At the annual conference of the North Carolina Prescribed Fire Council in Wilmington last week, Ranger Jesse Anderson and the staff at Carolina Beach State Park received the 2023 Division of Parks and Recreation Prescribed Burner of the Year Award. The award recognizes Division staff who make significant contributions in using and promoting prescribed fire as a tool for natural resource management.
The team at Carolina Beach State Park completed 204 acres of prescribed fire this year — a size totaling nearly half the park’s acreage. Anderson has been the park’s lead natural resource management ranger since 2020, following a promotion from a ranger position at Pilot Mountain State Park. Last year, he successfully achieved his burn boss certification.
One of Anderson’s accomplishments this year was a prescribed burn at the park’s Fitness Trail area, which was the last remaining unit within Carolina Beach State Park that had not been treated previously with prescribed fire. The 30-acre burn in February was conducted in conjunction with participants of the Women-in-Fire Prescribed Fire Training Exchange. The training program, WTREX for short, invites wildland fire and natural resources personnel from around the world for a 12-day hands-on intensive. It was held in North Carolina for the first time this year. Aside from Carolina Beach, participants also assisted in prescribed burns at Carvers Creek, Hammocks Beach, and Singletary Lake state parks.
The burn was also a timely send-off for longtime park superintendent Chris Helms, who retired in the spring. One of Helms’ goals prior to retirement was to see the Fitness Trail unit finally treated with prescribed fire. Helms himself won the Division’s Prescribed Burner of the Year Award in 2017, along with the Carolina Beach staff.
Carolina Beach State Park is home to a variety of ecosystems, including longleaf pine and live oak forests, swamp pocosins, and brackish marsh. It is most known for being home to carnivorous plants, particularly the Venus flytrap, native only within a 70-mile radius of Wilmington. Though flytraps are small and delicate, prescribed fire actually plays an essential role in their conservation, because it clears away competing shrubs that block light from reaching the low-to-the-ground plants. Carnivorous plants do particularly well at bouncing back from fire, sometimes within days. Still, natural resource management at the park requires care and skill to protect these unique plants and the range of habitats.
“Jesse and the park staff have diligently worked to have areas prepared and actively monitored for appropriate fuel and weather conditions to conduct fires that meet the management and resource needs of the diverse habitats found at Carolina Beach,” said Division Natural Resources Program Manager Jimmy Dodson, who presented Anderson with the award. “They have even called off plans to conduct burns this year, recognizing that the objectives would not be met appropriately.”
Dodson also noted that Anderson and the Carolina Beach staff have been working with the North Carolina Coastal Federation and Division biologists on a “complex” wetland restoration project. The project covers 10 acres on the northeast portion of the park. The rehabilitation process has involved mechanical excavation and invasive species treatments — and of course, prescribed fire. In July, staff and volunteers replanted 20,000 native marsh grass plugs to wrap up the project.
Top photo courtesy of Friends of Pleasure Island State Parks' Facebook page