Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
During the first half of the 20th century, it was widely believed that nothing good
came of wildfire. In the 1940s and 1950s, all fires that occurred in the park, wheth-
er of natural origin or caused by people, were immediately suppressed. During the
1960s, however, the tide shifted subtly as the ecological benefits of fire were studied.
The findings showed that fire was a natural condition that helped maintain balance
in the wild. Fires cleaned out understory and residual dead plant matter, creating less
competition between tree species for important nutrients and natural elements. It was
determined that until recently, wildfires had always been a part of the ecosystem and
were in fact necessary to preserve healthy and continuous life cycles of plants and
trees. The lodgepole pine, for example, which makes up an enormous percentage of
Yellowstone's forests, has two kinds of cones, one of which is called a serotinous
cone. The pitch sealing the serotinous cone needs to be heated by fire in order to re-
lease the seeds and continue the species. Without fire, the tree would not be able to
regenerate as successfully.
By the 1970s, the park decided to allow wildfires caused by lightning to burn un-
der controlled conditions. From the time the park established this natural fire policy
until 1988, they had allowed 235 fires to burn; only 10 of those were larger than 100
acres, and in total 33,759 acres had been burned. In June 1988 the park was exper-
iencing a drought, and it turned out to be the driest year in the park's history. Early
summer storms produced lightning without rainfall, and 20 fires erupted. Eleven of
them self-extinguished, and the rest were monitored; by mid-July only 8,500 acres
had burned. Within a week, park managers agreed to extinguish the fires because of
the extremely dry conditions. Strong winds made that impossible, however, and with-
in a week 99,000 acres had burned. By September, in order for emergency workers
to battle the blaze, the park had to close to visitors for the first time in its history.
When spring came, no one knew what to expect. It was with some trepidation that
people went into Yellowstone. Miraculously, the earth was green and vibrant amid
the fire-blackened swaths. With the exception of the moose, which lost a significant
portion of their forested habitat, the animal populations appeared as if nothing had
ever happened. Elk were even reported munching on the burned bark. Yellowstone,
it seemed, was different—better and healthier.
As visitors marveled at the park's rebirth, park managers reevaluated their fire
management policy and updated it in 1992 with stricter guidelines for managing
natural fires. In 2004 they made further additions by defining clear parameters for
