Fire restores a forest

Mark Lesser, a forestry instructor at the State University of New York Plattsburgh, was vacationing in Nova Scotia in the second week of July when his cell phone lit up with texts and tweets. The Altona Flat Rock pine barrens were on fire just beyond the Park’s northeast boundary.

But these texts and tweets weren’t out of alarm. They were messages of elation. As Lesser put it, “People have spent their whole careers waiting for the Flat Rock to burn.”

The destruction of 550 acres of the fifteen-square-mile Altona Flat Rock Forest is, in fact, a scientist’s dream. As the last of the drones flew over the charred landscape looking for hotspots, scholars and conservationists from far and wide awaited word from firefighters that it was safe to move in. One scientist, up from Albany, was only half joking when he said, “This is great; now let’s burn