Natural Renewal : Fires Viewed as Ecological Plus for Yellowstone

Fires hopscotching through Yellowstone this summer are of such epic proportions that they will significantly alter the face of the country’s oldest national park, changing timberland into meadows, officials say.

But administrators also say that the historic firestorm is an ecological boon for the 2.2-million-acre park and will result in the first major regeneration of Yellowstone in as many as 400 years.

“We are witnessing a historic event of epic proportions,” said Yellowstone spokeswoman Joan Anzelmo. “It will change Yellowstone significantly. Your favorite back country spot is not going to look the same.”

Soldiers Join Firefighters

About 1,200 hastily trained soldiers from the Army base in Ft. Lewis, Wash., joined 3,500 beleaguered firefighters Tuesday battling at least seven separate blazes in both the Wyoming and Montana sections of the park.

Crews have come from as far away as Connecticut, and the scores of California firefighters on the scene include experts sent to manage the worst blaze.

The Yellowstone fires encompass over 355,000 acres--about 16% of the park--but only about half the land within those boundaries has actually burned, said George Robinson, Yellowstone’s chief naturalist. The other half represents wetlands or unburnable rocky ridges within the fire perimeters.

Some of the fires have been burning since June, becoming a major problem only when they joined together last month. Firefighting costs so far have reached $29.5 million, and another dangerously hot and dry month is left in the fire season.

Severe drought, high daytime temperatures and unusually strong, gusty winds have fueled the park’s worst recorded fire plague and have hampered management of the blazes, park officials say.

Back Country Closed

About 90% of Yellowstone’s back country is closed because of fire, Anzelmo said. But, in general, the main roads remain open with the sporadic exception of small sections in the interior.

Over the weekend, the worst blaze--the 156,502-acre Clover Mist fire in the park’s northeastern corner--pushed toward a sparsely populated valley outside the park perimeters as 70-m.p.h. winds whipped the area.

On Sunday, the Boise Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates firefighting in the region, dispatched California expert Larry Boggs to take over management of the Clover Mist fire from the National Park Service. Boggs is a U.S. Forest Service district fire manager based in Las Plumas National Forest.

Park officials say the ongoing drought is posing more of a threat to the park’s bison, elk, grizzly bears and other wildlife than the fires.

Wildlife Adapts

“Fire itself is something all of our wildlife has adapted to genetically over thousands of years” said Gary Brown, assistant chief ranger of Yellowstone.

“The long-range benefit for wildlife will be enormous in terms of regeneration and new vegetation,” he said, comparing the meadows matted by old, decaying vegetation to a lawn that needed raking.

“We’re already seeing three- to four-inch green shoots in areas burned July 23rd,” he said, adding that large herds of elk have been observed grazing already in fire-scarred areas.

Residents in tiny Silver Gate, just outside the park’s northeastern entrance, spotted a buffalo with slightly singed fur wandering through town over the weekend.

Park officials say the fires will create meadows and young forests in places once dense with lodgepole pine.

Many of these 80- to 120-year-old trees already had been weakened by bug infestations, Robinson said, and the old pines’ shallow roots also made them vulnerable to windfall.

Fuel Builds Up

The dead trees and decaying vegetation turned parts of the forest floor into a kindling box over the years, park officials say, admitting that a pre-1972 policy of fighting all wildfires within national parks contributed greatly to this fuel buildup.

Ed Christian, assistant chief ranger in Grand Teton park, south of Yellowstone, where major fires also are burning, said: “The landscape will change for a lot of people. We’ll see a lot of charred trees for a while, but it’s part of nature’s way; forests will burn eventually, it’s just a matter of when. We had the Smokey Bear syndrome for so long that people are used to viewing all fires as bad.”

All but one of the Yellowstone fires were believed caused by lightning strikes. A careless smoker is blamed for the other, the 91,700-acre North Fork fire near West Yellowstone.

Structural damage from Yellowstone’s summer of fire so far has been limited to three storage sheds, but Grants Village, one of the tourist centers inside the park, was twice evacuated and finally closed. The park’s southern entrance also has been closed.

Overcome by Fumes

Only minor injuries to firefighters have been reported, including respiratory problems by half a dozen firefighters overcome by toxic sulfur fumes while working near a hot springs.

Firefighters in Yellowstone are given pamphlets on bear safety and must take special precautions in the back country, where food is strung from trees and garbage is collected and flown out daily so that bears are not attracted to the camps. No incidents have been reported.

Park officials insist that tourism has not been hurt by the thick smoke and orange flames sometimes visible from the road. “Some people are coming in specifically to see the wildfires and the firefighters at work,” Anzelmo said. “There are firefighters alongside the road who have had their pictures taken as much as Old Faithful this summer.”

However, people in neighboring communities that depend on Yellowstone for summer tourists and fall hunters paint a bleaker picture.

“A lot of people show up, take a look at the smoke and leave,” said Hays Kirby, who owns two lodges in the valley below the Clover Mist fire. “If it weren’t for the news media, I’d be completely empty.” The Silver Gate, Mont., innkeeper said the economic effects “have been devastating. We’ve had 100% cancellations, and August is usually our busiest month.”

4 Fires Under Way

South of Yellowstone, in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest, four major blazes are under way. The oldest, burning since July 11, is the 46,750-acre Mink Creek fire. It was 80% contained Tuesday, but there was still no estimated control date.

“We haven’t really turned the corner on the Mink fire, it has such a large head that there’s no way really to cut it off,” said Christian. “Most of these fires do a pretty good mosaic, they skip around, leaving unburned islands of timber and meadows. . . . Probably at most 60% of that acreage is actually burned.”

Other fires in the area are the 1,500-acre Emerald fire, still only about 30% contained, the 4,300-acre Hunter fire, which started Saturday and for a time threatened 12 homes in the Shadow Mountain area in Grand Teton Park, and the 6,000-acre Huck fire, which caused the evacuation of Flagg Ranch, a concession development in the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway recreation area between Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks.

Hell’s Canyon Fire

In Idaho, 120 men were battling a 700-acre fire in Hell’s Canyon, the deepest gorge in North America. The blaze was threatening valuable resources, including a 12-million board-foot stand of timber. Crews were being shuttled in by helicopter and trucked in by the Idaho National Guard.

In Montana, containment was estimated at 90% at the Warm Springs Creek fire, where 37,320 acres were involved and 2,500 firefighters were on the fire lines.

Researcher Lisa Romaine in Denver also contributed to this story.