PRICE COUNTY - Fire crews in bright yellow jackets, wearing hard hats and sunglasses, creep across wetlands. With driptorches in hand, they light strips of dry vegetation on fire.
This work, this prescribed burn, is mostly for the benefit for one species of bird. Fire helps clear the landscape for the sharp-tailed grouse.
"(It) is a threatened species in the state of Wisconsin," says Ann Dassow, the Wildlife Program Manager for the Medford-Park Falls Ranger District of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. "It's on the decline, the populations are on the decline, and the habitat they prefer is very open habitat. Not a lot of trees. They see those as walls, and they won't go through them, or over them. They'll stop."
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