When many people look at the black and desolate remains of a forest consumed by a fire, they think that is the end of the forest. But USDA Forest Service plant ecologists regard fires as the beginning of a new life. The scientists think that forests are more than capable of restoring themselves. Fire drives changes in a forest community of plants and animals that bring new wildlife into the area.

In 1967, a wildfire burned an area at the Miller Creek Demonstration Forest, killing mature larch, Douglas fir, and lodgepole pine trees and burning the duff to the mineral soil. But seventeen years later, trees grew in 97 percent of the area. The new trees were born from the seeds that fell from fire-killed on-site trees. If they go undisturbed, scientists predict the trees will dominate the forest again...