More storms in July would bring little rain and more lightning. Park officials did not know it would be Yellowstone's driest summer in recorded history, or that the lightning-sparked fires of May would burn into June. In 1988, the fire dangers were not immediately clear. They maintained fire was a natural event that promoted healthy forests. That changed in 1972, when ecologists, citing years of research, persuaded the park to adopt a policy allowing lightning-sparked fires to burn as long as they didn't threaten lives or park facilities. It was perceived that we were burning up their national park and there would be nothing left of it."įor nearly a century, Yellowstone managers were quick to douse wildfires. "What happened in '88 in Yellowstone was probably a passing of the threshold with what the political and social world was comfortable with. "The philosophy was, in these large natural areas, fire should be allowed to play its role," said Dick Bahr, a fire science and ecology specialist for the National Park Service. The fires also, however, forced federal officials to tighten a policy allowing some fires to burn and develop new strategies to battle the "mega-fires" of today across the West. Far from destroying the park, the fires brought new life, cleared out the forest canopies and allowed new plants to bloom. The 1988 wildfires were not the ecological disaster many feared at the time.
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