SOFIA JARAMILLO

THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE in this fire-scarred

forest is the color. Not long ago this square of

land south of Yellowstone National Park was a

monochrome of ash and burned pines. But last

summer, shin-high seedlings and aspen shoots

painted the ground an electric green. Purple

fireweed and blood-red buffalo berries sprouted

around blackened logs. Yellow arnicas danced

in the breeze. Five years after 2016’s Berry fire

chewed through 33 square miles of Wyoming,

this slice of scorched earth was responding to fire

as Rocky Mountain forests have for millennia: It

had entered a season of rebirth.

Monica Turner was cataloging that recovery.

On a sweltering July day, Turner, a professor of

ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison,

shuffled along a line of tape she’d stretched 50

meters across the ground. She and a graduate

student were counting every lodgepole pine

seedling within a meter on either side. We were

far enough from paved roads that there was

no telling which forest inhabitants might be

lurking—elk, deer, moose, wolves. The air was

so hot I wondered fleetingly if the bear spray

canister on Turner’s hip might explode.

So many tiny trunks crowded the researchers’

Ecologist Monica

Turner counts lodge-

pole pine seedlings

sprouting (along with

fireweed) among pines

that burned in 2016.

Fire opens seed cones,

allowing lodgepoles

to regenerate—but if

another fire comes be -

fore trees mature, they

may not grow back.

WYOMING

SOUTH OF

YELLOWSTONE

THIS BURNED FOREST

IS GROWING BACK,

BUT OTHERS AREN’T

T

48 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC