"Before the late 1960s, fires were generally believed to be detrimental for parks and forests, and management policies were aimed at suppressing fires as quickly as possible. However, as the beneficial ecological role of fire became better understood in the decades before 1988, a policy was adopted of allowing natural fires to burn under controlled conditions, which proved highly successful in reducing the area lost annually to wildfires."

"In contrast, in 1988, Yellowstone was overdue for a large fire, and, in the exceptionally dry summer, the many smaller "controlled" fires combined. The fires burned discontinuously, leaping from one patch to another, leaving intervening areas untouched. Intense fires swept through some regions, burning everything in their paths. Tens of millions of trees and countless plants were killed by the wildfires, and some regions were left looking blackened and dead. However, more than half of the affected areas were burned by ground fires, which did less damage to hardier tree species. Not long after the fires ended, plant and tree species quickly reestablished themselves, and natural plant regeneration has been highly successful."

I visited Yellowstone a decade ago, and remember seeing the great wide swathes of equally-sized small trees growing in the aftermath of the burnt-out areas. I met a few older people who had seen the park before the fire and were sad at its present state (some even said it was "ruined", though this has to be hyperbolic, as Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen), but to me it was a beautiful thing to get to witness the cycle of rebirth on such a grand scale.

I visited Yellowstone before, during, and after those fires. The view was ruined from one point of view - a lot of variety in tree size and age was lost in those fires, to be replaced with uniform coverage.

A large party of the beauty of Yellowstone can be attributed to its wildness - how untouched by human hands it is. Yellowstone's forests post fire... felt tamed. No matter how much of an illusion it is, that wildness is something we all feel and seek while in Yellowstone.

This has gotten better over the decades since, with trees no longer being as uniform in size and coverage, but it's still possible to make out the scars of those fires, if you know where to look.

National parks are places where nature is left to their own accords, and that happen to allow easy access for people to see such mostly-unspoiled nature. Nature does not care what you think about it. It is not constant, but rather changing and evolving. Sometimes, points in time in that evolution are glorious and pleasing. At others, they may seem mundane, or even repulsive. To force nature to remain in a certain state just reinforces the idea that things don't change. Let's leave that to zoos and botanical gardens, while letting national parks retain as much of their full cycle as feasible.

I wonder what this person's thought was about the no-longer-flowing Minerva Terrace in the Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone. Is it ruined as well? As an analogy to putting out forest fires in national parks, perhaps the Yellowstone administration should put in some piping to at least wet these terraces down a bit to save some of their previous glory.