Association members pool resources to expand the safe use of prescribed fire across Central Alabama.
Membership dues $100 for a 3 year membership term.
We work together as a community to train and learn to safely apply fire to the landscape for public safety, ecological restoration, and habitat improvement. Our organization serves as a network to connect central Alabama land owners with people in our 22 county area who volunteer to contribute knowledge or manpower to assist with local burn efforts.
Our goals are to teach competence in conducting all burns safely, provide an economical method for small acreage landowners to have prescribed burning as a tool to meet their goals and objectives, and provide public awareness of the benefits of prescribed burning.
Virtually every part of central Alabama burned on a 1-4 year interval for millennia and provided perfect habitat for deer, wild turkey, quail, and countless non-game species.
Fire helps restore the balance that was intended for central Alabama's plant and animal life. Bringing back fire improves the diversity of forage and insects available to wildlife year-round.
Getting sun to soil, and controlling non-beneficial growth will produce more tons per acre of highly desirable and nutritious forage and an abundance of resources for bees, butterflies, and beneficial prey insects for birds.
California finds itself looking to Alabama and Florida as models for using prescribed fire to limit fuel buildup and decrease the risk of wildfires that caus significant damage to lives, property, and habitat. Join our PBA and be part of another thing that makes us better than California.
Prescribed burns can kill invasive plants and insects that aren't fire adapted like our native organisms are. They are also helpful in controling fungal infections such as Brownspot disease which can kill Long Leaf Pines. Controlling White Pine Cone Beetle with prescribed burning is much more cost effective than chemical control methods.
Researchers in Georgia have found that long term use of prescribed fire reduces disease carrying tick populations so much that a person's chance of encounter with a diseased tick goes down by 98% compared to walking in unburned plots in the area.
Long Leaf Pines aren't the only plant that depends on fire. In fact, there's quite a long list of plants, insects, and even reptiles that need a natural fire return interval to survive. Now rare species like the Red Cockaded Woodpecker and the Georgia Aster, now almost lost to fire suppression, were once abundant enough to be considered common by earlier generations. As fire is returned to more land across central Alabama these rare beauties will thrive again.
Business and organizational support for the Central Alabama PBA will help us increase capacity to get more of the landscape treated, will increase efficiency by pooling resources, will increase confidence of practitioners, provide a legal mechanism to apply for grants, and will increase the pool of Certified Prescribed Burn Mangers in Alabama.
We ask businesses and organizations with vested interest with the continued success of prescribed fire, to join with us to achieve this mission by becoming a Sponsor.
The Gold Sponsor level is $500, Silver is $300 and Bronze is $150 per year.
Central Alabama Prescribed Burn Association is a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization. Donations are tax deductible.
We’ve put together a variety of resources for learning more about fire’s role in our ecosystem and for using prescribed fire to improve habitat for both game and non-game wildlife.
