The June Driptorch Digest is Now Available!

The 2025 Prescribed Fire Liability Report for the Southern United States from the Southeastern Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability Wildland Fire Work Group has now been released. Led by Brooks Pierce Law Firm, the report provides a comprehensive overview of how statutory laws and legal precedents govern controlled burning across the region. It analyzes how different southern states handle liability, specifically highlighting the legal distinctions between simple negligence, gross negligence, and strict liability standards, and how these rules directly impact a burner's exposure to lawsuits in the event of an escaped fire or smoke incident.

This updated report serves as a critical guide for land managers and policymakers. In addition to summarizing state-by-state statutory frameworks, the report details evolving case law and the role of certified prescribed burn manager programs in current state laws.

A simplified, clean-line illustration of a metal drip torch on a white background. The torch is shown at a slight angle, highlighting the cylindrical fuel tank, top handle, and
the long spout with its distinctive pigtail loop leading to the igniter tip.

The classic signs of southern spring and summer are appearing: the forests are green, the cicadas are singing, and the air is hot and stuffy. Above-normal temperatures are likely over the next few months and as we go out into that heat to do work, let's remind ourselves about the risks and mitigations of heat-related illness. Checkout this short selection of useful resources below:

6 Minutes for Safety briefs on Heat Stress and Heat Disorders
Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center blog post about heat stress
CDC HeatRisk Tool to find the current HeatRisk for your area
Southeast Heat Monitor

Extension Associate Stephen Ruswick, holding a red driptorch, stands with Burner Bob at the Party for the Pine Fire Festival.

Welcome to the team Stephen!

Please give a warm welcome to the newest member of the NC State Extension Forestry Team, Stephen Ruswick!

Stephen is an Extension Associate in wildland fire, working with student fire training at NC State on an America's Ecosystem Restoration Initiative grant, in collaboration with the Southeastern Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS).

Before joining NC State Extension, Stephen was a Fire Specialist with The Nature Conservancy in Pennsylvania for 3 years, assisting state agencies with prescribed fire operations and training. He served on the Pennsylvania Prescribed Fire Council’s board of directors from 2024 to 2026 and helped create the state’s Certified Burn Manager program. Stephen graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a B.S. in Biology in 2015 and an M.S. in Forestry from the University of Georgia in 2018.

Monthly Update for Prescribed Burn Associations in the Southeast

Conducting post-burn evaluations is a critical step for land managers to determine whether a prescribed fire successfully met their land management objectives. In this article, Tall Timbers describes important aspects of a post-burn evaluation. Assessing a recent burn helps cut management costs by pinpointing where vegetation control goals were already achieved, avoiding unnecessary mowing or mechanical treatments. A post-burn walkthrough also offers a perfect window to easily spot, map, and treat emerging invasive plants or target unburned patches in future burn planning that require harsher conditions to successfully ignite.

To learn more about burn planning and mapping for your burn plans, a webinar will be held on June 10, 2026 at 5:30 PM ET. Registration is available now!

For more resources on PBAs, please visit the Southeast Prescribed Fire Update website, under the "Prescribed Burn Associations" tab.

The 2026 Principals Meeting for the Southeastern Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) was recently held in Pinehurst, North Carolina. The meeting provided an opportunity to build relationships and reminisce on the last 20 years of the partnership. A major highlight of the meeting was the mobile meeting, where participants got to visit the Paint Hill Farm Tract of the Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve and learn about the successes across partnerships with natural resources, red-cockaded woodpeckers, and the military mission. Participants were also treated to a visit from Burner Bob!

The Southeast FireMap 2.0, developed in collaboration with Tall Timbers, USGS, The Longleaf Alliance, US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, Ferguson Lynch, and NRCS has been released. The goal of this map is to be a decision-support tool to help land managers and fire practitioners more accurately track fire patterns across the Southeast using 30 years of wildfire and prescribed fire data. The Southeast FireMap 2.0 now includes Downloadable Burn Reports and updated data through 2025. Practitioners can access the map online to utilize the new features and layers and download updated datasets.

A new Rapid Lesson Sharing Report discusses a premixed fuel can failure during a chainsaw training in Texas. During the training, a crew experienced a fuel can failure when a can of pre-mixed fuel suddenly burst and popped off its plastic spout while in the bed of a pickup truck. Because the fuel can was properly stored inside a dedicated fuel bag, the liquid spray was successfully contained, though fuel still leaked into the truck bed. Lessons learned from the incident include the critical importance of utilizing secondary containment systems, like fuel bags, to mitigate chemical exposure and fire hazards when transporting volatile liquids.

New research from the University of Georgia and Tall Timbers suggest that prescribed fire is a powerful tool for controlling invasive feral hogs in the Southeast. By tracking wild pigs across 50,000 acres in South Georgia and North Florida, scientists discovered that feral hogs heavily prefer fire-suppressed areas with dense, unburned mid-story cover. Notably, feral hog activity spikes significantly once a site goes more than three years without a burn, suggesting that maintaining a frequent fire return interval could help reduce feral pig use of an area.

A new factsheet from the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service highlights how landowners can utilize livestock to strategically construct and maintain effective firebreaks. By implementing targeted grazing using different timing and livestock selection, managers can efficiently remove the fine, fast-burning fuels that typically drive intense wildfire spread. This ecological approach offers a highly cost-effective alternative to mechanical or chemical vegetation control while simultaneously enhancing soil health and land sustainability.

Recent research published by NOAA is a highly accurate predictor of U.S. wildfire severity up to a year in advance. By analyzing weather and burn records from 1984 to 2022, scientists found that an autumn La Niña phase consistently triggers dry winter and spring conditions, more than doubling the following year's fire risk across southern regions. Conversely, an autumn El Niño brings increased precipitation to the southern tier, effectively cutting the expected spring and summer burn areas in half. This predictive link provides a critical long-range tool for wildland fire managers to anticipate severe seasonal fire activity and allocate resources well ahead of time.

Multiple NRCS Funding Programs

The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service offers several funding programs that may be used to support prescribed burning. Many private landowners in the South have already taken advantage of these programs but this year there may be more funding available than in previous years. Programs vary by area, so check out the information pages listed below:
Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP)
Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP)
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program (ACEP)

The Driptorch Digest is distributed by NC State University as a project of the Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability (SERPPAS) Prescribed Fire Working Group.

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This newsletter is made possible through a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, with support from the USDA Forest Service and the Department of Defense.