Ecology: The Yellowstone Wildfires of 1988
OverviewThis 10-minute video explores the lessons from the Yellowstone fires of 1988 that gave rise to a national political controversy about the relationship between fires and sustainable forestry. The video shows students how public attitudes towards fire and forestry had been molded for decades toward preventing and fighting forest fires, and how the Yellowstone fires led to a reevaluation of these ideas. Useful as an introduction to the context and complexities of forestry policy, the video helps students see recent debates over wildfires within a larger historical framework.
Objectives
Students will:
- Explain how the news media can affect public policy changes in environmental policy.
- Examine how the federal government’s policy toward the role of fires in forestry management has changed since 1910.
- Explain how fires affect forest ecosystems.
- Compare the strategies of Native Americans who used fire with modern forest management.
- U.S. History
- Civics & Government
- Geography
- Environment
- Science
- Earth and Space Science
- Biology
- Journalism
- Cultural and Social Change
- Domestic Policies
- The Environment and Natural Resources
- 1980s America
- The Modern Era (1980-Present)
- News Literacy
- Media Literacy
Introducing the Lesson
In 1988, wildfires burned out of control in Yellowstone National Park and virtually destroyed a national landmark.
That, at least, was a message broadcast by the national news media. But the reality proved more complex.
The wildfires did burn nearly a third of the park, but it wasn’t destroyed, nor were park officials to blame.
For decades, federal park policy put out every fire as soon as it started, a message driven home since the 1950s by advertisements featuring Smokey Bear.
But that policy allowed underbrush to quietly build up across the country’s national parks, providing dangerous fuel for potential wildfires.
To reduce that threat, park officials in 1972 began to let natural fires burn out unless computer models predicted a threat to life or property.
By the summer of 1988 in Yellowstone, that “natural burn” policy had failed to reduce the underbrush. Worse, a severe drought had turned the dead leaves and fallen limbs into tinder, ready to burn.
That summer, rare fierce winds ravaged the park, so when lightning ignited a series of small fires, they quickly spread, and soon rendered all existing fire-control models obsolete.
For two months, an army of firefighters fought daily to contain the spreading wildfires, but they were only put out with the help of a snowstorm in September.
The real lesson of 1988 was that naturally-caused fires are necessary to control the buildup of underbrush, and reduce the threat of devastating wildfires. But letting the fires burn isn’t always an option near some developed areas.
Essential Questions
- How did the 1988 Yellowstone wildfires affect public attitudes toward fire and forestry?
- How did the federal government’s policy toward the role of fires in forestry management change since 1910?
- What lessons have been learned from indigenous cultures about fire management?
- How will climate change affect the frequency and severity of forest fires?
Additional Resources
Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequences of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact or develop over the course of a text.
Evaluate the consequences of human-made and natural catastrophes on global trade, politics, and human migration.
Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.
Evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.
Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.
Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts.
Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.
Skill 7.F: Justify a proposed solution by explaining potential advantages.
Big Idea: Sustainability (STB)
- Data Analysis 5.C Explain patterns and trends in data to draw conclusions.
- Environmental Solutions 7.C Describe disadvantages, advantages, or unintended consequences for potential solutions.
- Environmental Solutions 7.F Justify a proposed solution, by explaining potential advantages.
- Interactions between different species and the environment.
- Sustainability
Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity
Evaluate claims, evidence, and reasoning that the complex interactions in ecosystems maintain relatively consistent numbers and types of organisms in stable conditions, but changing conditions may result in a new ecosystem.
Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.
Ecosystems are dynamic in nature; their characteristics can vary over time. Disruptions to any physical or biological component of an ecosystem can lead to shifts in all its populations.
Humans depend on Earth’s land, ocean, atmosphere, and biosphere for many different resources. Minerals, fresh water, and biosphere resources are limited, and many are not renewable or replaceable over human lifetimes. These resources are distributed unevenly around the planet as a result of past geologic processes
Human activities have significantly altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging or destroying natural habitats and causing the extinction of other species. But changes to Earth’s environments can have different impacts (negative and positive) for different living things.
Typically as human populations and per-capita consumption of natural resources increase, so do the negative impacts on Earth unless the activities and technologies involved are engineered otherwise.
Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems
Human activities have significantly altered the biosphere, sometimes damaging or destroying natural habitats and causing the extinction of other species. But changes to Earth’s environments can have different impacts (negative and positive) for different living things. Typically as human populations and per-capita consumption of natural resources increase, so do the negative impacts on Earth unless the activities and technologies involved are engineered otherwise.
Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming).
Construct an explanation that predicts patterns of interactions among organisms across multiple ecosystems.
Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
Design, evaluate, and refine a solution for reducing the impacts of human activities on the environment and biodiversity
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