The Nature Conservancy staff delivered a shipment of supplies to the Muscatine County Conservation Board’s (MCCB) Saulsbury Bridge Recreation Area on Friday (March 7, 2025) to establish a reserve of prescribed fire equipment. The cache includes prescribed fire specific tools such as drip torches, flappers, council rakes, backpack water sprayers, a kestrel weather system, and personal protective equipment.
This fire cache is available, free of charge, to landowners who have completed the Prescribed Fire Workshop for Landowners that has been offered every other year since 2006 by the Great Rivers Alliance of Southeast Iowa. The class was most recently held on February 13 in Lee County. The fire cache is also available to people who have taken the Federal S130/190 Wildland Firefighting series of classes.
The cache can easily be loaded into most vehicles but please be mindful that fuel may be present in some of the equipment. There is also a cache located in Louisa County that landowners have been utilizing for several years. The Fire caches can be reserved for up to four-days at a time, free of charge.
If you qualify, and are interested in borrowing items from the Muscatine County Fire Cache, please contact MCCB at 563-264-5922 or [email protected]. To borrow items from the Louisa County Fire Cache, please contact LCCB at 319-523-8381 or [email protected].
The Great Rivers Alliance of Southeast Iowa is made up of conservation professionals. It includes The Nature Conservancy, the Bur Oak Land Trust, NRCS offices, Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever, the National Wildlife Turkey Federation, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, the Iowa DNR, and the following County Conservation Boards: Johnson, Muscatine, Washington, Louisa, Des Moines, and Lee. The group partners together on a diversity of topics to improve biodiversity, protect fragile ecosystems, and promote good land stewardship.
