How fire protects the Premium Greenspace of UNCG

On a crispy winter afternoon, the prairie of Unc Greensboro rose in flames. But that was all part of the plan for Dr. Kevin Wilcox. He organized the controlled combustion on January 9, 2025 with the forest service.

“The two things that the prairies have to restore are time and fire,” he explains.

It is a point of pride for UNCG that the students can take a break from city life without stepping off the campus. This is thanks to the Peabody Park, a gift to the community, employees, employees and former students. It is a short walk north of the heart of the campus and is a source of inspiration, a laboratory outdoors and a place of calm.

“You feel like in another world,” says Kevin Siler, Interims assistant Director for terrain. “It's not just the students. You can tell the faculty and the employees that it simply enjoys very much. “

Siler and Wilcox are both in the Peabody Park Preservation Committee. Wilcox, who recently came to UNCG as an extraordinary professor of biology, is his new chairman. With the right care, the prairie becomes self-supporting and regulate your flora and fauna with little interventions through human-with the exception of the burns.

“You need time so that multi -year species can be able to compete and compete with existing species,” says Wilcox. “We burn it about every two years to make sure this happens.”

About the river and through the forest

Dr. Elizabeth Lacey, now a professor of biology, led the preservation of Peabody Park in the early 2000s. She started with his forests in the east. When the development of UNCG expanded into the park, the director of institutions asked her whether it was worth saving the forests. She took this question to the students in her course for nature conservation biology.

“They went into the forest and classified and aged the trees,” says Lacey. “You wrote a report for facilities and the recommendation was to definitely keep the forest.”

The UNCG Chancellor Patricia A. Sullivan introduced the Peabody Park Preservation Committee with Lacey as chairman. This committee recruited student volunteers for Ivy Pulls and began to exterminate invasive plant species. When the construction of the refrigerant in Mciver Park deck the jaws near Abzerrat, they planted new ones.

The occasional employee of the site helps the students to provide equipment and regular maintenance. So Siler joined the committee.

“I would help with these Ivy trains,” he says. “We were told: 'You don't have to get out of the truck. Just let the students load it. 'But I am happy to help, so I started helping and interacting. I have Dr. Lacey and everyone else met in the committee. It didn't take long for it to be more than just a job. It was fun. ”

Green on the other hand

In 2011, another course for nature conservation biology Lacey asked about the construction of a prairie at UncG. They found the best location and proposed it to the committee.

It became a recurring project for your students. “In one semester we are working on a necessary project for the forest and in the other semester we would work volunteers on the prairie and do something to establish it,” she says.

A widespread misunderstanding is that prairies are limited to the large levels, but according to Wilcox, they were once plenty of in the southeast. He says Peabody Park Prairie is a look into the past, which is of crucial importance for students, especially for those who lived their whole lives in urban areas. “It's a small time machine for the community,” he says. “People can stand next to this area and see how it could have been to European colonists.”

Since the UncG prairie is still new, the committee leads the development of a healthy and balanced ecosystem with more wild animals. “In highly disturbed areas, they often have a way, usually a plant species, dominate everything and it shadows all other types,” says Wilcox.

When you see how one plant overwhelms the others, remove them. The other way to manage this is regularly controlled combustion.

Play with fire

According to Lacey, the popular opinion is that fire is always bad. “Historically, these prairies were maintained by fire. Then Smokey Bear came in. This campaign with urbanization and agricultural development effectively suppressed the fires. Some species disappeared as a result. ”

Prairs need fire – caused by lightning strikes in the past – to remove excessive vegetation and fill nutrients back into the ground. In addition, Wilcox says, if a country is not released by the dead and dry brush, it is lit for much more destructive forest fires.

There is a science to manage controlled combustion. Siler and GroundSkeeping first mow the grass down. “I go in there and cut everything off, maybe 12 inches, and that forms a mat on the floor that we can burn,” he says.

This spring you will see which plants are growing in this room. When new plants grow, Wilcox says that burning will develop. “The goal for the future is to increase the abundance of grasses like Little Bluestem,” he says. “These add fuel in this middle layer so that the fire can climb into the canopy and the vegetation can burn completely.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx9avq0dxmm

Their goal is ultimately that the prairie will reach a point where it can support itself. “If you have a healthy community of plants and insects and birds, they should regulate each other,” says Wilcox, “you can have a community that supports yourself without relying on a large part of our intervention.”

Sowing seeds for the future

The committee signs people for the next ivy to pull the forest into the forest April 11th at 12:30 p.m. It is accessible to the public so that anyone interested can contact Wilcox at k_wilcox@uncg.edu.

Siler encourages everyone to consider, even if he has never done it before. “I saw the students who did not do this kind of physical work outdoors. They give them the shovel and they don't know which end they should hold. But at the end of the two hours you have the feeling that you really achieved something. “

Lacey is grateful to the future of Peabody Park with Wilcox and with students who take care of it as much as this first course for nature conservation biology. “I'm pleased,” she says. “It is really important to help the students understand the meaning of nature and natural areas, not only for the preservation of species, but also for human health.”

Wilcox agrees. “The students here at UNCG are among the most smart, most committed and committed students everywhere. If I think about these conservation ideas, deal with difficult questions and ask me freshly at the challenges, I am excited to think about what they will do in the future. ”

History of Janet Imrick, university communication
Photography by Sean Norona, university communication
Additional photography with the kind permission of Dr. Elizabeth Lacey And Adobe Stock
Video by Grant Evan Gilliard and David Lee Row, university communication
Video edited by Michael Ream, university communication