‘Entering Burn Area’: Yosemite After the Fire

Fabulous piece of writing and photography. The author captured what my husband and I saw in mid-October in Mariposa Grove, Glacier Point, and Tuolumne Meadows (where they were conducting controlled burns).

My family camped in Yosemite throughout my childhood in the sixties. The firefall is one of my most vivid memories. It was spectacular.

You know, there are "hordes" of people who are desperate for work and are willing to work hard at jobs that few other people are willing to do. We could be helping them and helping ourselves by putting them to work in forests across the United States thinning trees, clearing underbrush, and generally working to restore forest health. And it would cost a fraction of what it costs to fight fires.

There’s something iconic about the way Yosemite greets and welcomes visitors. It’s like entering your a private backyard. I’ve been there with millions of visitors in summer and in winter solitude. It always seems smaller then suddenly larger than you imagine. Perhaps it’s the physical grandeur or simply the lighted mountain air but it never fails to instantly soothe and suggest adventure. Say the word “Yosemite” in conversation and a brief visual apparition hangs in the air. It’s that kind of place.

What is the thing that looks like it's breathing in the "What The Fire Left Behind" video? I can't make it out. Is it an animal or just debris blowing in the wind?

Thanks for this article and the images. I only wish there was a bit more talk about the difference between a controlled burn and a wildfire. Yes, plants rejuvenate but not necessarily when they are consumed by an undiscminating wildfire.

Recall the spectacular Ken Burns/PBS series on our national parks, which was amazing on its own terms, but especially emphatic visually about the endowment that is in our trust, not only for future generations of Americans, but for all persons world wide. Our parks are what the Amazon has been recently called (in a different kind of context: planetary carbon sink against global warming): A GLOBAL PUBLIC GOOD. Our "national" parks are a global public good, placed by Time in our trust. Global warming is Capitalism smothering life. It is like an atmospheric hand put over the mouth of the land for the sake of this-generation's advantage. I came up with a new idea recently (maybe not new): What so-called "regulation" by good government does is draw short-term thinking UP INTO LONG-TERM VALUE. Good government reins up short-term thinking. Good government sees horizons. Future generations unwittingly (not yet alive) DEPEND ON THEIR ANCESTORS TO HAVE SEEN the long-term horizons of our heirs.

Although some commenters seem to have missed the information, this article contains a key paragraph that mentions how, in areas of past controlled burns in the park, the fire was not as hot or as destructive. That's all we need to know about how to approach our future of greater fire danger in California. Controlled burns can be timed to occur in the fall, just after the first couple of rains and with rain in the near future. With a significant controlled burn program, coupled with early detection and aggressive containment during the long summer dry season, we can solve this problem. There is no sense in failing to take these steps. Even though global warming is largely to blame, it is a fact and even if we get carbon emissions under control we still have the problem of hotter weather for the foreseeable future. Two technologies need to be aggressively implemented: mass pyrolysis (conversion of plant material to charcoal) and aerial/space surveillance. The one maximizes the benefits of controlled burns by sequestering carbon (which is a natural soil amendment), the other makes it possible to implement rapid fire response across the vast areas of California to create the same kind of strategy used in the last century to put an end to catastrophic urban fires. To make this a win/win: fund the effort by having the State take over fire insurance in wildland fire areas. Better to prevent than to inadequately compensate after the fact.

Fine writing by Bonnie Tsui. Yosemite is a magnificent park, and at one time I lived less than three hours from it. But the intensity of California fires is frightening... along with the potential destruction from the effects of climate change. California depends on the cycle of drought, yet big snows in the Sierras that cache deep snowpacks to provide water in the drought months. There can be twenty feet of snow base up there. I don't know how delicate of a cycle this is, but if global warming delays, or shortens any of the cycle, we could be in for more fires. The wet seasons could grow back their cover, only to head into longer, drier seasons that burn. These are huge areas. Some areas just have to be preserved as large landed regions that are undeveloped. This philosophy flies in the face of land developers who want to mine and build into these areas. Places like Yosemite have been preserved from development, but we wonder how much its landscape could be altered by a change in climate.

No mention of the impact of the fire on the park’s other life form: animals.

”Dutch Crunch Bread?” Is what, exactly?

As stunning as Yosemite and other national parks are, if we don't cultivate an appreciation in our daily lives of the most mundane things in the natural world, we will lose it all. Nature does not begin or end at the borders of a national park. Yes, Yosemite is sacred, but so is the river that runs through your town.

This summer my wife and I spent a couple weeks in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. They are still very beautiful and they are truly treasures of our country. However, the glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone in about two years, and they are now just small patches in the vast landscape. The water flow through the vast valleys of both parks is drying up. And both parks are burning up. Long hikes that previously had been through lush forest are now often through sections or entire areas of burned out dead trees. The locals in both areas talk about the rejuvenation of the forests that will result from the fires. But that will take many decades or longer. I hope my grandchildren get to see it. I rarely hear locals out west talk about climate change. The mid-west and west, mostly Trump country, will eventually be forced by circumstance to come to terms with the drought and fires that will continue to ravage the area. Some will blame these circumstances on poor management or even the Democrats. We will need to find a national policy that addresses climate change before it is too late. On the eve of a national election, with the country more divided then any time since Vietnam or perhaps the civil war, it looks to me like our parks will continue to burn.

Ms. Tsui you ask, "Is it weird that I have a framed photo of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt hanging in my bedroom?" No. It's AWESOME! WE THE PEOPLE must demand that OUR U.S. and State governments, along with private Socially and Environmentally Conscious companies, create excellent, sustainable jobs for people to protect and preserve/protect OUR public, open lands. I am a tree hugger. Nothing is more healing to me than being in old-growth forests and other green places. There is oxygen in abundance and room to breathe. There is life. We must not allow Robber Barons to cause more damage or leave it to the wealthiest to "save" them. We must not allow OUR lands to go untended anymore. Not now. Not ever.

I've been going to Yosemite since childhood, and it is indeed a sacred place. I recommend going in the dead of winter if there's not too much snow on the ground. The Ferguson Fire occurred in an area of small to medium sized trees, where savage logging occurred throughout the 20th century. This creates hotter microclimates, and is force multiplier for climate change, a fact fully reported in the Biology and Forestry literature. Had there not been fire suppression and clearcutting/high grading in the area, fires would have left many trees standing. We have a place north of Yosemite, on the Feather River, in Plumas County, and Trump/Zinke are accelerating logging throughout the National Forests there. It's a recipe for disaster, and our children will be paying the tab. Here's a fact few realize: After a fire, 85% of the site carbon remains on site, and the charcoal acts as a soil amendment. After logging, it's the opposite: only 15% of the carbon logging is sequestered in wood products. The opposite of what logic and intuition tell you, in other words, but where the data is clear. We use 25% of the earth's wood products, with 4% of the population. This is so sick it's malevolent. We need to switch to inert and durable materials, for housing, packaging, and much else, to save our forests and our climate. https://thinkprogress.org/which-emits-the-most-co2-in-home-construction-steel-concrete-or-timber-a6a8b2d3370f/ [email protected]

Thank you for calling attention to this issue in an artful way.

Yellowstone burned in 1988 and has come back stronger than ever. It proved to the NPS that you cannot continue to surpress naturally occuring fires without creating the perfect conditions for a firestorm when prolonged dry conditions come. Fire brings new life. Let it burn.

Vegetable life is incredibly tenacious, and never ceases to amaze me. But the last time I drove through California on a trip north to south during the height of the drought in 2015, what struck me was the prospect of desertification, that the soil could die for lack of moisture and cover. Later I hiked a section of the PCT that had burned several years prior; the soil was ash and dust, with brambles and the like proliferating, but hardly thriving, and no tree seedlings to be found. Megafires will create such dustbowls I fear, and rampant erosion. I am planning to join friends in Kings Canyon next summer for a hike of several weeks. I expect to be shocked and saddened, and as always overawed by the majesty of the Sierras.

Having rock climbed, backpacked, and worked throughout Yosemite NP and surrounding areas, its always terrible to view the devastation wrought by fires like the Ferguson and Rim (2013) fires. And as the writer points out, the local natives, the Ahwahneechee, have successfully managed fire risk and controlled the crowding out of forests through their own controlled burns, something that the US conservation movement, spearheaded by Muir, eradicated. A recent article in Scientific American, "Native American Land-Use Practices and Ecological Impacts" by Kat Anderson of UCLA and Michael Moratto of CSU Fresno underlines this: for 10,000 years Amerindians in the Sierra successfully mitigated the danger of huge fires with controlled burns, also thinning the forests while controlling the growth of shade trees. The idea is re-iterated on a blog in the same journal, "The Primate Diaries," with the heading "How John Muir's Brand of Conservation Lead to the Decline of Yosemite." Part of the story of the creation of Yosemite, the idea of Yosemite and wilderness, is the story of the eradication of the Ahwahneechee, a few of the remaining Fresno-based tribe I've met over the years (having been forced out of the Valley a century ago). The point? Grabbing the land for recreational use and eradicating the original inhabitants has caused untold misery for the natives and environmental degradation across the West, with Zinke as the most recent, and egregious example, of bad stewardship.

Beautiful article. Trees having a heartbeat is much more than “literary conceit”. They are an expression of consciousness and can be experienced as such. In doing so, experiencing nature becomes so much more and all the world changes dramatically for us. Something Native Americans have always known.

And not a word of how NPS and CDF have grossly mismanaged the area. CDF has been so aggresive about squashing each fire that areas which need a burn every decade haven't burned in 100 years, and NPS is worse. Fire is a crucial for these ecosystems-- so crucial that bristlecone pine can't propogate without fire, and Sacramento and DC continue to destroy

Many if not most of these fires are started by arsonist. As per a nytimes article about forrest fires where only fires from the sixties forward there were more fires. But if you looked at the charts presented in that acrticle the 1930's had more and larger fires than we are experiencing now. I know there can be other reasons for why they were worse back then besides weather and climate but it was hotter in the thirties. Know about the dust bowl drought where dry weather combined with bad farming techniques created a disaster. Rhetoric is not science and here I'm as always in the times after spectacularly bad weather events we're told it was climate change .

Let's not forget, California state air pollution authorities have complicated controlled burns in Yosemite, and I presume elsewhere, by whining that smoke from these burns, which are our best hope for preventing a devastating wildfire, might cause health issues outside the park. Ridiculous. I'm all for clean air, but, at some point, common sense should kick in. If we don't want mega fires overwhelming our natural treasures, we need these burns, and we have a lot of catching up to do after so many decades of stomping out all forest fires, no matter what.

This is a great article, but our national and state parks would be in trouble even without climate change. They've been increasingly seen as revenue machines and sold off to private interests. Biologist and conservationist park employees have been silenced as development, tourism, roads, and other harmful activities are increased. Park workers are underpaid and often seasonal, with no job security. Ryan Zinke and others in the Trump gang want to allow ruinous logging, mining, hunting, ORVs, and fossil fuel exploitation in our parks and other public lands. Climate change is terrible, manmade, and global. But our parks are under threat by development, increased tourism, and bad management. If you care about parks, fight back.

for those like me challenged by large numbers, 100,000 acres = 150 square miles or what the rest of the world calls 400 square kilometers.

Beautifully written and another reason to vote tomorrow and in 2020. We must get rid of the monsters in our current administration who would give mining and lumber rights to the businesses that lobby them. Please vote. Your national parks depend on it.

Sad, but beautiful as mother nature renews the earth.

This article most disappointingly barely cites one of the main causes of mega-fires, one hundred and ten years of fire suppression policies. Of course, I do believe that climate change is happening, and in the case of the Yosemite area increasing the risk of fire. But, the overwhelming cause of these destructive fires has been over a century of fire prevention, which has allowed the forests to be crowded with fuel. Additionally, there is evidence that 'natural' fires actually did affect widespread acreage like our current fires; hence the reactionary policies of the American government, trying to prevent infrastructure loss. The difference was in the intensity of the fires; i.e. John Muir wrote of intentionally surviving a wildfire in a hollowed out Giant Sequoia tree, which he did successfully. The story of American ecosystems is much more complex than just solely that climate change is affecting fire cycles negatively. The ecosystems have been ravaged by human induced fire suppression, and other factors, that have left the forests much more susceptible to "megafires".

Thank you for this article. Change is inevitable on Mother Earth, and is measured over millennium. We should not be helping speed the process. Protect our parks

This is a wonderful piece about Yosemite. My partner and I started our pilgrimage to the backcountry when Ferguson ignited. During the evening we surrendered sunsets and stargazing to the ever expanding haze. Before entering the park we had spent the night in Bristlecone Pine Forest after visiting the grove of four thousand year old pines. This was my partners first trip to Yosemite. I had the pleasure of witnessing her awe of granite, water, trees, history and deep-restorative silence. Trees work so hard for the planet. More public land is needed.