DETROIT – Officials are reminding the community not to be alarmed by prescribed burns scheduled to take place Thursday at three Detroit parks.
Controlled fires are taking place across Detroit at Palmer Park, Riverside Park, and Rouge Park on Thursday, May 11. The city says trained professionals are administering prescribed burns at the parks in an effort to promote a “healthier overall ecology and habitat.”
Prescribed burns are planned fires carried out by fire experts and are meant to “restore health to ecosystems that depend on fire,” the U.S. Forest Service says. Such fires can benefit different types of land in different ways, including minimizing the spread of insects and disease, or recycling nutrients back into the soil.
In Detroit, the prescribed burning is being used to manage natural areas at the parks by reducing weeds and replacing mowing, according to Jeff Klein, deputy chief of landscape architecture with the city’s General Services Department.
“Prescribed burning will replace mowing in these park spaces and should ultimately result in reduced overall emissions from the equipment used to mow the grass regularly,” Klein said. “Contemporary prescribed burning is directly adapted from the cultural practice Native Americans performed seasonally as a part of their land management strategy.”
The prescribed fires were scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. at Palmer and Riverside parks, and either at 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. at Rouge Park. These are the first prescribed fires being carried out by the city, and were initially scheduled to take place in April.
Klein said the practice “could become a very important maintenance tool for Detroit parks.”