One of the key things to remember is an often repeated forestry term, "nature abhors a vacuum".  This simply means that plants will race to grow back when vegetation is removed.  Realizing this, you can tilt the odds and conditions in favor of fire resistive plants attractive to you, in what is in effect a small ecosystem, known as defensible space.  Most, if not all, living things in nature strive to establish a place for themselves and their future generations-often through fatal competition.  Therefore, if you establish and/or encourage fire resistive plants naturally evolved for your ecosystem, they will strive to crowd out the undesirable flammable ones.  If you selectively manage this defensible space, you will create a beautiful, natural, and fire resistant ecosystem that will need less and less effort from you within a relatively short time frame.  After creation of the defensible space, the second year maintenance will be half that of the first year and by the third year following the original treatment, most of the undesirable flammable brush species will be dominated by the ones you have encouraged.

Maintenance is done through the use of either mechanical equipment and/or chemical herbicides. You obviously will need to choose your own method.  A combination of the two is very effective by using a mechanical method for removing established vegetation and herbicides for treating the new sprouts from the low cut stems.  Some points to consider are as follow:

• The time of treatment is important.  Generally it should be done when the targeted species are still vigorous in the spring or early summer.  Once they harden off or ripen, they are much more difficult to manage.  Equally important is that your desired species (often natural grasses) are vigorous enough to take the place of the ones you removed.
   
• Follow directions and safety procedures, because both methods have some risk to exposure and require you to think.
   
  • Mixing the herbicide at greater than the manufacturer's recommended percentages is wasteful and dangerous to both you and your ecosystem.   Herbicides control brush species efficiently, and if label directions are followed, the effects on other forest values (beyond removing the brush) are negligible. There are many methods of killing brush with herbicides, but the most common for landscape maintenance are stump treatments, basal bark treatments, and foliage treatments.
     
  • Wear or use all recommended protective devices and clothing.  Keep bystanders back a safe distance.
     
• The effectiveness of the chemical herbicides will be increased by the addition of a surfactant.  This is a substance that decreases the tensile strength of the water, so that it spreads its herbicide out over the plant's leaves instead of beading up like water on a newly waxed car.  In most cases, a squirt of dish soap will accomplish this task; commercial "spreader/stickers" can be purchased also.
   
• If you select a herbicide that kills all plants, like Round Up, you will succeed in killing everything.  Generally this is not consistent with managing an ecosystem.  It is far better to pick herbicides which are designed to be selective.
   
• If you choose to use mechanical methods, you will probably purchase a weed eater with a saw blade attachment and or a brush and field mower.  Picking the right tools and keeping them maintained is critical.
   
  • Try to buy professional grade equipment.  It will be more expensive, but if you have an acre or so to maintain, it will be a great investment.
     
  • An excellent line of walk behind brush and field mowers are carried under the DR™ line. 
     
  • One of the important things to remember in mechanical treatment is to cut the brush species as close to the ground as possible, impacting the plants' important root crown area.

In summation, maintenance of defensible space works and maintaining what has been done is your responsibility, and it is also a project you can accomplish.  Recently said by Larry Isenberg, HFT Project Manager for Benewah, Bonner, and Kootenai Counties,  "I live in a home on eight wooded acres near the head of Cougar Gulch in Kootenai County. Since I regularly do my own maintenance, I know it works. I use a combination of mechanical and chemical treatments here, and the most important thing I can share with you is “just do it”. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with how effective your efforts are. The brush species will not survive repeated cutting or application of chemical herbicides. Common sense tells us that all the fields and other clearings around us were once brush and trees, which have, in effect, been turned into a form of defensible space."  The picture above shows the transformation of flammable brush fields into defensible space at the three year point after the original treatment.