Prescribed burn to bring new life to Ward Pound Ridge

Habitat restoration — A prescribed burn at the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation should help native species grow back where some invasives had taken hold. The meadows and wildflower diversity also should benefit. It had been decades since the ecological management method had been used at Westchester’s largest park. (Robert J. Cummings photos)

By ROBERT J. CUMMINGS

The “prescribed burn” at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation on Nov. 14 was deemed a success after six areas of the 4,300-acres park were targeted.

Such burns are intended to boost ecological health. The park is Westchester’s largest.

Taro Ietaka, the superintendent of the park, said it was the first prescribed burn in Westchester in decades. He noted that Native Americans used burns regularly to manage the forests and fields. 

The goals were to rejuvenate meadows, increase wildflower diversity, increase seed production and reduce invasive species. The burnt areas will be compared to unburnt areas nearby to gauge the effects over time.

“We monitored the weather, including wind and humidity, and the moisture in the vegetation,” Ietaka said of the period leading up to Friday. A snow squall that came through Tuesday could have stopped the operation, but didn’t last long enough to make an impact.

The effort was conducted by Star Tree Wildfire Protection LLC, a company that specializes in prescribed burns.

Multiple local fire and first responder personnel were on-site, including volunteer fire departments from Pound Ridge, South Salem, Bedford Hills and Bedford. The Lewisboro Volunteer Ambulance Corps was on hand, as well as the Westchester County Department of Emergency Services and county fire marshals.

The park was closed to the public for the day. The burn began at 9 a.m. and ended at 3:30 p.m. 

The burn added a new tool to the management of the park’s meadows. In past decades, the only tool available for maintaining the meadows was mowing. Continuous mowing can compact the soil and cause the meadow to build up thatch, which acts as a barrier to seeds landing and germinating. This can lead to a loss of diversity of species in the meadows.

The park has over 100 acres of meadows. Around 15 to 20 acres were targeted in the burn. 

Some of the fields did not burn as thoroughly as others, but that was expected. Goldenrod and mugwort, which are present in the beehive meadow, are generally harder to burn. The final field of the day was also more shaded, and the plants were not as dry as they were in the other fields.

The burn will be well studied with control fields set up that were not burned, and other techniques will be used, such as test pots and fire breaks, to allow for comparing similar meadows over time. Some of the fields have blueberry bushes, which are commonly treated with fire in Maine to produce higher yields.

Bill Edwards, who runs Star Tree, said a burn can be compared to wedding planning, with all of the moving parts and agencies involved, not only with the day but also the planning, permits and funding. The one-day burn was about a year in the works, with the initial meetings in December 2024 and planning continuing up to the day before.

Funding was supplied by a combination of grants from Lower Hudson Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Friends of Trailside Museum and Ward Pound Ridge Reservation.

Several county parks employees were on hand to learn and potentially apply lessons to other parks.

Ietaka looked forward to seeing what comes back. “It’s going to be a really interesting spring coming up. In a season following a burn, there is typically an eruption of growth,” Ietaka said.