Ecology: The Yellowstone Wildfires of 1988

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.