Sandbar Burn This Week Targets One of Vermont's Most Threatened Forests

A multi-agency team will set fire to 53 acres of the Sandbar Wildlife Management Area in Milton starting Tuesday, in an effort to restore one of Vermont’s rarest and most endangered forest types.

A prescribed burn, announced Monday by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, targets a Dry Pine-Oak-Heath Sandplain Forest — a fire-dependent natural community that once covered roughly 15,000 acres in Chittenden County before European settlement.

Only about 1,000 acres remain today, or 6.7 percent of the original total, according to Fish & Wildlife’s natural community fact sheet. The rest has been converted to housing developments, airports, commercial areas, graveyards, sand extraction operations, and agricultural fields.

“Species that depend on natural disturbance from fire, such as pitch pine, as well as several threatened and endangered plants are found at the Sandbar WMA,” State Botanist Grace Glynn said in the announcement. “This prescribed burn is part of ongoing restoration work to help the rare sandplain natural community at Sandbar by mimicking natural fires in an intentional, safe way that improves habitat for a diversity of plants and wildlife.”

Why fire

Pitch pine, the signature tree of these forests, has bark that protects mature trees from light fires while killing competitors. The species germinates best on bare mineral soil exposed after fire burns away leaf litter. Without periodic fire, the duff layer thickens, pitch pine seedlings cannot establish, and the canopy closes — gradually converting the community to a different forest type and crowding out the rare plants that depend on open, sunny conditions.

A number of Vermont’s threatened and endangered plant species reach their northern range limit in these sandplain forests, where warm climate and sunny openings provide habitat unavailable elsewhere in the state.

Who is doing the work

The burn will be conducted by fire professionals from the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks & Recreation, the New Hampshire Division of Forests & Lands, and the U.S. Forest Service, working alongside biologists from Fish & Wildlife.

“Prescribed burns are planned and conducted with safety as the first priority,” said Kathy Decker, Forest Protection Program Manager with Forests, Parks & Recreation. “One key element is working within specific weather parameters. We will conduct this prescribed burn only under favorable weather conditions and use proven techniques to minimize smoke impacts to the public.”

Route 2 impact

The burn area is just west of U.S. Route 2 in Milton. Signs will be posted along the highway to notify drivers and residents on active burn days. Professional teams will remain on site for the full duration of the burn, which is scheduled to take place over several days starting Tuesday, May 12, with exact timing dependent on weather.

The bigger picture

Of the small acreage of Dry Pine-Oak-Heath Sandplain Forest that remains in Vermont, the natural community fact sheet notes that one very small example sits in a town park and another much larger example is under active ecological management that includes the use of prescribed fire. No large example currently has permanent legal protection.

The community type is restricted in Vermont to the warmer biophysical regions — the Champlain Valley and the Southern Vermont Piedmont — with the most significant remaining stands in western Chittenden County, where the Winooski, Lamoille, and Missisquoi rivers deposited the deep, well-drained sands these forests require.

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