A Controlled Burn on the Ossipee Pine Barrens

The Nature Conservancy�s Jeff Lougee leads nature hikes in the Ossipee Pine Barrens through ferns, flowers, and wild blueberries, on trails carpeted with pine needles.
SOUND :28 walking sound

He says sometimes you can hear the rare birds that live here, but on a recent afternoon, the birds weren�t cooperating.
LOUGEE :19 we�re trying to see if we can here a rufous-sided towhee. It�s the sound that�s the essence of the place. In Spring it�s all over places.
RAQUEL can you make the sound?
LOUGEE drink your tea! Whistles.

The towhee is only one of the birds that live in the pine barrens. There are also nighthawks, brown thrashers, vesper sparrowS, prairie warbler, and whip-poor-wills.
Lougee says these birds thrive here � they nest in the scrub oak, and feast on blueberries and moths. The birds, the moths and certain species of trees that define the pine barrens form a unique ecosystem. That ecosystem is at risk. Without regular forest fires, this delicate habitat is disappearing.
LOUGEE :17 we�re sitting in the middle of ancestral lake bed. All this sand drained into lake basin. Water receded. Pine barrens sprouted up because they love to grow in sand.

Forest fires used to sweep through the pine barrens every 20 years or so. The vegetation here is especially adapted to the dry, sandy conditions and to fire. A scrub oak�s roots run deep so it can recover quickly after a forest fire. Pitch pine cones germinate best on ground that�s recently burned. Blueberries grow back bushier and plumper after a fire. But Lougee says, without fire this ecosystem is being taken over.
LOUGEE :07 The white pine is bad guy because it�ll replace pitch pine. Kill under-story scrub oak and blueberries.

Since the turn of the last century, community fire fighters have been putting out out any blazes that started here. This opened the door for the white pine, the fast-growing trees shade out the forest floor. Which brings us to the moths of Ossipee.
LOUGEE :12 These are rare endangered moths, some of which are only found in Ossipee. They feed on pitch pine, sometimes red, but absolutely not white pine.

The moths are not only valuable in their own right � they also feed the whip-poor-wills, the towhees, and the rest of the birds.
The Nature Conservancy says only a carefully planned and executed burn will restore the pine barrens� natural mix of trees. As an organization with a mission to protect forests, they haven�t embarked lightly on a plan to start a forest fire. They first studied the moths. Last summer, Lougee and a couple of graduate students from the University of Vermont used black lights and bait to trap moths.
LOUGEE :13 I get a nice high quality six-pack of beer. Old bananas out of freezer. Put it all in blender with cornmeal and molasses. And then I paint it on the trees.

Several endangered species of moths were attracted to that cocktail. Lougee says their presence sealed the argument in favor of a controlled burn. The Nature Conservancy says it�s not just a matter of protecting wildlife. Fire officials support a prescribed burn to preempt a major forest fire. The last major fire here was in 1953. Ossipee Fire Chief Brad Eldridge says the flames flew across the pine barrens.
ELDRIDGE :15 it started about in the area where Int�l Paper is now and went to Tamworth Bay in like 3 hours. I know a guy who jumped into Ossipee Lake to get away from it. Something like that today � there�d be a good chance of loss of life. Just because of the speed that it moved at.

Since then, fuel has built up. And Eldridge says the nearby towns of Tamworth, Freedom, Madison, and Ossipee � the area locals call �The Plains� � have changed as well.
ELDRIDGE :18 They are building in these pine barrens. Windsock Village, Soren Heights, in Tamworth you have Ski and Beach, in Madison you have Moores Pond. There are hundreds of houses where there were none in the 50s when some of these fires went thru here.

To make this burn happen, The Nature Conservancy has a lot of planning to do. They�ll coordinate with local fire departments and state officials and establish fire breaks around roads and houses. It could be five years before the first match is struck.
For NHPR News, I�m RMD.