When dealing with restorative fire within prairies, safety precautions and proper techniques are very important to the success of the burn itself. To maintain a good level of safety a lot of equipment must be used. You can typically find many vehicles (including ATV's, Trucks and others), communications, 100-1500 gallon water tanks for putting out fires, chainsaws, axes and other hand equipment such as shovels and also the kerosene drip torches.

Before a burn can actually take place, a burn plan must be laid out. It is exactly that. The crew must plan out what is going to be burned and what specifications must be met before they start the burn itself. Normally, wind and moisture are the big factors that could influence the outcome of a burn. If it is too windy, this could cause the burn to get out of control and with too much moisture, it would be hard to have a thorough burn and it would create too much smoke to deal with. If smoke gets out of hand and creeps up onto the roadside, a flare is ignited on the other side of the road in the grass. This new fire in-turn will create heat that will pull the smoke off of the roadside. When the crew arrives at a burn site, they go through their checklists of all the conditions and if only one is not in order, the burn will be cancelled or postponed. During a burn, a "back burning" fire is set that would go into the wind. Then small fires are set (as "head fires") that would continue through the prairie until the burn is finished.

Restorative fire has a lot of career and future opportunities. Normally, one who would want to pursue this career would take classes 2 years thus, attaining the basic knowledge required to be active in a restorative fire itself. There are many different careers in this field such as, the basic field worker, who works on foot or ATV's, or a smokejumper, who would jump from an aircraft to put out a fire in a secluded area such as a mountain range. Finally a smoke "rappelled" would actually be supported by lines drawn down from a helicopter and would then be flown into the fire area.

Restorative fires are used on prairies to remove old dead material and help bring out more desired types of grasses. A desired burn is burning 75% to 100% of the area of which they plan to burn. The burned area helps to eliminate or at least stunt foreign grasses planted by Europeans such as Kentucky Blue Grass and Timothy (for early cattle grazing) and allows for the native species to return such as the Big Blue Stem, Little Blue Stem, and Brome grass. This is most effective when everything is burned right down to the dirt. Not only are the effects of a burn helpful to the stunting of invasive species but allows sunlight to warm the darkened soil which also helps the desired warm season grasses. A later burn actually is more effective in assisting warm season grasses, so on the Touch the Sky Prairie, they burn later to eliminate cool season grasses and bring out the native warm season grasses.

The burns will slightly affect the wildlife and insects for a small amount of time. The birds will re-nest and the animals will soon return to the prairie. Their numbers, contrary to media statements, increase in the following years because all the dead materials are eliminated. Only certain sections are burned at a time to avoid too much interference with nature, the rest is hopefully burned in the following year. The insects are left alone because they only burn between 75% and 100% of the area that leaves areas of refugia, which acts as places to hide from the fire. Refugia is a patch of unburned grass where insects are able to survive the fire. After the burn is over the prairie is mostly ashen with a few patches of green refugia preserved.