Wildfires

By Mark Derowitsch

America has some of the world’s most breathtaking trees.

Think about it for a moment. There are majestic, towering redwoods along the West Coast. Colorful, vibrant maple trees throughout the New England countryside. Stand after stand of pines, as far as the eye can see, high up in the Rocky Mountains. And lush, green parks liberally scattered around the nation filled with trees of all different shapes and sizes.

In fact, it’s difficult to find a place in the United States that doesn’t have its own distinct, inspiring trees.

The United States is home to 10 percent of the world’s forestlands. Much of America’s forestlands, especially west of the Mississippi River, were set aside by the federal government as protected through the Land Revision Act of 1891. These tracts of land reserves later became our national forests and parks that millions of Americans enjoy each year.

A short time after the Land Revision Act became law, President Theodore Roosevelt—one of the early leaders in the conservation movement—used it to increase the federal forest reserves by 150 million acres. These lands were turned into our national forests, national parks and grasslands.

Today, millions of Americans benefit from the foresight to preserves our forests. Think of all the ways we use the forests. We enjoy hiking through magnificent stands of trees through the mountains, skiing in the winter months and interacting with the natural world or viewing nature’s beauty and wildlife out in the open air. Trees also provide wood for homes, habitat for wildlife and clean air and drinking water for millions of Americans.

But our forests are being destroyed as never before by wildfires.

Higher temperatures and drought conditions have fueled record wildfires in recent years. Wildfire season—which used to begin in late summer—is starting earlier than ever. Some large-scale fires are burning hotter than usual, eliminating the chance that charred acres of land will regenerate.

Wildfires are nature’s way of clearing brush that has built up in the forest. Certain species of pine trees need fire to naturally regenerate. The pinecones from these trees need fire to open and release their seeds.

Sometimes, wildfires are severe enough to capture the attention of the nation.

Who can forget the wildfires that roared through Yellowstone National Park in 1988, scorching more than 1.4 million acres of land before they were finally put out in late fall?

The Yellowstone fires raged throughout the summer as North America experienced a severe drought. Many days, smoke blocked out much of the sun, and white ash from burning trees and vegetation floated to the ground like snowflakes. The fires finally slowed in September, and were finally extinguished for good by snowfall in October.

How big were the fires? In all, more than 25,000 firefighters, who came in from every part of the United States, at one time or another helped fight the raging Yellowstone fires.

One witness said spending time outdoors at Yellowstone that summer was “like being in a smoke-filled room.”

Gallatin National Forest, the “Gateway to Yellowstone,” suffered major devastation from the fires. The Gallatin is located in southwestern Montana and borders Yellowstone to the north.

A Nebraska-based, but nationally focused, nonprofit organization decided to help replant trees that were lost in the Yellowstone fires.

The Arbor Day Foundation forged a partnership with the U.S. Forest Service to plant trees in America’s National Forests in the aftermath of the Yellowstone fires. That partnership remains strong today.

Through the generosity of its members, the Arbor Day Foundation was able to help plant more than 125,000 trees in the Gallatin by the spring of 1990. These trees were planted in areas of the forest that the U.S. Forest Service determined that regeneration wouldn’t take place without human help.

Since then, the Arbor Day Foundation has worked with the Forest Service to plant 18 million trees in our nation’s forests. These trees are making a difference in the world today as they help remove pollutants from the air, clean drinking water for millions of Americans, provide homes to countless wildlife species and prevent soil erosion in some of the most beautiful areas of the country.

The need, however, is still great. In addition to the wildfires, the U.S. Forest Service is fighting decreasing budgets and rising costs of battling the blazes. The Forest Service has a backlog of one million acres that will not naturally regenerate and must be replanted.

America’s national forests are like treasures, treasures that need to be preserved and passed down for generations to come. It’s vital that we continue to reforest these vast areas of land to ensure that the forests will continue to be healthy and vibrant.

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