Follow up and overview of our prescribed burns at Radnor Lake State Natural Area (March 23, 2021)
Radnor Lake State Natural Area completed it’s 2nd prescribed burn in the past 30 days on March 22nd, 2021 to achieve our resource management goal of 82 acres successfully-safely burned to manage invasive-exotic plants, reduce fuels relative to future wildfire response and assist in our management of critical plant-wildlife species within the natural area under our resource management plan.
Our burn plan for 2021 consisted of 4 project areas (see maps), 2 1/2 of which were burned during our first prescribed burn of the year on February 28th. Due to changing wind conditions and smoke management, we did not burn all our target areas that day and thankfully were able to do that yesterday (March 22) with all 4 project areas safely burned for a total of 82 acres south of Otter Creek Road. Most of these areas were in what is historically known as the Hall Farm, a beautifull 139-acre tract of land acquired in 1979 now protected forever as state natural area.
Our prescribed burns were conducted in partnership with Tennessee State Parks, Tennessee Division of Natural Areas, Tennessee Division of Forestry and Friends of Radnor Lake. Thank you to each of these partners for their outstanding work and for helping us achieve our resource management goals at Radnor Lake State Natural Area yesterday!
The goal of these prescribed burned 82 acres was a combination of upcoming native grasslands plantings (May 2021), promoting critical plant species that need fire management such as common milkweed (host plant to Monarch Butterflies), promoting endangered plant species research with Penn State University and promoting native grassland nesting areas for birds such as bobwhite quail and eastern meadowlarks with our partners at TVA along the easement thru the natural area.
For visitors hiking at Radnor Lake in the coming weeks, you can view portions of this prescribed burn safely by hiking the eastern portion of the South Cove-South Lake Trails, Otter Creek Road near the causeway and/or the Hall Drive to the Barbara J. Mapp Aviary Education Center. We do ask that visitors always stay on all trails and/or roadways as these areas for their safety in accordance with our posted rules/regulations for hiking at Radnor Lake.
What’s next?
Over the next few days, state park rangers at Radnor Lake will be monitoring these areas on foot until we have substantial rainfall which is anticipated on Thursday (March 25th) and visitors hiking should anticipate seeing a few logs-downed trees smoldering within the safety of the fireline project areas that were burned on March 22nd.
In addition, we are in need of additional volunteers this Friday (March 26th) to work with our state park rangers remove invasive-exotic plants within some of these prescribed burn areas. For more information on how you can help and see this resource management work firsthand at Radnor Lake please visit the following link:
https://tnstateparks.com/parks/events/radnor-lake/#/?park=radnor-lake
