PLANT CITY - One recent morning, Stephen Raymond huddled with his colleagues before going out and setting the wilderness on fire.
These aren't arsonists. They are specially trained employees of Hillsborough County's Department of Conservation-&-Environmental Lands Management, and they torch for good.
Conducting "prescribed burns'' in county-owned nature preserves reduces the chance of wildfire and opens the land for new growth and animals, they explained. Bill Carlisle, overall prescribed burn coordinator for the county, said he loves to see the result.
"It's really, really rewarding once you've seen an area go from overgrown palmettos and everything to beautiful green grass areas, new growth and new plants and animals and everything moving back to an area.''
The trick, however, is burning only what they want to burn.
That's why Raymond, burn manager on this mission in the Lower Green Swamp Preserve near Plant City, goes over the plan in detail. He wants to ensure the fire is kept within the designated 43 acres of high brush and palmetto scrub.
The land managers follow along on maps in their packets as Raymond lays out the strategy. A red arrow signifies the direction of the wind, a key element in whether the burn goes forward or is cancelled. Sometimes, that's a last-minute decision.
They want a constant wind direction to keep the fire under control and blow the smoke plume away from homes, businesses and traffic.
Raymond assigns two pairs of crew members, "ignition teams,'' to strategic spots along the perimeter, marked by letters A through E. One team will start at the southwestern corner of the plot, and once the fire reaches a certain point, the other team will create a scorched border on another side and start a flanking fire to meet the original fire and burn out.
Raymond identifies the fire breaks, including dirt roads and a cypress swamp, and points out spots for special attention.
"There are two big long-leaf pines about half way between D and C,'' he tells the teams. "We want to protect those. I want to burn out everything around them. As soon as the fire passes, go ahead and put those out.''
At the site, as the wind blows steadily toward the west, a crew member in fire-resistant suit, gloves and helmet uses a gas- and diesel-fueled drip torch to start a test fire, dropping blobs of flame here and there.
The fire behaves as expected, so the land managers start creating a scorched border as a buffer against the neighboring acreage downwind. They keep the scorched swath under control by scraping the edges with a fire rake or dousing it with water from a tank on the back of a truck.
Another crew member moves ahead of the fire, taking periodic temperature and humidity readings and radioing the information to the others. Higher temperature and drier air would make conditions more volatile. Once the scorched band is complete, the crew lets the fire spread against the wind.
"It's a much slower, more controlled process than having it run with the wind,'' said Andy Fairbanks, environmental outreach coordinator with the land management department.
Some 45 people, almost every environmental lands employee in the department, are certified to conduct prescribed burns, though that is only a part of their jobs. About 20 employees are burn leaders like Raymond, according to environmental lands manager Ross Dickerson. Crews burn about 5,000 acres per year, most within the county's 61,000 acres of nature preserves.
Hillsborough's land holdings expanded greatly during the last three decades under the Jan K. Platt Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program, named after the late Hillsborough County commissioner who championed the effort.
In the prescribed burns, land managers are mimicking the natural process of regeneration through lightning-sparked fires. Fire releases nutrients back to the soil, spurring new growth.
"This is based on, honestly, centuries of fire technique going back to even the native Americans and the pioneers, knowing how the landscape responds to fire and perfecting the technique,'' Fairbanks said.
"For them it was for the game, for easier visibility and access to deer or whatever they would have been hunting. We're doing it now for biodiversity reasons.''
Contact Philip Morgan at pmorgan@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3435.