Fire Season Success

After missing a year due to the pandemic and resulting health protocols, Lake James State Park’s Paddy’s Creek Area saw more prescribed burning this spring than has ever taken place since the inception of the program during 2014.

In all, a record-breaking 1,231 acres, comprised of six burn units, met the strict parameters that allow for controlled fires to take place. The Long Arm Peninsula, a remote area of the park accessible only by boat, underwent its second prescribed fires; following up on the first, which occurred during 2016. “Second entry” burns, as they are referred to by natural resource managers, are especially significant in shaping habitat and reducing the risk of wildfire because they burn up a lot of the dense, combustible woody vegetation leftover by the initial use of prescribed fire. That is especially the case in areas like Long Arm Peninsula, where forest fires of any type had been actively extinguished for more than a century.

On the day-use side of the Paddy’s Creek Area, park visitors are now able to compare and contrast areas that have never been burned, like the mountain bike trail system and middle section of the Paddy’s Creek Trail (that portion bracketed by the intersections with the Mills Creek and Homestead trails), have been burned only once (in March 2021, that section of the Paddy’s Creek Trail starting at the PCA parking area to the Mills Creek Trail intersection) and have undergone second entry burns (the area from the new visitor’s center entrance road to the Mills Creek Trail road crossing, 2016 and 2019, and the section of the Mills Creek Trail starting at the east end of the PCA parking area to below the PCA drive-in campground, 2017, 2021).

None of this important natural resource management would have been accomplishedwithout the extraordinary contributions made by N.C. Parks and Recreation partners. The N.C. Forest Service provided their expertise and considerable resources to accomplish the prescribed burns on Long Arm Peninsula. A big thank you also goes to The Nature Conservancy’s burn crew, who helped on three separate burn units in the day use area at Paddy’s Creek.