BOERNE, Texas – The Cibolo Preserve in Kendall County will conduct a prescribed burn on Thursday.
Officials said the burn would only take an hour and would happen sometime between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the preserve located on City Park Road adjacent to the Cibolo Nature Center campus of the Cibolo Center for Conservation.
Preserve officials have put precautions in place including alerting area fire and city/county officials, neighbors and nearby Champion High School, which is not yet back in session.
The prescribed burn, which was contracted with a professional prescribed-fire service, is necessary to reduce dead vegetation and thick brush on about 20 acres of the preserve.
“Planned prescribed fires help the natural environment: reversing woody plant encroachment, stimulating grass growth, improving watershed health, benefiting all wildlife, and also providing future wildfire mitigation and buffer zones by removing volatile underbrush and promoting healthy grass growth, naturally,” officials with the preserve said in a press release.
The Cibolo Preserve is a nonprofit natural habitat laboratory and groundwater recharge area. The 653-acre property is kept in its natural habitat for education, scientific and charitable purposes and used for research projects conducted by the University of Texas at San Antonio, Cibolo Center for Conservation, U.S. Geological Survey, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and Texas Parks and Wildlife.