Starvin Larry

The exact same type of “damage” that the Hammonds caused to fed land…

RALEIGH, N.C. — Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. And where there’s fire, at least on a N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission game land, there’s usually a prescribed burn — one of the best and most cost-effective methods of managing habitat for wildlife.

A prescribed burn, or an intentional burning of vegetation under strict and specific circumstances, helps restore and maintain wildlife habitat. It is a cost-effective tool that the Commission uses to create and maintain suitable and ample wildlife habitat on game lands throughout the state.

The most common prescribed burns conducted by the Commission are restoration burns and maintenance burns. Restoration burns are done on fire-dependent habitats that haven’t been burned in years. Maintenance burns are repeated burns that restore and maintain fire-adapted habitats.

Commission staff typically conducts maintenance burns in multi-year cycles to open groundcover for quail, grassland birds, deer and turkeys. Many of North Carolina’s declining or rare wildlife species are adapted to and found only in fire-dependent habitat.

Many prescribed burns, also called controlled burns, are conducted between January and March when trees are less active metabolically. Some burns are conducted into spring and summer as warm season burning provides for better control of young hardwoods.

“Burning encourages production of native grasses and herbaceous vegetation, which provides valuable food and cover for a wide variety of wildlife species,” said Isaac Harrold, the Commission’s lands program manager. “Animals like deer browse on groundcover. Quail and songbirds utilize seed produced by native plants. Quail and other species, such as turkeys and rabbits, use the groundcover for nesting.”

Many times during a burn, the Commission gets calls from people who are concerned about animals not being able to escape the fire, particularly during turkey hunting season in the spring.

“We use burning techniques that ensure animals have time and room to escape,” said Harrold. After we burn an area, we typically see regeneration of vegetation within a few weeks and animals returning to the burn site shortly after.”

Prescribed burns are also used to help reduce high levels of forest fuels that can cause deadly wildfires and to control disease and insects, such as brownspot disease in long leaf pine seedlings and cone beetles in white pines.

For more information on prescribed burns, read “Using Fire to Improve Wildlife Habitat,” by the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service. For more information on the Wildlife Resources Commission, including an interactive game land map, visit www.ncwildlife.org.

WASHINGTON — Veteran ID cards to be issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs will be pushed back to 2017, according to House Veterans Affairs Committee sources, in order to fully test the GPS tracking functionality of the card mandated by Congress.

The implanted radio frequency identification chips, or “RFID trackers,” are required by the “Veterans Identification Card Act of 2015,” signed into law by President Obama last July. House Armed Services Committee members say the chips are there “to help protect those who protect our freedom,” but none would go on the record about the program, or who authored the amendment requiring the chips.

Similar technology is used in automotive and consumer applications but is proving unreliable in locations veterans typically frequent.

“Our first major challenge was penetrating the windowless clubhouses typical of veteran organizations,” said program manager George Orville. “Once we fixed that bug, we moved onto electromagnetic noise from strip club sound systems. But signal interruption from dense structures — like reinforced concrete walls, freezers, aluminum foil hats, and lead-lined containers — really strain today’s RFID technology.”

Reports also surfaced during early testing about the tracking chips overheating while in a user’s pocket, activating its self-destruct function. But Orville says those reports are blown out of proportion.

“Reports of injury from the self-destruct function are wildly exaggerated,” said Orville, before boarding a black Chinook helicopter. “One or two users experienced some mild discomfort, but the tracking device worked as designed, allowing first responders to subdue the veterans before they became violent and out of control.”

Despite the minor injuries and numerous setbacks, Orville is confident that he and his team will have the technology ready for mass production in the fall of 2017.

“We’re thinking an early to mid-September release,” Orville added. “Probably around the 11th.”

Veteran’s group leaders across the nation have condemned the tracking policy as unconstitutional, citing the 4th, 5th and 14th amendments, along with dozens of other federal statutes and Supreme Court precedents.

The veteran’s themselves are another matter, however, due to the offer of a free “US Veteran” trucker hat emblazoned with the branch of service or tour of duty of their choice with every ID card.

“This is an egregious violation of the Constitution and, normally, we would not stand for it. No way,” said VFW Post 2314 member Alex Little. “But have you seen the artist’s rendition of those hats? I’ll be the first one in line for my veteran ID card come 2017.”