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Smoke still rises each spring from the historic restored prairies at the UW Arboretum. Here, Michael Hansen backtracks to see how this April fire on Curtis Prairie was progressing. One of the challenges of managing the Arboretum 75 years after its founding is accomodating public use while still protecting the fragile landscape. Here, Brian O'Malley, San Francisco, and Maureen Fox, Madison, enjoy a walk through Curtis Prairie. The use of fire to manage prairies was also pioneered at the UW Arboretum. Fire crews don yellow fire-retardant suits every spring to burn off the vegetation that winter snows have compressed. The same Curtis Prairie which appeared charred and black after the April burn now blooms with color after the flames cleared away winter debris and put needed nutrients into the soil.
Except for a few signs such as this one on the Grady Tract south of the Beltline, the Arboretum Committee has voted to keep signage to a minimum in the Arboretum in an effort to give visitors some sense of being in a natural landscape. The smell of smoke and the crackle of flames is a familiar part of prairie management. Here Sue Chamberlain lights a fire on a prairie on the Grady Tract near Seminole Highway in the UW Arboretum.    
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