ysboston@cs.utexas.edu (Yee-Sing Tsai) (08/08/89)
YELLOWSTONE: revisited Park heals itself spectacularly from fires of '88 by Mike Leggett [Austin American Statesman, August 6, 1989] WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. -- A year after a pack of hell-on-earth forest fires converged on the United States' oldest and most treasured national park, Yellowstone lives. Spectacularly. As it did before anyone thought to call it a park or before white men knew it was there, Yellowstone survives. The mud pots still bubble. Old Faithful still marks off the hours with a fine eruption. The Firehole River brews steam out of the marriage of frigid snow melt runoff and boiling spring water. Nearly a million acres of park land were burned in the frenzied summer of 1988, about 45 percent of the park's 2.2 million acres. Another half million acres of forest land around Yellowstone were burned to some degree. As late as October, dense smoke blotted out the sun. Trees smoldered and choking ash took flight on even the slightest breeze. A drive through the park was an almost psychedelic trip through lush meadows bound by moonscape burns. Through it all walked the wildlife. Yellowstone's hallmark, largely unaffected by the fires. Elk fed on still smoking hillsides, possibly taking in nutrients from the scorched earth. Deer moved along the green edges, and bison simply took to the broad, green expanses of Hayden Valley. But gigantic forest fires -- so frightening and out of control when viewed in human terms -- constitute little more then a cosmic blip in the ecological and geological life of the park. Yellowstone hardly noticed. Travel to the Rocky Mountains to visit Yellowstone in 1989, and you see a land changed and changing, challenged but coping. Among other things, Yellowstone today has: -- Nearly nine percent more visitors than in 1988. Visitation also is about four percent about 1987's record 2.2 million. -- Burned meadows and areas of forest floor, fed by rain and a record winter snow pack, blooming with lush grasses and wildflowers. -- Significant numbers of elk, deer, moose, and bison enjoying the new growth fed by the fires. Winter kill, because of heavy snows, reduced animal populations within the park, but numbers remain basically normal for the region. -- Crews of volunteers working to aid the natural recovery process and to augment that with cleanup and restoration of human-use areas near roads and in the back country. "There's certainly a lot of work that needs to be done," said Steve Sarles, a supervisory park ranger who is manager of the Yellowstone Recovery Project. "The job is not going to be finished this summer, but we hope to accomplish all of our priority projects. There are projects we'll continue working on for the next two to three years." Other fires will slow that down, Sarles said. A total fire suppression policy is in effect, which has seen workers sent to take on more than a dozen blazes already this summer. And some Yellowstone workers have been sent, as well, to help fight the current round of fires in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, and California. The recovery projects for Yellowstone include repairing and, in some cases, replacing bridges, walkways, wilderness cabins and other man-made structures that were destroyed by the fires; rehabilitating and re-routing back country trails; and removing dead and dangerous trees from alongside roads and campgrounds in the front country areas of the park. "The fire obviously had an impact on trails, bridges and the like, and it's a major project to get those back up to speed," Sarles said. Besides the volunteer workers who have come to the park to spend the summer season, the park service has doubled the number of back country trail crews and increased the number of back country rangers, Sarles said, in order to speed up the rehabilitation process. That process, though, is one viewed in terms of people, of course, since Yellowstone already undertook recovery on her own, using the natural process of fires to remove canopy trees that retard growth of low plants on the forest floor. It is those plants that are most important to the huge wildlife population of Yellowstone and the surrounding national forest areas. Wildflowers, grasses, sedges, and low brush have experienced a growth explosion, except in scattered areas where burns were so intense all seeds and root systems were destroyed. There are completely dead areas, particularly where the fire burned into timber blowdowns, but those are few and scattered. The natural role of fires and their positive impact on wilderness -- including what they have done for Yellowstone -- doesn't reduce the National Park Service's sensitivity to criticism of its burn policy and of the events that led to last summer's conflagration. Visitors to the park are handed a four-page color tabloid extolling the virtues of fire as a part of nature's plan and listing the "failures of the media" to accurately portray what happened to Yellowstone in 1988. Briefly, the NPS had instituted a modified "let-burn" policy for Yellowstone in 1972, meaning that natural fires caused by lightning would be allowed to burn themselves out unless they threatened human life, property, historic or cultural sites or endangered species. In the 16 years since that policy went into effect, there had been 235 lightning-caused fires allowed to burn in the park. Few did any significant damage until 1988. That's when a deepening drought, which broke a six-year wet summer pattern for the park, allowed a dangerous combination of weather and wind to spread both lightning and human-caused fires to the Rocky Mountains. Once the magnitude of the fires took hold, the effort to stop them took on mammoth proportions. The logistical numbers were staggering, if the toll on wildlife was not: -- 25,000 firefighters in the Greater Yellowstone area, with a peak population of 9,500 and 117 aircraft. The work continued for three months. -- Almost $120 million had been spent on fighting the fires. -- Workers cut more than 665 miles of hand lines, 137 miles of bulldozer lines, including 32 miles in the park alone. Helicopters dropped 10 million gallons of water and 1.4 million gallons of fire retardant. -- Flyovers showed just 257 of more than 20,000 park elk died in the fire, along with four deer, two moose, nine bison and no black bears. It is now thought two grizzly bears may have died, the park service said. Winter kill as a result of heavy snow did have a significant impact on Yellowstone's elk. Wildlife remains abundant, however, throughout the park. A recent afternoon drive-through viewing accounted for a black bear, numerous moose, hundreds of bison, dozens of elk and deer, bighorn sheep, antelope and migrating cutthroat trout. The new plant growth following the fire already is proving to be a windfall for animals and birds. "I was surprised to see the incredibly rapid rate of forest-floor covering," said John McIntosh, field director for the Student Conservation Association, a non-profit group heading up much of the volunteer recovery work. "There was just vibrancy that i was surprised by. The grasses and wildflowers are just totally spectacular." McIntosh's crews are working both along roads and trails in the high use areas of the park as well as in the back country, along with some areas of the Targhee, Gallatin and Custer national forests. You don't have to venture off the main roads to understand what the fire did to Yellowstone, he said. "You get a fairly accurate picture of what the back country is like by looking at the burns from the roads in the park. It's a mosaic pattern," McIntosh said. Many animals are taking advantage, thus cutting back somewhat on the numbers that might normally be seen along roadways and river bottoms. "We're certainly seeing a change in the cycle of how natural eco-systems work." (Congress last year approved an increase in the ceiling on fees for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. The fee is currently $10 per vehicle for a seven-day pass good for both parks or $15 for an annual pass. Lodging is available within the park, but reservations are almost always necessary well in advance. There are numerous motels in Gardiner, Silver Gate, Cooke City and West Yellowstone, Mont., on the edge of the park. Camping also available in the park, on a first-come, first-served basis.) -- Mother cooked a big breakfast. When she cleared off the table, she found a quarter and a dime and three pennies by Father's coffee cup. He'd tipped her. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ghostie * Austin,TX * (512) 471-1082 * ystsai@grumpy.cc.utexas.edu