Prescribed Fire In The Rainwater Basin

Fire was a natural driver in promoting vibrant wetland and grassland vegetation communities across the Great Plains. Its benefits include controlling for invasive woody species, promoting native grasses and forbs, improving forage quality for livestock, and reducing the risk of uncontrolled wildfires. According to research, grasslands in the Great Plains experienced a fire event every 1-10 years. Many of the fires were caused by lightning, and some were caused by Native Americans wanting to use the fire to attract grazing animals like deer and bison.

In the Rainwater Basin, fire is an important tool in controlling woody encroachment by Eastern Red Cedar as well as undesirable invasive plant communities like reed canary grass, cattail, and river bullrush. These plant communities choke out native vegetation that historically provided essential seeds utilized by migratory waterfowl. The benefits from fire used on wetland landscapes are best shown when paired with other management techniques like grazing, herbicide application, and mechanical removal of woody species.

Rainwater Basin Joint Venture (RWBJV) has dedicated staff that works to provide grazing infrastructure, manage herbicide and tree removal contracts, as well as Prescribed Fire (RX Fire) contracts on public and private lands. In 2025, the RWBJV had contracts with two RX Fire contractors to support RX Fire on 3,500 acres of private and public lands in the RWB management region. This year the RWBJV has contracts with three RX Fire contractors to complete RX Fire on 4,500 acres of private lands and 4,500 acres of public lands during the spring of 2026.

To support this increase effort of putting fire on the ground in the Rainwater Basin, RWB   JV completed tree removal projects on several of the locations in 2025 to increase the fires effectiveness on woody encroachment. The RWBJV also contracted out burn plan writing for RX Fire for most of the private land burns. Most of these properties had not previously been burned before. Having a burn plan is a valuable resource for landowners to implement the initial burn as well as follow-up RX Fire on their properties. This years added contracts come from seeing where there were stalls in previous years during the burn season and finding ways to remove any barriers to getting fire on the ground. One of these stalls was properties not having adequate firebreaks in place during burn season. To try to mitigate for this delay, RWBJV has contracted out the work to mow a 30ft wide firebreak on over 1,500 acres of private lands across the basin. The partners are looking forward to a successful RX Fire season.