ON A QUIET April morning, when the wind is low and the soil still damp from snowmelt, smoke rises like fog from Lake Simcoe’s De Grassi Point. Tongues of flame sprint through tall grass, creep beneath oaks and pines, lick at downed twigs and dead leaves. Within hours, four hectares in Innisfree, Ont., a neighbourhood of homes and cottages, will be scorched and blackened. No one will call 9-1-1.
This isn’t a wildfire, an arson, or an accident. It’s a “good” fire, a prescribed fire that treats and heals remnants of a rare tallgrass prairie and red oak-white pine savanna. “It’s modelled after the natural burns that keep the savannas open and functioning,” says Conrad Heidenreich, a York University geography professor emeritus and a long-time cottager, now retired to the Point. “Burning kills invading trees and shrubs, and releases the seeds of savanna species that are adapted to burns.”
Fire “is an essential tool for this kind of restoration work,” adds Peter Shuttleworth, restoration project specialist with the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority. Without the
