The staff at Mesa Verde National Park has done the entire region a service by reopening the park so quickly. A third of the park is blackened, but there’s no reason not to take advantage of the situation and provide an interpretive opportunity that explains the role of fire in the natural environment.

That attraction stands in addition to the traditional lure of the Ancestral Puebloan ruins at Mesa Verde. This is not the first time those ruins have withstood the cycle of fire and regeneration, and park visitors may view them differently once they’ve learned how quickly one lightning strike can snatch away most of the resources this high-desert ecosystem has to offer. How did the cliff dwellers deal with such natural phenomena? How should we?

Considerable anger has focused on how a catastrophic wildfire, whether mismanaged or not, can harm the economy of a tourist-oriented community. The loss of two weeks of the peak season, and the inevitable devaluation of the remainder of the season, will undoubtedly hurt, and those losses will be difficult to recoup.

The flip side of that coin is that we sometimes fail to appreciate what a valuable resource we have in Mesa Verde National Park. Without it, our tourism revenue would be minimal, and the ruins themselves would probably not have been preserved as well as they have. It’s unrealistic to expect that visitation and income will increase each and every year; this year, they are likely to decrease. While that’s a disappointment, we should remember to be grateful that tourism revenue has not dried up entirely. We have Mesa Verde, and we’re surrounded by other archaeological resources. That’s a wealth few other communities can claim.

Those who’ve had criticisms of the way the Bircher Fire was handled have had an opportunity to give park officials the benefit of their opinions, and that advice is worth quite a lot, as it comes from local residents who are familiar with the vagaries of this desert land. We need to remember, though, that the Park Service is a preservation agency. Its primary mission is not to serve as the centerpiece of the Four Corners’ archaeological offerings or to provide economic development for the Montezuma Valley.

Those positive byproducts, and the speed with which the park has reopened show that the people on the mesa do understand the importance of their role in our economy and contribute whenever possible. Because admission will be free for two weeks, the revenue to the park will be insubstantial, and the clean-up efforts could probably be conducted much more easily without the interference of visitors. The benefits of this prompt reopening will accrue to the valley, not to the park.