What were the benefits of the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980?
Despite the devastation left behind on May 18th, not everything in the blast zone was destroyed. Areas that seemed like they would never recover have surprised scientists with the resilience of nature. Many animals and plants who were fortunate enough to be beneath the spring snowpack or underground, soon found their way through the thick ash to the surface. Several lakes that were still frozen over went virtually untouched even though all the life around them was decimated. One of the first plants to reappear, appropriately enough, was the fireweed (pictured above). The presence of plant life enticed deer and elk to return to the area. With their wanderings, they stirred up even more ash, freeing seeds and shoots of plants still buried. Even though there were over 1500 elk killed as a result of the eruption, the elk population had returned threefold by the early 1990’s thanks to mild winters, an abundance of food on the debris avalanche, and the lack of human interference. One of the
