This 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.
Blazes That Damaged Yellowstone Changed Wildfire Strategy
A rapidly growing California wildfire is threatening a grove of giant Sequoia trees in Yosemite National Park, some nearly 3,000 years old. For context, we examine the 1988 fires in Yellowstone National Park that ignited a debate over firefighting tactics and sustainable forestry.
Increasingly, wildfires affect populated areas. But more than 30 years ago, it was a huge fire in Yellowstone National Park that stoked media attention and political controversy.
The continuing narrative that summer was that park officials had negligently let the fires burn out of control and destroyed the legendary national park, which had supplied generations of visitors with fond memories and colorful snapshots.
But the story that played out on national television was incomplete. Until the 1970s, fire policy had called for putting out every forest fire as soon as it started, creating tons of underbrush in Yellowstone – and in parks across the nation. And that underbrush had set the stage for raging wildfires. When federal officials shifted fire policy in 1972 to allow for naturally-caused fires to burn themselves out, and, hopefully, reduce potentially deadly build up of underbrush, it turned out to be too little too late. It failed to make a dent in the thousands of acres of dry underbrush that ignited in Yellowstone during the summer of 1988, the summer that gave everyone an education in fire.
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- Lesson plan 1: The Yellowstone Fires of 1988
- Read transcript
- Producer: Singeli Agnew
- Producer: Laurence B. Chollet
- Editor: Ben Howard
- Reporter: Olivia Katrandjian