Throughout history
the National Park Service has alternated between suppressing wildfires, and letting
wildfires burn naturally. Both management practices have their advantages and
disadvantages, and their proper time and place. I feel that while wildfires can
be beneficial for the environment, allowing nature a new start of sorts, it is
important that more effort be put into controlling and containing wildfires in
our national parks. The National Parks are an important source of ecotourism
and provide enjoyment to all who visit them. When wildfires burn a large
portion of a national park down it can impact how humans interact with the
environment, and how people view our national parks. Yellowstone National Park
is one example of how wildfire management has changed, and is changing over
time. For the first half of the twentieth century wildfires were seen as a
destructive and harmful force on the environment, and suppression and
prevention was the key management strategy of the forest service. Smokey the
Bear warned the public of forest fires with his famous line “Only you can
prevent forest fires”. With the lack of wildfires the forests of Yellowstone
became much denser, accumulating more dead and dry material, perfect for
wildfire fuel. The consequences of preventing wildfires in these areas can be
seen today. When wildfires do start in these heavily forested areas, they burn
extremely hot, proving a challenge to suppress, and causing a maximum loss of forest.
The Yellowstone fire of 1988, started by a single lightening strike, demonstrated
this. Unable to predict how dry the summer of 1988 would be, foresters kept to
the “natural burn” policy, or the “let it burn” policy as it came to be known
to the public. The media played a huge
role in people’s opinions about the fire. Up until July of 1988 the fire had
burned about 50,000 acres, of Yellowstone’s total 2,219,791 total acres.
However, the fire grew quickly, jumping the Yellowstone Grand Canyon, rivers,
and roads, and sending out spot fires a mile ahead of it. Later in July a
woodcutters smoldering cigarette started a second fire in Targhee National
Forest, spreading to Yellowstone National Park within hours, and burning over
400,000 acres. Yet another fire, started by a downed power line near the south
entrance, burned 10,000 acres in one day. Overall the Yellowstone fire of 1988
burned 1.4 million acres of the Greater Yellowstone area, and burned 739,000 or
the national park’s 2.2 million acres. The fires were not stopped by man, but
by Mother Nature, finally being extinguished by rain, snow, and cooler
temperatures in September of 1988. Natural historic fire occurrence estimates a
grassland or shrub fire to occur every 25 to 30 year, and a Lodgepole pine and
Subalpine white pine forest fire to occur about every 300 years, not taking
into account the early settlers need to stop all fires. Today the forest
service uses a “prescribed-fire” approach to management, allowing wildfires to
burn under certain predetermined conditions, and treating each fire on an
individual basis. In this way the parks get the best of both worlds. The
wildfires help the forest, allowing regeneration, and growth of plants that
require fire to grow. By allowing prescribed burns we can also prevent another
1988 fire from occurring, as regular fires can keep forests from becoming too
dense or collecting too much dead and dry material. Prescribed burns in our
parks can also mean more manageable fires, and less aesthetic damage to places
such as Yellowstone. The more people, the public in particular, understands
about fire’s essential role in the ecosystem, the healthier our parks will be
because of it.
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