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Wildfire, Big Sur, California, 2000

A wildfire encroaches on a tree in California's still wild Big Sur. Strict zoning laws and a limited water supply ensure that the area has not become overly populated, and nature, too, has done her part to keep developers away: In 1997 a fire raged in the Santa Lucia Range for three weeks. Big Sur naturalist John Smiley calls the wildfires simply "another type of weather."

(Text adapted from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Big Sur: California's Elemental Coast," August 2000, National Geographic magazine)

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Photograph by Frans Lanting