Smokey Bear Lied

An osprey flies away with fish in tow through smokey, western Montana skies.

Hazy skies across western Montana haven't hurt the fishing, as an osprey wings away into the smoke with a large fish in tow. Lightning strikes have set fire to parts of Montana every summer for at least the last 11,700 years, when the Pleistocene ice sheets retreated for the last time. Southern forests slowly expanded northward into Montana's grasslands, where forest fires eventually replaced grass fires. Virtually all of our native animals living in Montana today have adapted to fire one way or another. Except, perhaps, for contemporary humans. Forest ecology is far older than Smokey Bear.