![]() ![]() Air quality in the Helena area is listed as "unhealthy for sensitive groups." The Lewistown area air quality is listed as "moderate." A provincial state of emergency has been declared."Īccording to the Edmonton Journal, as of Tuesday morning, there are 87 active wildfires in the province with 24 out of control.Īs of Tuesday evening (May 16, 2023), the air quality in and around Cut Bank and Great Falls is listed as "unhealthy" by the DEQ. The wildfire smoke is being blown into Montana from dozens of wildfires burning Alberta and British Columbia there are no large fires burning in Montana.įrom the Alberta government: "Hot, dry conditions continue in most areas of the province resulting in numerous wildfires. If a hotter, drier climate is unsuitable for those trees to come back, "they won't recover,” she added.GREAT FALLS - Air quality in some parts of Montana is rated as "unhealthy" by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality ( link) due to wildfire smoke. “We have a lot of places that are probably climatically different than when those (conifer) species were established," she said, which means they can struggle when trying to recover after a burn. One 2018 study in the journal Ecology Letters that looked at nearly 1,500 wildfire sites found that because of hotter and drier climates, fewer forests are returning to their pre-burn tree mix, and in some cases trees did not return at all.Ĭamille Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor at Colorado State University and co-author of the study, said wildfires have become larger and more intense, killing more trees, while also happening more frequently. The effects of climate change can be significant on forest regeneration. Firefighters used helicopters to dump water on the fire, which burned across rugged terrain. News reports and press releases from June and July 2021 attributed the wildfire to a lightning strike and said the nearly 600-acre blaze fanned by winds forced evacuations and cut off access to nearby roads, hiking trails and campgrounds. Whitney, at 14,505 feet the highest mountain the contiguous United States - is home to Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, an endangered species, and to the whitebark pine, an endangered species candidate. ![]() The area of the blaze - not far from the trailhead to Mt. ![]() Some species only flower after a wildfire. The tiny, fragile flowers and patches of fresh growth against a stark mountainside and slabs of gray rock were a reminder that wildfire is part of the ecosystem in California, including the eastern Sierra Nevada where the fire took place.įirefighters said they used minimum-impact techniques to fight the blaze because “natural fire plays an important role in maintaining the landscape within these areas.” Sometimes, it’s up to foresters to go in and replant them. “The conifer trees don’t come back very quickly,” Ellsworth said, referring to certain pines and other trees that bear cones. One stand of pinyon pines was heavily damaged – needles burned off the branches, their trunks torched black – and will not come back. Forest Service.īut it can be five years before the ground cover returns to what it was before the blaze. “Some of the shrub species and other grass species are more fire-adapted, and they can come back quicker,” said Todd Ellsworth, a post-fire restoration program manager with the U.S. The first plants to reappear after a burn typically have grown more resistant over time to the flames. Some of the towering trees on the hillside are dead, others only singed and can recover. House Approves Bill to Help West Fight Wildfires, DroughtĪs it roars across the landscape, a fire burns at different intensities. ![]()
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