Photo of the Day 301

Lodgepole Pines, Yellowstone, Montana, 1989

Photograph by Jonathan Blair

A stand of lodgepole pine trees in Montana’s Yellowstone Park are backlit by the glow of the 1988 North Fork Fire, which charred nearly 800,000 acres (324,000 hectares) of the park. Such fires are actually good news for lodgepoles, whose pine cones need extreme heat to release their seeds.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Extinctions," June 1989, National Geographic magazine)