In late February 2026, there was a wildfire, probably caused by a prescribed fire or the burning of trash on private land, that burned into Upland Island Wilderness Area (UIWA). This fire, that the U.S. Forest Service (FS) suppressed, took about a week to fully contain and put out.
The Sierra Club monitors the five East Texas Wilderness Areas in the National Forests and Grasslands in Texas. As a result, the Sierra Club, along with the Texas Conservation Alliance (TCA), visited UIWA on March 19, 2026, to view where and how this wildfire had burned.
The Sierra Club supports a certain level of prescribed burning on UIWA to perpetuate the fire dependent plant communities (Longleaf Pine, native bluestem and other grasses, and herbaceous vegetation) that exist there.
Lightning causes natural fires in UIWA but the FS suppresses these wildfires because it fears that uncontrolled wildfires will burn outside UIWA and into private lands and damage or destroy private residences and other structures and threaten the lives and health of humans.
Sierra Club and TCA walked about 6-7 miles on the southern and northern boundaries of one part of the over 13,000-acre UIWA. This area is defined by Forest Road (FR) 314 in the south and former FR 302 in the north, which is now in UIWA and used by the FS as a hand prepared fire lane.
The wildfire, in places, burned very hot and charred many Longleaf Pines and other trees’ bark and browned needles and leaves. Many of these Longleaf Pines, from seedlings to mature trees, will recover because the growing apex of these fire tolerant pine trees after the fire are green and growing.
The total extent of this wildfire was 7,000 acres. This wildfire was allowed and encouraged by the FS to burn this many acres because the amount of dead vegetation was considered significant as a fire hazard and the FS wanted this risk to be reduced via the backfires and other management actions it used.
We climbed up and down many of the rolling hills in UIWA and saw the effects of this wildfire. We noticed, now that it is spring, and the wildfire has burned leaf litter and created rich fertilizing ash, that green-up by grasses, herbaceous vegetation (Yellow Star-grass, Bull Nettle, Agrimony, etc.), and Bracken Fern was in progress.
Even almost a month after the wildfire was suppressed by the FS, we saw a few places where downed trees continued to smoke due to embers that still burned in them.
We saw quite a few downed trees that had burned in the past due to wildfires and prescribed fires and had been weakened and then fell during high winds. In bog areas (lower slope seepage from sandy hills with clay aquicludes) sundews (a carnivorous plant) were numerous and doing well. The wildfire didn’t burn most of the bog areas because they are moist.
In areas where Loblolly Pine, American Beech, American Holly, Flowering Dogwood, Sweetgum, and other hardwoods grow, the fire burned less vigorously because of more mesic (moist) soils, that had a greater clay content, and had less flammable hardwood leaves.
It’s unfortunate that the use of former FR 302 by the FS as a boundary for fire control within UIWA has retarded the natural restoration of this roadbed into a forest ecosystem. If this continues it may be best to turn this elevated human-created feature into a trail that allows people to view part of UIWA. Another alternative is to allow forest vegetation to grow and mature on this former road so that it loses its appearance as a former road.
The Sierra Club will continue, whenever possible, to visit East Texas Wilderness Areas when wildfires burn, to monitor what has happened and whether our wilderness is being managed in as careful and non-trammeled way as possible.