YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - In a spot severely burned by the 1988 North Fork fire, a National Park Service interpretive sign notes that the area surrounding the boardwalk may be a meadow for decades. Instead, spring-green lodgepole pine trees up to 15 feet high have taken root across the hillside.
The sign points out the misconceptions held by many after the 1988 fires burned almost one-third of Yellowstone National Park - that the landscape would take a long time to rejuvenate, that meadows might replace forests in some places and that some soils were so badly burned they were sterilized and no plants could take root.
During the summer of 1988, when 794,000 acres of Yellowstone burned, Despain was criticized for advocating fire as a natural part of the northern Rocky Mountains' ecology. He helped write Yellowstone's first fire management plan in 1972, which allowed naturally ignited fires to burn in two areas. By 1975, the policy was updated to allow natural fires in all but developed areas.
“Fire in a forest that's dependent on fire, it's not destructive, it's recycling itself,” said Bob Barbee, Yellowstone superintendent in 1988. “It's a fact of life, like rain and sunshine.”
Barbee wrote Yosemite National Park's first natural resource management plan, which included the use of prescribed fires, or fires set intentionally to burn fuels and reduce the risk of larger, more destructive blazes.
Unfortunately for the Park Service, the summer of 1988 proved to be unusual. A dry spring was followed by a drier-than-usual July accompanied by lightning storms and high winds. Initially, lightning-caused fires were allowed to burn in remote areas, but by July 21, as seven fires burned in Yellowstone, federal officials ordered full suppression of all fires.
“At that time, 17,000 acres had burned,” Despain said. “All of the acres that burned after that were burned under full-suppression tactics.”
The size of the fires surprised everyone, said Al Nash, Yellowstone's spokesman.
“It shattered everything, and a new frame of reference had to be constructed,” he said.
But 20 years later, the park landscape is proof that fires play a role in wildlands and that few of the aftereffects harm the ecosystem.
“One thing I've learned over the years is that it's not a big ecological event in a lot of ways,” Despain said. “A 200-year-old forest becomes a 1-year-old forest. Some of the biomass will change for a few years. The small mammals are back within three years. There are not large masses of animals killed. The system is just adapted to fire.”
Losses of large mammals also were surprisingly low, with Park Service studies showing that 246 elk, nine bison, four mule deer and two moose died as a direct result of fires. Grizzlies and fish were largely unaffected.
News reports at the time focused on red-tailed hawks circling the edges of advancing flames to snatch up fleeing rodents.
“People wanted Bambi stories, but the animals generally moved to large, open fields and were seemingly unconcerned,” said Roy Renkin, a vegetation specialist for the National Park Service. “A lot of them would just sit down and chew their cud and show this sort of nonchalant behavior.”
The following winter was tougher, as a combination of fire- and drought-ravaged vegetation, brutal cold snaps and high population numbers resulted in the loss of an estimated 5,000 elk. But by 1995, the elk had rebounded, Renkin said.
Moose numbers declined after much of their preferred old-growth spruce forests burned, and they have not fully recovered in the park, Renkin said.
A 1989-92 study showed that bears were found grazing more frequently in burned areas than at unburned sites, and scientists saw no significant changes in fish growth in streams and rivers flowing into or out of Yellowstone and Lewis lakes.
“There were certainly some changes and, yes, the Yellowstone River turned black, but not during spring runoff, it was during a thunderstorm in the summertime,” Despain said.
Flooding that occurred three to four years after the fires altered some stream channels, and some aquatic insects became dominant while others disappeared.
Were the fires good or bad for the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem?
“I don't think the ecosystem has values. We do,” Despain said. “From a human's perspective, some things are better than others. But the ecosystems don't have perspectives. They are just there. They respond to changes.
“We get certain amenities from the forest. Most of them that we get are not damaged by fires. The wildlife are adapted to it. The songbirds are adapted to it. There's not a lot of shade and it takes a while to get the lumber we need. But those are not long-term changes.”
Gordon McBride, of Tucson, Ariz., recently visited Old Faithful with his wife and grandchildren. He said he spent time in Island Park, Idaho, before the fires, so he had a concept of what the area looked like 20 years ago. He said it was interesting to see how the park had rebounded after the '88 fires.
“That's what they told us would happen, and to see it is phenomenal,” he said. “The thing that has comforted me is the sense that it's a natural part of the growth cycle.”
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