Editor’s note: Ben Wheeler is the Coordinating Wildlife Biologist for Pheasants Forever, Inc. and Quail Forever. He is also the lead for the Loup River region of the Great Plains Fire Learning Network. This blog post recounts the highlights and outcomes from the 2025 Loup TREX in central Nebraska. You can find a PDF version of this TREX recap as a “Notes from the Field” document here, and follow along with other TREX events on the TREX Facebook page.
The Loup TREX is an intensive two-week, community-based live fire training event held in the spring in central Nebraska. It draws fire practitioners representing many agencies and organizations, and – in the years since the first Loup TREX in 2010 – has hosted participants from 19 states and six countries. In addition to the valuable training the Loup TREX provides, it has directly delivered 30,000 acres of good and meaningful fire to central Nebraska grasslands and provided a growing model showing that the obstacles to landscape-scale fire are not insurmountable.
March 16 The 2025 Loup TREX is up and running. Twenty-seven fire practitioners from eight U.S. states and one Canadian province are calling central Nebraska home for the next two weeks. During this time, they will receive valuable live-fire training, share their experience by mentoring other participants, work on qualifications, and deliver meaningful conservation to Nebraska’s grasslands.
March 19 Ramping up for the event, we spent the first day with introductions, hearing presentations about grassland ecology and fire behavior, completing fire shelter deployments, and becoming acquainted with the equipment we will be using.
March 20 Sometimes good burning weather only presents itself in limited pockets of time. While it may not be enough time to burn an entire unit, it gives us an opportunity to use smaller fire to secure critical or challenging pieces of burn unit boundaries. These little actions now pave the way for bigger and better things later on in the Loup TREX.
March 24 The weather finally opened up for the Loup TREX to burn a unit. This 200-acre prescribed fire not only results in 200 acres of positive fire effects in the grassland, it also gives us 200 acres of black to use as a safe backstop later in our event.
March 26 Night burning has become a regular tradition on the Loup TREX, especially when daytime weather conditions are challenging or hazardous. Following several dry, windy days, participants at the Loup TREX took advantage of moderate evening weather conditions to put on a 90-acre light show in the central Nebraska grasslands.
March 27 A big part of any TREX is building partnerships with community organizations. Last week, when participants couldn’t burn due to weather conditions, they met with local organizations and learned from each other. There may be non-fire days during the TREX, but there are no non-learning days. With a blizzard warning outside, we stayed active with participant presentations, IRPG races, and a tour of the local Ord Volunteer Fire Department, which had just been recognized with the Outstanding Public Service Award by the Valley County Community Foundation.
March 29 During the last week, participants worked with local Prescribed Burn Associations to accomplish some great burning. PBAs are cooperative groups led by private landowners throughout the Great Plains and other parts of the U.S. that build local prescribed fire capacity by sharing equipment, labor and experience. The Loup TREX joined a couple of area PBAs to help accomplish over 1,000 acres of prescribed fire. We appreciate the warm welcome to share the fireline with these neighbors, and several participants enjoyed seeing effective prescribed fire delivered in a fresh and new way.
Dan Speckert, a Helitack crew member for Parks Canada, was named as the 2025 Loup TREX MVP. Dan attended the Loup TREX as an opportunity to continue learning about restoring healthy fire regimes and to support Indigenous fire practices and grassland conservation in Canada. Loup TREX leadership was impressed with how Dan humbly shared his fire knowledge and the attitude he brought to support everyone around him. Congrats, Dan, on this wonderful honor!
May Lush green grass covers the recently black hills. Birds are nesting, and livestock are enjoying nutritious, protein-rich grass. Central Nebraska continues to be an anchor for prescribed fire in the Great Plains. In addition to the Loup TREX, area PBAs combined to deliver 30,000 acres of fire this spring. These efforts are restoring the important fire process to an entire ecosystem.
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