Yellowstone Springs Back After Devastating Inferno : Ecology: Wildflowers, grass and lodgepole pine saplings have sprouted among the trees blackened five years ago. Lush thickets feed on ash- and nutrient-rich soil.

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. —  Tiny young pine trees finally stand taller than the grass. Elk and bison are growing fat. And visitors are coming to admire Yellowstone National Park in record numbers.

Five years after wildfires ravaged the world’s oldest national park and its surrounding forests in a six-month inferno, green is bursting out all over.

“The new forest is in place and it’s on its way,” said Yellowstone Supt. Bob Barbee in a recent interview. “Frankly, it’s robust.”

Wildflowers, grass and lodgepole pine saplings have sprouted among the blackened trees. Lush thickets of greenery run rampant, feeding on the ash- and nutrient-rich soil. It’s all testament to the vibrant health of the park Congress created in 1872.

“Nature does not destroy herself,” said John Varley, the park’s chief of research. “She has some sort of cosmic plan to assure that all of those things that appear to have been destroyed in 1988 . . . are going to be back, and be back with vigor.”

Observing that the lodgepole pine are just now starting to peak over the grasses, Varley made a prediction: “Another dozen years, there will be a Christmas tree forest, par excellence.”

The rebirth is not all pretty.

Charred trees tower above tangled mats of green vegetation like blackened totems. Where the hottest flames scorched the earth, the soil was sterilized to the nutritional equivalent of beach sand.

And black patches darken the scenery, grim mementos of the relentless flames that swept through more than one-third of 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone and the six surrounding national forests in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

“It’s terrible, just terrible,” visitor Myrna Marti lamented after viewing burned-out areas. The St. Louis tourist made her first trip to Yellowstone in June with her husband.

Eldon Marti was equally stunned.

“What makes it look so bad is when you go by places that didn’t burn and then you see where it did,” he said. “The thing that amazed me, and there’s nothing you can do, is all those (burned) trees are still standing.”

Hindsight and critics say disaster could have been averted--particularly since the fires came during a drought lasting nearly 10 years.

But Phil Perkins, who oversees firefighting efforts at Yellowstone, noted that for the four years before 1988, fewer than 1,000 acres in Yellowstone were hit by fire.

In the spring of 1988 no one had an inkling, a whiff, a worry of what was coming. When they did, it was too late.

“Let it burn” was still the policy when the first fire, an inconsequential lightning strike in late May, 1988, flickered out on its own. “Let it burn” meant allowing naturally caused fires to go unattended unless they threatened buildings or communities.

It was not until mid-July, when three lightning-ignited fires covered almost 1,900 acres of Yellowstone, that park officials began having second thoughts about holding back.

The decision to suppress all fires finally was made in late July. By then it was too late. Nature had taken over.

Winds gusting to 60 m.p.h. pushed towers of flame. Fires overran fire lines, racing through tinder-dry forests. By July 28, more than 109,000 acres in the park alone were burning from 10 different fires.

Before November’s snows finally quelled the firestorms, more than 25,000 firefighters--an army of forest and park workers, soldiers and trained prison inmates--had battled 249 fires. They had support from 117 airplanes and helicopters that bombarded the flames with water.

The blazes lashed across Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and neighboring forests. The U.S. government’s bill for the effort approached $120 million.

Elk, deer, moose, bison and black bear perished.

One man died--a firefighter killed by a falling tree in the Shoshone National Forest east of Yellowstone.

One paradoxical boon from the fires is increasing tourism.

In 1987 the park counted 2.4 million visitors. The next year, despite the fires, they logged 2.2 million, and the totals have been climbing since then. In 1992, a record 3.1 million people came to Yellowstone.

The fires also prompted policy changes. Immediately afterward, officials put a moratorium on the “let it burn” policy.

Last year a revised fire management plan was issued. Some naturally caused fires can burn unattended as before, but there are many more exceptions, depending on weather conditions and other variables.