It's the biggest fire to hit the Superior National Forest in about a century. It has torched miles of scenic birch, spruce and pine, turned the lush forest floor into a blanket of smoldering ash and consumed dozens of cabins and homes.
Yet as devastating as the Gunflint Trail fire has been, it could be one of the best things to happen to the boreal forest.
Within minutes of heating up, the cones of the jack pine and black spruce pop open, spilling millions of seeds to the scarred but fertile forest floor. Within weeks, the seeds will germinate, and hundreds of thousands of seedlings will pop through the soil.
"That's the future forest," said Lee Frelich, director of the Center for Hardwood Ecology at the University of Minnesota. "I'd rather that the fire hadn't occurred at all. But given that it has occurred, it will be exciting to follow the development of a new forest."
The last time a fire approaching this magnitude ravaged the tip of Gunflint was 1910, Frelich said.
On average, he said, "any one spot on the ground would burn every 50 to 100 years in a fire of this intensity." And he added that the forests of the northern Minnesota wilderness, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, are "fire dependent," requiring flames every few decades to regenerate.
"It's important for people to understand that when they canoe through the Boundary Waters and see all these beautiful forests, every one of those forests started with a fire," said John Pastor, a biology professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
"What we're seeing now is the same establishment of the fire regime that got the Boundary Waters started."
Next year will tell
Just how the new forest develops will depend on how quickly the fire is extinguished and how much rain falls over the area this summer.
A major drought could kill many of the jack pine and spruce seedlings, giving other species -- such as birch or aspen -- a chance to creep in next year, changing the landscape of the burn area, which started near Ham Lake at the tip of the Gunflint Trail.
"There are a lot of ways things can go," Pastor said. "And whatever happens this year will determine how things will play out in the next 10 or 20 years, or even 30 years."
Pastor said that in any fire, there are unburned pockets that become seed sources for growth and islands of habitat for animals. How much has survived the Ham Lake fire is not yet known.
However, because the fire, unlike the Cavity Lake fire of last summer, occurred in the spring, much of the ground was still cold and wet. So damage may not be as severe.
"In many cases, the soils may not be as eroded or badly burned," Pastor said.
Unless the fire burns for weeks or the summer delivers a severe drought, the burn area will "turn green by the end of summer," Frelich said, producing blueberries and geraniums that have waited decades to bloom.
"A good chunk of [this forest] is 96 or 97 years old," Frelich said. "They'll regenerate quite nicely. ... It's no problem for a seed to lay in the ground that long and wait for a fire."
Fireweed and raspberries will be part of the new mix. So will pin cherry trees with shiny red bark and white flowers.
Within five or six years, "it'll look like a young forest, with mostly saplings," Frelich said. "You'll be able to tell it's a young forest because it will be rather hard to walk through because the seedlings will be so dense."
Global warming and relatively hotter, drier conditions in coming years could have a long-term impact on the restoration. Yet barring major climate changes or other fires, campers and visitors will be able to walk under the trees after about 20 years.
And by 30 or 40 years from now, people will think "it was always the way it is," Frelich said.
Slower recovery in parts
Recovery in areas dominated by red and white pines could be slower. While jack pine and black spruce reseed immediately, Frelich said, "It will take a couple of decades for red and white pine to refill the area with seedlings, and that's only if the big pines survive. But we won't know if they'll survive until the end of summer."
Much like the 1988 fire that destroyed the west side of Yellowstone National Park, the Ham Lake fire will greatly change the landscape for visitors who travel north for a glimpse of the beauty of a mature forest.
"Outfitters are worried about that -- that tourists won't like that," Frelich said.
But a changed landscape, even if it's scarred, has its selling points, he said.
"It opens up certain views, especially views of the rocks and the views from the hilltops not as blocked by trees," Frelich said.
Frelich said the Cavity Lake fire, along with some prescribed burns from the years following the 1999 windstorm that swept through the area, produced some "incredibly beautiful things," including the growth of "brilliant emerald green moss" on black, charcoal soil and exposing pink granite against the deep blue water of the lake.
The abundance of new shrubs and saplings also will attract more moose, bear, deer and wolf, all of which should be easier for visitors to see, he said.
"A lot of burn becomes productive food supply," said Mary Shedd, a forest biologist with the Superior National Forest. "We're expecting good berry crops and an increasing number of prey species. Picture a nice blueberry patch out there, and the bear is out there gobbling away."
Hawks, falcons and owls also should be abundant, because the burn will provide perches for birds to use in hunting.
Frelich said some species that had been almost impossible to spot should now be quite visible. Among them, the black-backed woodpecker, which thrives in burned-over areas by eating insects that live behind loose, burned-out bark.
"Before any of these burns ... we'd see one black-backed woodpecker an entire summer," Frelich said. "Now you can sit there and have lunch and see five of them. It's just amazing. It's a bird some people won't see their entire life. All it cares about is standing dead trees.
"And the more standing dead trees, the better the black-backed woodpecker likes it."
Lee Kerfoot, a fourth-generation owner of the Gunflint Lodge, said the resort's naturalists hope to capitalize on the regeneration of the forest while showing off the burn area to visitors this summer.
"I think you have to focus on that," Kerfoot said. "It's part of the life cycle of the forest. It gives you a very dramatic example, a first-hand example, of another stage of the life cycle of the forest. And that's quite interesting."Minneapolis Star Tribune
