Prescribed Burn on the Rice Lake Plains
by Laura Mousseau, NCC
Current Projects - Rice Lake Plains
The Rice Lake Plains, one of the most intriguing areas on the Oak Ridges Moraine, is an area of roughly 100,000 acres (40,469 hectares) located at the eastern end of the moraine, southeast of Peterborough. Historically, the Rice Lake Plains were covered with tall grass prairies and oak savannah, dominated by massive Black and White Oak, where grasses like Big Bluestem, Indian Grass and Switchgrass grew more than two metres high and a diverse range of wildflowers blossomed.
Today, the oak savanna and tall grass prairie of the Rice Lake Plains are badly fragmented and overgrown with non-native species. Globally these habitats are rare, and oak savannas are considered among the most endangered ecological communities in North America. Grassland birds and other rare species depend on this rare habitat to survive.
The Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) visited landowners in the Rice Lake Plains to provide information on the importance of grassland birds and how to help protect them and their habitats. As part of the efforts to educate landowners and the general public, a guide to the maintenance and restoration of tallgrass prairies in the Rice Lake Plains was produced featuring information on grassland birds of the area. A Landowner's Guide for Restoring Central Ontario's Rice Lake Plains Tallgrass Prairie, released in the fall of 2006, was published in partnership with the Peterborough County Stewardship Council and funded by the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation and the Landbird Habitat Program. The release of this guide was followed by a grassland bird information workshop in the spring of 2007 which educated participants on bird identification as well as threats to bird populations and bird habitat restoration and maintenance.
NCC and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources have also conducted prescribed burns on various properties over consecutive years to restore important bird habitat. Prairie and savanna sites on the Rice Lake Plains can be encroached on by forest species including invasive trees like Scots Pine which fire helps to thin out and push back. Baseline bird studies have also been undertaken to lay the foundation for future long term monitoring.
The Rice Lake Plains Joint Initiative, a partnership of conservation groups, First Nations and local governments, works to gather and share information on plants and animals, connect with local landowners, develop management plans and restore properties by removing non-native plants and by using prescribed burns.
Many grassland habitats in Ontario were formerly forest and are now returning to forest cover following changes in land use. Conservation work in the Rice Lake Plains is helping to maintain grassland bird habitat in an area that was naturally dominated by tallgrass ecosystems. It is a natural fit for NCC to extend its interest in prairie and savanna to encompass the needs of some of its most visible inhabitants – the grassland birds.
