If you saw smoke in south Fort Worth on Tuesday, there was no need for concern.  A field was actually burned on purpose. “We’re basically replicating the natural disturbance regime by burning it periodically to maintain the health of the area,” Fort Worth Park and Recreation Department Nat ural Resource Manager Jared Hall said. He oversaw a prescribed burn on prairie fields at the Rolling Hills Tree Farm. He explains that the process offers a lot of benefits over mowing or herbicides. “This helps keep the invasive species that are not good for wildlife and pollinators out, and so we’re basically making sure that the good plants stay here and that they thrive,” Hall said. It also reduces the dead plant material that can fuel wildfires while adding nutrients back to the soil from the ash. Even though this was a controlled burn, the weather can still change plans in an instant. “We had one more little piece on the far west edge of the property that we had originally hoped to burn, the wind directions a little slightly off from what was forecasted, and so we opted not to burn that, just in risk of getting smoke close to homes,” Hall said. Tuesday’s burn was supposed to happen a few months ago, but it was postponed with wildlife preservation in mind. “This is a pretty cool stopover area when the monarchs migrate through,” Hall said. “And that’s actually why we waited. We were originally planning to do this kind of late summer, early fall, around September, which coincided with the flowers and the monarchs. And so, we delayed that until all the flowering was done, the monarchs had moved out to then burn it.” Fort Worth Park and Recreation has done prescribed burns since 1980. ...read more read less