Every year, prescribed burns make up action taken by several agencies at Fort McCoy to help prepare the installation for higher numbers of training and for prevention of wildfires. But those burns also help improve habitat, control invasive species, and more, natural resources officials say.
According to the Fort McCoy Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch (NRB), the branch that manages Fort McCoy’s prescribed burns with the Fort McCoy Fire Department, prescribed burns benefit the environment many ways and are one of the tools can use on a large scale to improve wild habitat.
Prescribed burns also help set back invasive species, and they burn up their seed banks, NRB biologists have said. Burns also give native species an opportunity to compete against some of the non-native species, as many native species depend on fire to help stimulate them and set back non-native species.
Burns also set back small trees and shrubs and make them grow again from the stump. This allows for more food for deer and other animals and removes unwanted (tree) species from the understory, such as white pines growing underneath an oak forest.
According to the U.S. Forest Service, “the use of fire in prescribed burns removes invading trees and shrubs that would otherwise overtake the fields, helps control non-native plants, and promotes the growth of native warm-season prairie grasses that provide important wildlife habitat.”
Former NRB Chief and Wildlife Biologist Tim Wilder, who retired from Fort McCoy in 2025, said in a November 2023 interview that prescribed burns are useful in creating needed habitat for endangered species as well — of which many thrive at Fort McCoy. He spoke about one of the endangered species managed on post — the Regal Fritillary butterfly.
“We have … the Regal Fritillary … and its host plant is violet,” Wilder said. “This burning will help increase the amount of violets on the landscape and everything, too. And an individual burn may mortality for the butterflies that are found within that burn, but we're burning such small areas on a rotational basis. … That’s the one advantage of McCoy, though. We have a lot of habitat on the ground. And so, when we burn in that rotational area, we can improve the habitat without negatively impacting the population.”
In that 2023 discussion, Wilder said the installation’s prescribed burn team will go to areas that need attention on the burn rotation the most at the beginning of the burn season.
“The largest fire we do is when we burn out the impact area,” Wilder said. “But most of our ecological burns are in this 50- to 75-acre size. So, not real large.”
Wilder had helped manage prescribed burns at McCoy for nearly 40 years from a biologist perspective. He said the average is to burn about 15 to 20 land units each year in the spring and sometimes in the late fall.
He said whenever it’s done, it also helps prevent spread of invasive species plants.
“There’s other benefits to burning — some of it has to do with invasive species management,” Wilder said. “We’ll burn particular areas to help control invasive species, too.”
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources also states how prescribed burns are beneficial to plants at [https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/forestfire/prescribedfire](https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/forestfire/prescribedfire).
“Many of Wisconsin’s native plants developed adaptations to survive in a fire-prone community,” the website states. “For instance, fire-adapted prairie grasses and flowers develop deep roots and buds beneath the soil, enabling them to withstand the fire, while shallow-rooted non-native plants succumb to the heat. But these plants do not simply tolerate fire better than others, they actively benefit from fire. For instance, by removing accumulated leaf and grass litter and invading brush, fire stimulates the growth of native herbaceous species and maintains the open character of these systems. Prescribed fire also returns nutrients to the soil, which in turn benefits the entire plant community.
“Without fire, the structure and species composition of a plant community changes, providing the opportunity for invasive plants to overwhelm the site and allowing faster-growing species (maple) to shade out the slower-growing seedlings (e.g. oak),” the website states. “These communities would become uninhabitable to many of the wildlife species that depend on it, especially those that have very specific habitat requirements. Maintaining the integrity of these plant communities is especially crucial in critically rare ecosystems such as pine or oak barrens and oak savannas. Conducting prescribed burns in these systems ensures their continued integrity for future generations.”
Fort McCoy’s motto beginning in 2026 is “Training the Total Force and Shaping the Future since 1909.”
The installation’s mission: “Fort McCoy strengthens Total Force Readiness by serving as a training center, Mobilization Force Generation Installation, and Strategic Support Area enabling warfighter lethality to deploy, fight, and win our nation’s wars.”
And Fort McCoy’s vision is, “To be the premier training center supporting the most capable, combat-ready, and lethal armed forces.”
Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin. The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services nearly every year since 1984.
Learn more about Fort McCoy online at[https://home.army.mil/mccoy](https://home.army.mil/mccoy), on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortmccoywi, and on X (formerly Twitter) by searching “usagmccoy.” Also try downloading the My Army Post app to your smartphone and set “Fort McCoy” or another installation as your preferred base. Fort McCoy is also part of Army’s Installation Management Command where “We Are The Army’s Home.”
| Date Taken: |
03.27.2026 |
| Date Posted: |
03.27.2026 15:24 |
| Story ID: |
561470 |
| Location: |
FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN, US |
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This work, Prescribed burns at Fort McCoy help control invasive species, improves habitat, by Scott Sturkol, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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