"Firefighters fully contained the Flat Rock wildland fire Tuesday night after it burned 547 acres of the jack pine forest. But that’s a good thing, said Kristopher Alberga, a regional forester with the State Department of Environmental Conservation. “On this pine barrens in particular, it’s really essential to have periodic fires because the fire is really what perpetuates the forest here,” he said.

"Unlike most tree species, jack pines actually require fire to open their pine cones, allowing them to propagate in the ash bed below. By next summer, new jack pines should have germinated, creating new, dense thickets across much of the area, said Mark Lesser, an assistant professor of ecology at SUNY Plattsburgh. Jack pines exist in about only 20 places worldwide, including on the Flat Rock, Alberga said. Fires such as this one have taken place there five or six times there in the last 100 years."