Post-expedition Interview
  Conducted by Michael Heasley

Chadwick: We didn’t really have a lot of time to get into this on the radio, but Yellowstone is unique in the world. It is a hot spot. It is a very, very hot spot. And the temperature of the Earth right under Yellowstone is 30 to 40 times higher than it is under...the rest of the world. There are a couple of places in the ocean that are hot spots like this, but Yellowstone’s really the only one on land. It’s a volcano. Yellowstone itself is a volcano.

Someday—and that day could be very soon—someday Yellowstone’s going to blow. And when it does...there isn’t going to be any Yellowstone left. Yellowstone has eruptions, big eruptions, about every 600,000 years, and it’s 600,000 years since the last big one. It has small eruptions—and when they say small they mean as big as Mount St. Helens—about every 20,000 years, and it’s been 70,000 years since the last one of those. So we’re overdue.

MH: Is this one geologist’s point of view?

Chadwick: Oh no, this is a consensus.

MH: That was something that you didn’t cover on the show?

Chadwick: We kind of touched upon it. What seemed funny to us, or I guess what seemed ironic to us, was that there had been such controversy over the fires and the extent of the fires and how that had changed Yellowstone or not changed Yellowstone and whether it was good or bad. But the fire that’s coming is going to dwarf everything that’s happened at Yellowstone. No one’s ever going to think about the fires of 1988 again once these eruptions occur.

MH: This was a story about how nature bounces back—

Chadwick: It is a story about how nature bounces back, but this is a special part of nature. This is a park, but not just a park: This is THE park, the first national park anywhere in the world. To go into it and see that a third of it has burned is shocking....So when you go driving past Yellowstone—which is how really most of us see Yellowstone—you get this overwhelming impression of huge amounts of dead forest, because that is what you see....

Now, beneath those dead trees....there are new trees coming up...the animals are thriving, things are coming along exactly as the foresters thought that they would....When you get out of your car, when you really see the forest, you realize, Ah, it’s all springing up. In another 20 years....the very low forest that’s there now...will be 20 feet high. And then you will see that there is a new forest

MH: Tell us about the pictures you took for this Web site.

Chadwick: A lot of these pictures are taken in and around Yellowstone Lake, which is on the eastern side of the park....There was a big fire there, called the Red Fire. And it took out a lot of trees, and you can see that here....It’s a part of what happens in a forest system....There are some trees here that put out special cones that will only open in a fire, with a great deal of heat. So the forest knows that it’s going to burn. The forest is adapted to fire.

MH: Who are the main people that guided you and that you consulted with?

Chadwick: There’s a forester by the name of Don Despain. Now, Don wrote the basic scientific argument 25 years ago for Yellowstone adopting a new fire policy. Before then Yellowstone said if it’s burning, we’re going to put it out. But after 1972 Yellowstone changed its policy and said if you set it accidentally, or if an arsonist sets it, [the Park Service is] going to try to put it out. But if it’s a lightning fire, they’re not going to try to put it out. That’s a natural, normal occurrence; they’re going to let it burn.

[Despain] became a very controversial figure in 1988, because so much of the forest burned then. And because he can be very direct in what he says: Someone overheard him looking at a section of burning forest back then and saying to himself, “Burn, baby, burn.”

MH: Why did he feel compelled to say that?

Chadwick: He wasn’t really encouraging the fire. This was just kind of a joke comment or an offhand sort of wisecrack—the kind of thing that gets politicians and journalists and others in trouble, when they speak without thinking and then get quoted. It was a foolish thing to have said at a time when the fire was burning so big and threatening towns and communities at the border of the park.

MH: Has the “let it burn” policy affected attitudes and national parks across the U.S.?

Chadwick: Oh, yeah....This is the policy of the National Park Service. Individual parks operate their own systems, and there are parks where you should put out any fire. Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.—if a fire starts, we’re going to go put it out. But for most big parks with wilderness areas, it’s a decent policy....More people are visiting Yellowstone now than in 1987. The peak year, I think, was 1992, with about 3.2 million visitors. They may break that this year, and that’s even after doubling the park entrance fee a year and a half ago.

MH: Why do you think that is?

Chadwick: During the fires, television went in there; the story drew huge coverage back in 1988....The news media kept saying the parks were in ruin, and they weren’t in ruin. They were being parks, they were being woods.

They have done surveys since then, and what they’ve discovered is that, by and large, the public has come to accept the view that fire is a natural part of what happens. They were very surprised to learn that the message coming out of 1988 was that this is normal. This is going to happen. We can’t really stop it from happening, and we shouldn’t. We shouldn’t want to.

MH: Knowing that Yellowstone might someday just explode, how did it affect your impression of the place?

Chadwick: I did come away from Yellowstone, after talking with the physicists and the geologists, understanding that...it is truly unique in the entire world. It’s this very strange place on the Earth where geologic forces are coming to the surface. And it’s just a matter of time—it could be a year, it could be 10,000 years, or longer—but that place is gonna blow.

MH: Are you going to go back at some point?

Chadwick: I very much want to go back to Yellowstone. I want to go stay in this valley there, Lamar Valley, and see the wolves. It was hot when we were there—very hot—and some of the big wildlife had moved higher up into the mountains. We tried recording wolves; we were out at four o’clock in the morning. We never got a wolf. So I’ll go back for a wolf.