Living things eventually will move onto these horrendously scarred lands. Without some human intervention, the chances are good the first round of colonizers will be extremely competitive nonnative plants, or competitive native varieties, even if they were never part of the original forest community. With time and luck, an even-aged stand of conifers will appear. Given the poor soils and brief growing season of the region, it will take at least 50 to 100 years for that stand to mature. The losses ripple throughout a forest ecosystem.
Stable forests can regenerate from even a catastrophic fire.
Twelve years after fires consumed more than 1 million acres of its forests, Yellowstone National Park is thriving. But Yellowstone had never been clearcut. Nor had it endured decades of livestock grazing, off-road vehicles, wetland and stream degradation, weed infestations, and other ills that are common on national forest lands. All of these activities render today's forests fragile and unstable. A big wildfire becomes the knockout punch.