[elk bugling] [fire sizzling] - [Firefighter] Copy.

[crickets chirping] [birds cawing] [mysterious music] [fires sizzling] - First tonight, we focus on the fires in Yellowstone and the damage they're doing to the park.

- As the controversy over firefighting policy rages on so do the fires.

Officials here admit the situation is grim and with the weather forecast calling for 50 mile an hour winds over the weekend they're worried the fires will become even more destructive.

[fires sizzling] - Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming today called on the president to declare Yellowstone National Park a national disaster area and the figures to support his requests are now staggering, 650,000 acres of parkland destroyed.

And listen to this one, until now, no more than 30,000 acres of the park have ever burned in a whole year.

Yesterday, 45,000 acres were destroyed in one day.

[mysterious music] - One look at this charred and barren landscape and it's easy to understand why the great Yellowstone fires of the summer of '88 have aroused such passions.

It's hard not to react with sorrow and anger to these desolate scenes.

Those emotions have fueled a huge debate about the role that fires should or should not play in our wild lands.

But in fact, the fires that swept through Yellowstone were only the beginning of a saga as big and beautiful as the park itself.

The fiery holocaust that we watched each night on the evening news did not herald the death of a forest, but instead, it's phoenix-like rebirth, the same process by which the Yellowstone we love was created in the first place.

If we can understand that process, perhaps our sorrow for what was lost will be tempered by the joy of new beginnings.

Born a fire, molded by titanic forces, Yellowstone has always been a showcase of nature's might and its splendor.

In the public's mind, the park was a paradise, vast, verdant, pristine, a place which epitomized all that was best in the great wild west where some of the most magnificent animals on earth still roamed, majestic and unbound.

Yellowstone stood on a pedestal, an island of natural perfection, but few of the millions who came to the park realized that this world they so admired was formed by fire and needed fire to sustain it.

Long before the west was settled, fire was a familiar feature of Yellowstone.

Major blazes occurred every 200 to 300 years.

In August of 1886, the US cavalry took charge of the park and set to work fighting the smaller fires which flared up every summer.

Everywhere, there are abundant signs of the long partnership of Yellowstone and fire.

Scars on the trunks of living trees testify to the countless fires which have passed through the park over the years.

The lodgepole pine, which makes up almost 80% of Yellowstone's forests, is dependent upon fire to maintain its dominant status.

This pine sapling sprouted from a seed which was released by the heat of a blaze.

Fresh, vigorous and fertilized by the ashes in which it grows, it owes its life to fire.

But in 1988, one-third of Yellowstone's forests look much like this, shaded by a canopy of old largepole pines, years of accumulated duff and dead wood carpeted the forest floor.

This dense mat of debris would provide a bumper supply of fuel once the fires began.

The park's oldest forest with their dense understory of spruce and firs were even more flammable.

In a fire, the understory would serve as ladders to lift flames up to the crowns of the pines.

The stage was set for a major blaze given the right conditions.

[ominous music] In the summer of 1988, for the first time in recorded history, virtually no rain fell in Yellowstone Park.

[ominous music] In the sun-bleached meadows and hot sage flats, quality forage became hard to find.

[ominous music] As temperatures climbed into the 90's and reserves of standing water shrank, all of Yellowstone seemed to wait in anticipation of the great event to come.

[ominous music] All that was needed now was something to ignite it, a spark.

[ominous music] [thunder clapping] The fire spread quickly through the dry summer grass engulfing the trees where fuels had been stored through the decades The flames shot up to the crowns of the tall lodgepole pines forming a chimney of fire fed by resins released by the burning pine needles.

[fires sizzling] With temperatures in the heart of the blaze exceeding 1,000 degrees, trees flashed into flame with explosive fury.

[fires sizzling] Under these conditions, forests in all stages of succession were set ablaze, regardless of how long it had been since they last burned.

Whipped by arid winds that gusted to 70 miles an hour, the fire raced through the understory, spiraling upward to ignite the crowns.

As hot air swept into the sky, strong winds were sucked in to feed the flames, creating a firestorm.

The blaze became self-sustaining.

Wind and drought, plus the flammable state of the forest had brought the burn Yellowstone had waited for.

[fire sizzling] The first fire started on May 24th.

By mid-July, a dozen separate blazes, many starting outside the park, were burning simultaneously throughout the greater Yellowstone area.

Since 1972, it had been park service policy to fight only those fires caused by people unless lives, property or endangered species were threatened.

In a typical year, most natural fires rarely burned more than an acre, but 1988 was a year of extremes.

[dramatic music] Driven by hot dry winds that hurled burning fire brands more than a mile ahead of the flames, the fire skipped and jumped across the park advancing by as much as 10 miles in a single day.

[dramatic music] To many experts, it was clear this was a blaze that no human force could hope to control.

While the fires burned, the park remained open to visitors and many stayed to gaze at the spectacle.

[fire sizzling] Conditioned to think of fire as an instrument of destruction, the human observers were often horrified by what they saw.

But the wild inhabitants of the park displayed surprising indifference to the flames bearing down on their world.

[fire sizzling] Clearly, the wildlife did not share our fear of fire.

Each had a strategy for survival.

[birds screeching] [fire sizzling] Many residents found refuge underground.

Because of the extraordinary insulating effects of soil, small burrowing animals could stay comfortable only inches below the flames.

With a well-ventilated borough, there was little risk of asphyxiation.

[fire sizzling] And at the height of the fires, as a result of their normal seasonal response to drought, the sage-dwelling ground squirrels were already in hibernation.

Sound asleep in their dens, they were blissfully unaware of the flames sweeping by overhead.

As the fires raged on through the park, the large mammals like the bison simply moved out of the way.

[ominous music] Though encircled by flames and shrouded in a suffocating fall of smoke, the herds continue to behave as if the fires were an everyday occurrence.

Yet seeing images like these on the nightly news many people began to wonder if the death of Yellowstone was at hand.

[ominous music] [engine blaring] From the outset, the park service had been fighting all those fires which were human-caused and several of the biggest blazes were clearly in this category, the result of accidents or neglect.

Firefighting crews from across the United States were part of this effort, but the public's perception was that far too little was being done, that Yellowstone's survival as a natural treasure was in serious jeopardy.

By late July, the fires were still widely scattered and had affected only a small percentage of the park, but the flames were spreading rapidly and government officials responded with demands for action.

The park service found itself under siege.

- Well, the fires, we consider the Grant Village as relatively secure.

- [George] On July 21st, the service went into a full suppression mode and announced that all new fires, whether natural or human-caused, would be fought.

It was a declaration of war.

Our ancient foe would be fought with all the manpower we could muster.

To back up the civilian effort, more than 4,000 soldiers and marines were airlifted into the park.

Altogether, 25,000 men and women would fight the fight.

At its height, this war would cost three million dollars in federal funds every day.

For the military, this would be a new and frustrating kind of warfare.

Their usual weapons were exchanged for rakes and shovels.

Throughout history, fire has been used as a tool, one of the few elemental forces people could control and it seemed logical to think that the fiery tide engulfing Yellowstone could be turned aside by men and machines.

While choppers doused the trees with fire-retarding chemicals, the Marines went to work building and maintaining fire lines but the fire proved to be an intractable enemy and the high winds many traditional firefighting techniques were useless.

Almost none of the fire lines held and the best anyone could do seemed feeble when pitted against the superior forces of nature.

- [Firefighter] It's right around here.

Pour it over there, yeah.

- [George] By August, as the war against the fire steadily escalated, even the most stubborn had to acknowledge the limits of human efforts.

By early September, nothing in Yellowstone seemed immune from attack, including the park headquarters.

For the elk, life went on undisturbed with the headquarters lawn hosting the annual ritual of the rut.

[elk calling] [elk grunting] But grim battles loomed ahead.

On September 7th, the North Fork Fire, a blaze that was human-caused, swept down on Old Faithful Inn, threatening to destroy it.

Nearby, Old Faithful performed on cue as if competing with the flames while the firestorm marched closer by the minute.

[ominous music] Like poison gas in a time of war, a cloud of choking smoke swept in ahead of the flames.

[ominous music] [sirens blaring] The park service ordered the last of the concession employees in the area evacuated.

This was fire as we know it, the scourge of human life and property.

A superhuman firefight seemed inevitable if the settlement was to be saved.

In the afternoon, the assault began.

Hoses were turned onto buildings.

It was hoped the parking lot would serve as a fire break.

While embers exploding from the trees set cabins and storage buildings ablaze, a truly heroic effort kept old glory waving above the end.

In the end, it was a chance shift in the wind that spared the treasured structure.

Only a few nearby cabins were lost.

Just 14 out of a total of 400 structures were destroyed, an incredible victory under such daunting conditions.

But Yellowstone and fire had a scheduled appointment to keep and refusing to be stopped, the flames burned on across tens of thousands of additional wilderness acres.

On a day dubbed Black Saturday, an eerie darkness overtook the afternoon sun.

Magnificent in its way, the fire had lent its own beauty and serenity to the wonder that is Yellowstone.

[birds squealing] [ominous music] In three months, 13 major blazes had burned three-quarters of a million acres, almost a third of the park.

But not all of the burned areas had been affected to the same extent.

[ominous music] This map shows the total area of the park touched by fire.

But within the fire's perimeters, not all areas burned with equal intensity.

Hot crown fires colored red occurred alongside less intense ground fires in yellow and some areas didn't burn at all.

[ominous music] In the fight to contain the fires, $120 million would be spent, all to little effect.

[helicopter whirring] [ominous music] While the fires continued to burn, aerial surveys took stock of the changes in the land and began the count of casualties.

Surprisingly, relatively few large mammals died.

With a total of 30,000 elk in the park, only 246, just 1% of the herd, are known to have perished.

Most of these died from smoke inhalation when trapped by fast moving fires.

[ominous music] Because wind blown embers touched off fires wherever they happened to land, the overall pattern of the burn was spotty, a patchwork quilt of areas that had burned to different degrees.

This mosaic effect would promote a welcome increase in diversity as seemingly uniform tracks of forest gave way to patches in various stages of succession.

A study of the occurrence of fire in Yellowstone during the past 300 years reveals the mosaic effect through time.

Red patches of fire have flared periodically over the area, followed by fresh new growth colored yellow.

In time, the young vegetation ages and the burned areas return to mature dark green forest.

This dynamic flux contrasts with what Yellowstone might look like without fire.

The diversity of landscapes gives way to the gradual development of one large old growth forest.

In recent decades, the advancing maturity of Yellowstone's actual forests helped set the stage for 1988's dramatic fires of renewal.

Many species in Yellowstone, most notably the largepole pine, use fire to their advantage.

In the strategy of the pine, some of the cones open only in response to the heat of the blaze, releasing their seeds days after the flames have passed through.

This adaptation, called serotiny, ensures that space, nutrients and sunshine will be in ample supply for a new generation of pines.

In the freshly burned forest, the windfall of up to one million seeds per acre triggered a burst of activity.

By stashing the seeds of the white bark pine and then sometimes neglecting to retrieve them, the clark's nutcracker played a vital role in the survival of the tree.

Far from desolate, the forest buzzed with life after the fires.

No shortage of food awaited this red squirrel on an early excursion back to its territory in the wake of the burn.

The reserves of unburned cones could sustain a hardy survivor like this for several years.

But to harvest the cones, it would have to contend with a desperate shortage of cover for protection from predators.

For predators like the great gray owl, the fire was anything but a burden.

It was an unprecedented bonanza.

Forced to seek refuge in small islands of grass, mice and voles made easy prey.

Before the ground had cooled, pioneers of many species had shuffled in to survey the territory.

A porcupine returned to its old haunts to feed on the inner barks of the burned trees.

In time, a new supply of tendered twigs and buds would increase its odds of survival.

After the fire, the opportunists had the edge.

The black bear is one of these, adept at taking advantage of fresh circumstances.

With her cub born before the fires, a bear unearths a delicacy, the nest of a colony of ground-dwelling wasps, which survived the flames unharmed.

[wasps buzzing] [bear growling] Though rebuffed by the wasps, the bears with their flexible feeding strategy would endure few hardships after the burn.

[gentle music] The big herbivores like the elk must consume large amounts of forage on a daily basis.

Within hours after the flames swept through, they resumed their search for food.

As if driven by instinct, the herds drifted into the newly burned meadows.

With their energy sapped by the long summer drought, they could do little more now than wait for the miracle of regeneration to transform their world.

[mysterious music] Many turn to less favored sources of food, such as pine needles.

Not as nourishing as grasses and herbs but able to make the difference between starvation and survival.

With summer ranges already diminished by the drought, many elk had begun an early migration to their winter ranges.

The herds trekked down slope shrouded in ash searching for food wherever they could find it.

The margins of streams often supported a fringe of unburned grasses, a valuable resource in the first days after the fire.

Moose are rarely found far from water, and much of their diet depends on vegetation that grows on the bottom of lakes and streams.

This affinity for water may explain why only two of their kind are known to have died in the flames.

Depleted by the drought, the bison trudged along the burned sage flats where soon new grasses would supply an abundance of forage.

And even as the fire still burned, in the blackened woods, the event occurred which had been so long awaited.

[mysterious music] Undamaged by the flames, the roots of the grasses set up new stems and leaves nourished by the nutrients in the ashes.

These young grasses appearing within days of the burn would provide high quality food for the grazing animals.

[fire sizzling] Through the summer, the fires smoldered in the ghostly groves.

When the great inferno was extinguished at last, it was not by human means.

A gentle snowfall, just one quarter inch of precipitation, accomplished what all our efforts could not as one natural process gave way to another.

[mysterious music] By mid-November, the last of the fires was out.

Winter had settled on Yellowstone.

Hard on the heels of several mild winters, conditions reverted to normal with days of bitter cold and heavy snow.

For the big mammals, this would be a time of trials.

The years of unseasonably mild weather had seen a steady increase in the number of elk, but now, worn down by the effects of the drought, the herds confronted their toughest test, to survive until spring.

Even in weather that dipped far below freezing, animals which depend on the rivers enjoyed a distinct advantage.

Fed by warm springs, many of Yellowstone's streams provided refuge for birds, like the trumpeter swans, ducks and Canada geese.

But while the water birds were able to feed virtually undisturbed through the winter, the elk were less fortunate.

Unable to find their preferred food, many elk turned of necessity to whatever was at hand.

For some, the end of the struggle was a foregone conclusion.

For a limited time, the green needles of the pines would keep the weak alive, but such low energy forage was at best a last resort.

In nature's great scheme of things, no mercy is shown to individuals, but the resourceful and the strong would survive to lend their vigor to future herds.

By the geysers and thermal pools, some elk found food through the winter.

In long files, the bison trooped here by the dozens following the streams to the source of the warm waters.

The heat of the springs reduced snow cover and they could find grazing here.

These would survive while hundreds more would be shot by hunters when the bison sought food outside the boundaries of the park.

Yet even within the park, death would come to many.

Drought, fire and winter were too much for the feeble, the old and the very young.

[dramatic music] [wolf howling] To some accustomed to lean winters, the kills would be a boon, a feast of record proportions.

[wolves growling] All told, a third of the elk may have perished, but by thinning the herds, winter may have strengthened both predators and prey.

[crow cawing] With the coming of spring, the melting snow fed countless streams.

Water rushed down slopes once thick with vegetation leeching from the ash the rich legacy of the fires of summer.

In natural basins, the sediment swirled to the bottom and cold, clear water moved on fortified with nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium.

As they flowed through forest thinned by the fires, the waters drew warmth from the sun.

These warm enriched streams would support a thriving aquatic community for years to come.

Now, in a ritual unaffected by the fires, the rivers played host to the yearly migration of cutthroat trout.

Below the cataracts, the trout gathers strength for the leaps which take them upstream.

Step by step, they make their way to the shallow gravel beds to spawn a new generation.

The spring rains brought further benefits to the land, soaking the layers of ash and washing into the soil the rich nutrients once locked up in the tissues of trees.

Drinking deeply from this brew, life sprang forth in glorious profusion.

Among the first of the plants to benefit was the pink fireweed.

[mysterious music] Yellow balsam root joined the colorful display in mountain meadows.

Stimulated by the fire to sprout new shoots from its unburned roots, fireweed will dominate these woodlands for two or three years to come, providing healthy food for forest dwellers large and small.

The rufous hummingbird was one of many species eager to exploit the rich nectar and help pollinate the flowers of the fireweed.

[birds and bees buzzing] The hawk moth caterpillar not only feeds on the fireweed but is provided with protective coloration, which blends in well with this plant.

Formica ants share in the wealth by milking a sugary nectar from tiny green aphids feeding on the fireweed.

The ants obtain food while the aphids in turn are protected by the ants from predators.

Everywhere in the post fire forest, busy feeders and pollinators were at work.

The most visible result of the fire was a flush of wild foods for survivors of the trials which began with the drought of the previous summer.

With a greater variety and abundance of food than before the fire, the herds would soon rebound and throughout the burned forests, the slow work of renewal would proceed.

Since it reproduces slowly from seed, the sagebrush, which formerly covered vast areas of the park, would give way to grasses.

Higher in nutrition than sage, the grasses would provide better grazing for more than a decade.

In Yellowstone, fire is instrumental to the survival of aspen.

Its leaves are an important source of sugars for elk, moose and new dear.

Aspens maintain a special hormonal balance between the buds and leaves above ground and the roots below.

When the tree is healthy, the production of new chutes from the existing root system is inhibited.

Even a light ground fire is enough to kill the standing trees, but the roots survive intact.

The scorched buds can no longer inhibit the production of new chutes from the vast root system.

An abundance of new trees springs to life, supplying yet another superb source of food for the wildlife of Yellowstone.

The seedlings of the largepole pines enjoyed their own strategy for success, drawing nutrients from the ashes and thriving in the sunny open spaces.

Everywhere, there were signs of coordinated activity, creatures busily at work moving energy and nutrients through the food chain.

Carpenter ants were presented with an almost unlimited choice of nesting sites.

By hollowing out the burned trees, they began the process of transforming dead wood into valuable food.

In turn, the ants would provide abundant food for birds and other animals.

Attracted by scent to a freshly burned tree, the wood-boring beetles were among the first wave of invaders.

Beetles are prime movers in the process of digesting wood and reducing it to nutrients.

They also promote regeneration by creating new home sites for bees, key agents in the pollination of plants.

[bees buzzing] The hairy woodpecker benefited from the explosion of beetle larvae.

[woodpecker pecking] The morning cloak butterfly followed soon after to drink the sap from the woodpecker holes.

The following spring, the mountain bluebird claimed the nest cavity the woodpecker had built.

So the land and life of Yellowstone were once again restored and a new world began in the wake of the old.

When fire swept Yellowstone in the summer of 1988, many believed that the park and all of its wonders would be destroyed forever.

We now know that just as the rainforest depends upon rain, Yellowstone depends upon fire to set in motion the processes essential to its survival.

[gentle music] An unprecedented opportunity now exists to witness the historic process at work.

As the seeds of renewal continue the gradual regreening of Yellowstone.

If there is one lesson to be learned from the great fires of 1988, it may be that we must trust nature a little bit more and listen to the lessons it can teach us.

Yellowstone will move through time in its own way, at its own pace.

[inspiring music] And wherever the flames brushed the land, it now wears fresh apparel.

[inspiring music] [elk yelling] As wondrous as it ever was, Yellowstone remains an incomparable place for life.

[peaceful music] [peaceful music continues] [peaceful music continues] [bright music]