gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
hsakols wrote:
I'm in El Portal and it is perfectly clear. Fire damages structures not forests. The Yellowstone Fires of 1988 resulted in creating more biological diversity in the long run. All I can say is we may have some amazing wildflower seasons coming up.
Natural fire doesn't damage forests and is part of the normal and necessary process of forest ecology. It serves to clear the buildup of brush and fallen trees and branches and generally "opens up" the forest without killing the larger, mature trees. In Yosemite you can see some beautiful examples of what that sort of fire accomplishes, even along portions of highway 120 - here the trees are healthy, the forest is more open, and light is everywhere.
The situation in many parts of the American West is not normal anymore. Because our instinct was to suppress all forest fires - remember Smokey, bless his heart? - the natural, periodic fires were decreased, and some areas have not burned in many, many decades. The result has been an unnatural accumulation of fuels on the forest floor. The problem here - and you can read about it in the context of the "Rim" fire - is that this can produce extremely hot fires and travel very fast and burn all the way into the crowns of the trees. Rather than improving the health of forests by thinning, these fires destroy vast swatches of mature trees, many of which may have been growing for up to centuries.
The result is not a healthy, open, renewing forest. It is a wasteland of dead and destroyed forest, often with no trees left, then with chaparral and underbrush crowding out the infant trees. There are also examples of this along the road into Yosemite Valley that you follow if you start out on highway 120. Heading toward the Valley, continue past the left turn toward Tuolumne Meadows and you are now on Big Oak Flat Road. As this road descends toward the village of Foresta the forest disappears and you drive through an extensive area of destruction where there used to be a healthy and thick forest. I remember, as I've been going to the park for "that long."
I'd have to look up the dates now, but the first major burn there was perhaps 20-25 years ago, at a time when fire management was not practiced. Indeed, this forest had become a fire disaster waiting to happen... and when it did happen, the mature trees were destroyed in a path that finally ended miles away up against Tioga Pass Road. (If you drive that road today, after passing some other examples of healthy managed fires, you will pass a section where there is a Valley that is still almost completely devoid of live trees - that is the end point of this fire.) Sadly, a misguided management burn in Foresta got out of control a couple decades later and reburned a similar area. Today the former forest above Foresta is a sad and destroyed place. Yes, there can be beautiful wildflowers in this landscape in the spring - I've photographed them many times - but it will be many decades before there will again be a forest like the one I remember. It won't be in my lifetime, unfortunately.
Like many of my age, I once believed that forest fires were a purely evil thing and were to be avoided at all costs. Then, over the years, I learned that it isn't that simple, and that fire is a natural and necessary thing. I came to view the fires and the burned areas in a different light, enjoying the stark beauty of their aftermath and, especially, the light-filled open forests that result from natural burns. Some years ago I even began to photograph this landscape, and I understand and support the managed burn policy.
But when I pass through these scenes of complete destruction such as those I described above and what I expect I'll see as a result of the current fire, amplified by two years of severe drought following years of no fire*, I have a hard time seeing the beauty.
Take care,
Dan
*Some portions of the current fire area have been burned in the past decades.
Edited on Aug 27, 2013 at 12:52 PM · View previous versions
|
). big oak flat 120 is closed but access to tioga pass is open. All the major entrances are open but 120 is not (it's fine if you're coming from tioga pass and then down to the valley).