Recent Michigan prescribed fire successes set stage for needed progress
In the tapestry that makes up Michigan’s impressive landscape, there are many fire-dependent habitats. But our oak and pine forests, savannas, and prairies have dwindled due to centuries of wildland fire suppression.
A recent study from the Michigan Natural Features Inventory identified that Southwest Michigan needs more prescribed fire than anywhere else in the state—10-60 times more fire than is currently applied is needed to restore and maintain the prairies, savannas, and oak forests characteristic of our region.
In today’s highly developed and fragmented landscape, it will be impossible to ever replicate historical fire regimes. But progress has been made to facilitate coordinated efforts to reintroduce fire to the lands that most need it.
Michigan DNR pilots Certified Burn Manager Program
Prescribed fire as a tool for ecological management has been increasing in popularity since the 1980s. It is a safe, controlled means of applying fire. Land managers throughout the state of Michigan have been able to increase fire regimes with the use of prescribed fire but have for the most part worked in silos, tending to their own isolated properties.
In Michigan, there had previously been no enforceable standards for individuals applying prescribed fire, which made some landowners and communities reticent to allow prescribed burns to take place.
A program from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) may help make prescribed burning safer as well as increase opportunities for collaboration.
In 2025, The Michigan DNR began administering a Certified Prescribed Burn Manager program. The program had been codified in 2007, but administration of the program was not funded until 2025.
Conservation Director Justin Heslinga and Stewardship Manager Lucas Dykstra completed the requirements to achieve the certification in 2025.
“The Certified Prescribed Burn Manager program sets standards for the qualifications for burning where previously there were none,” Justin said.
With the certification, burn managers can convey expertise and confidence. An agreed-upon set of standards also supports more structured training opportunities and collaborations between different organizations.
The Michigan Prescribed Fire Council (MPFC) has begun facilitating coalition burns to facilitate just this kind of collaboration. The burns help get more fire on the ground, and they are also important learning opportunities.
“One of the problems with siloed burning is you just kind of do the same thing every time, there’s not a lot of learning or exchange of knowledge or ideas or different ways of doing things,” Heslinga said. “When we can learn from each other, ultimately that makes fire safer and more professionalized across the state.”
The Land Conservancy hosted an MPFC coalition burn at Maas Family Nature Preserve in fall 2025. In addition to helping maintain the rare oak savanna habitat the preserve protects, the group of prescribed fire professionals had the opportunity to share skills, techniques, and lessons learned.
Decades of Dedication, Commitment to Results
In the early 2000s, as the Land Conservancy of West Michigan was beginning to restore a rare prairie fen at Lamberton Lake Nature Preserve and establish a tallgrass prairie at Saul Lake Bog Nature Preserve, it became necessary to incorporate prescribed fire into our management plans.
Former Stewardship Coordinator Melanie Manion (2006-2011) recalls the challenges they faced at the time.
“Jack McGowan-Stinski [program manager for the Lake States Fire Science Consortium] was telling me that we were never going to be successful in Lamberton Lake Fen unless we did a burn,” Melanie said. “And everybody was like, ‘No way in hell are you getting a burn done within [Grand Rapids] city limits.’”
But collaborators at the Michigan DNR were optimistic. Melanie worked with Steve Cross, then a fire management specialist with the DNR, to draft an ordinance allowing for prescribed burns within city limits, and it was adopted by the City of Grand Rapids in 2009.
Today, the ordinance enables the continued management of Lamberton Lake Fen with fire, as well as the ongoing restoration of The Highlands.
In 2017, the Land Conservancy established a volunteer Prescribed Burn Crew. These volunteers enable the organization to execute low complexity burns on our preserves internally. We engage experienced contractor support for higher complexity burns. We now employ prescribed fire to manage 11 of 20 preserves and habitats including oak savannas, prairies, and fens.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done,” Justin said. The Certified Burn Manager Program is a hopeful harbinger of progress, but that progress will take time.
For as long as our natural communities have been without fire, humans have been losing memory of their role as fire managers and how to play it. Efforts between organizations and tribes to reinvigorate traditional ecological knowledge also inspire hope.
“MNFI, for example, is working with Indigenous communities to recreate that history, relearn those lessons from the past, and pair that with Western science,” he said. “I think that’s super cool.”
“I hope we’re in a different place 10 years from now, where we’re actually making meaningful landscape-scale changes—that fire is once again a meaningful part of our landscape instead of just a little bit here, a little bit there,” Justin said.