Prairie Burn 2007

A spring tradition for a half-century, the burn promotes growth of native prairie grasses and suppresses non-native "invasive" species. Left, student Zarir De Vitre leads the fire line with a kerosene drip torch. Photos by Andy Fitz.
This year's burn covered about 20 acres in the West Prairie sector of Green Oaks. Sectors are burned on a three-year rotation. The grass in the burned-over district will begin regrowing within a week or two. Photos by Andy Fitz, left; and Meredith Lirman, right.
	Bonus Burn Pic: A couple of days before the 2007 Green Oaks Prairie Burn ? Friday, March 30, to be precise ? Knox graduate Neil Young stepped outside the office where he was working in Hollywood and snapped this photo of the Hollywood Hills brush fire. Neil reports, "It's nice to have a Hollywood disaster that doesn't involve lots of bad acting and fake explosions. Some people had to be evacuated, but thankfully, no one was hurt. It looked pretty dramatic from my office roof." He would know ? Neil covered the Prairie Burn in 2004.

"The fire... does not travel as fast as a horse at full speed... but vines and other impediments [may] render it necessary for the rider to guide his horse in the zig-zag paths of deers and buffaloes, retarding his progress. Then he may be overtaken by the dense column of smoke sweeping before the fire..." ? from Letters and Notes on the North American Indians, 1841, by George Catlin, read by Knox biology professor Stuart Allison to the burn crew prior to the Green Oaks prairie burn on April 1, 2007.