserve will continue to be at risk for fires.
