{"id":39934,"date":"2026-02-11T13:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=39934"},"modified":"2026-02-11T13:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:17:09","slug":"open-burn-permit-update-advanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=39934","title":{"rendered":"Open burn permit update advanced"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill intended to help policymakers better understand the use of prescribed burning in Nebraska advanced from general file Feb. 11.

\"Sen.
Sen. Dave Wordekemper<\/figcaption><\/figure> <\/p>\n

LB823, introduced by Fremont Sen. Dave Wordekemper, would update the definition of land-management burning to include both controlled burning and prescribed burning and create definitions for the latter two practices, which he said are \u201cfundamentally different.\u201d <\/p>\n

Controlled burning is intended primarily for cleanup of debris or vegetation in situations where the spread of fire is limited to a small area, Wordekemper said, whereas prescribed burning is the systematic application of fire to manage vegetation, control weeds and pests, prevent wildland fires and carry out certain other activities. <\/p>\n

He said prescribed burning is the \u201cmost effective and cost-efficient tool\u201d for managing Nebraska\u2019s grasslands at a time when eastern redcedar continues to spread across the state, threatening rangeland and increasing wildfire risk.<\/p>\n

LB823 would require open burning permits issued by fire chiefs to specify whether land-management burning is to be a prescribed burning or a controlled burning as well as the approximate number of acres to be burned. <\/p>\n

Landowners would be required to provide the same information when filing an application for a permit and a plan for conducting a burning. <\/p>\n

Wordekemper said the requirements would help policymakers, researchers, conservation groups and landowners collect data on where and how frequently prescribed burning is happening in Nebraska. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat information will inform future policy decisions about how we support this critical land management practice,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

LB823 advanced to select file on a vote of 30-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill intended to help policymakers better understand the use of prescribed burning in Nebraska advanced from general file Feb. 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36723,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[303],"class_list":["post-39934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-dave-wordekemper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/UpdateBlogPhoto-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39934"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39935,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39934\/revisions\/39935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}