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As a bigfoot investigator, I've taken a number of Bigfoot sighting reports in and around the KC area in the past few years. Most have been near the Missouri River near Sugar Creek, Independence, and east at the Burr Oak woods conservation area. There was also a mothman sighting at Burr Oak Woods. The most recent Bigfoot sighting occured in the city in Independence when a large grey bigfoot was seen near 23rd and Pearl street at dusk. If you have had a sighting in this region, please let me know, as I would like to include it in an upcoming book on the subject.

For a concrete example, the area near Hobson's Horn, a mountain in SW Oregon, burned in 2002. Prior to that, part was still old growth forest. I hunted it in 2014 and got a deer. It had regrown to clumps of brush about chest height with gaps between. There were many fire-hardened snags fallen into the brush. It was easy to see the ground in the gaps and watch animals walk through them. It's 2026 now. I was back there in 2025. The brush has not grown significantly taller since 2014. The clear spaces have closed in some. Another part of the same ridge which connects Hobson's Horn and Silver Peak "hosts" the Silver Peak trail. This burned in 1987's "Silver Fire". It has grown back a little more but from a distance it is still fairly bare with clumpy brush because there is not much water for most of the year and, being in designated federal wilderness, there is no reforestation activity at all. I don't see any natural re-growth of pre-fire species .. douglas fir .. yet. I wouldn't expect to see much improvement for the next 150-200 years. USFS / contractors have done some replanting. These are monoculture "super trees" meant to put on the most cellulose in the least amount of time to prepare for logging and they are not doing well because it is truly too dry for them. They're stunted, some are dying because they are too weak from lack of water to out-run disease and pests. I think something will come back, some portion of them, in maybe 100-125 years, if there is no fire forcing a restart, but they will not be the original trees with the original genetics. Another location, across the main divide toward the Rogue, burned in .. I think it was 1970 or 1971. It has grown back to alder (not the original species there) and heavy brush. The alder is 30-50 feet high in places. There are some cedar / spruce and a very tiny smattering of douglas fir returning but they are 20 feet tall or less. It will be another 25 years, minimum, and more likely 50+, before they are tall enough to begin to choke out the alder and return to pre-burn forest conditions. As long as there isn't another fire, it'll be roughly 100 years between the last fire there and a return to similar-ish conditions. It doesn't mean those areas won't support wildlife. As Norseman points out, that early/middle age forest supports animals .. in fact, it may provide more edibles per acre than mature forest. Much of the old growth left where I grew up .. well, there are 2 kinds. The increase in humidity has allowed some younger trees to reach proportions you'd expect only of pretty ancient forest. Cores of those trees sometimes show growth rings approaching 1 inch across. THen there are the truly old trees, mostly found in sheltered canyons which were surrounded by very dry ridges in older times, and some of those can run 400 - 500 years old or more. If you think about it, even under the most ideal conditions .. no intervening "resets" from fire, etc .. if the original trees took 400-500 years to grow, then their replacements are also going to take 400-500 years to grow.

We do not have proof of bigfoot. We have evidence for the existence of bigfoot. The difference matters greatly. The absolute and unavoidable "math" is this: we will not have PROOF of bigfoot until modern science accepts the existence of bigfoot. These are exactly identical. We have some pretty cool evidence. Some is easy enough to dismiss even if it is incorrect to do so, some is pretty hard to rationally dismiss even if a scoftic would do so.

I don't think that's automatically a strange question. It is something we should be thinking about .. society-wise, not just bigfooters. I think the best answer is "it depends." There are some really bad assumptions built into the question, assumptions that should be examined. First thing .. what we consider "normal" is not historical normal. (1) Transpiration creates a downwind moisture plume which allows forest to grow in places it naturally could not. Fire destroys not just what it burns, but the downwind moisture plume which "artificially" supports forest in places that would naturally be desert if there were no forest upwind to provide the atmospheric moisture. (2) We have 100 years and more of fire fighting / fire prevention which has altered the natural landscape. Though it is familiar to us, it is not the long term norm and it is not "natural." Complicating things further, the Native Americans / First Nations people deliberately altered the environment / landscape with large scale fire. Because they seem to have arrived before deglaciation, there probably has not been a "natural" environment, one not altered by human activity, since before the last glacial maximum. Data suggest we are in a period of rapid climate change. Second thing .. forest regrowth is though a progression of stages. Once forest is lost, we get grasslands / brush, smaller trees, etc before big trees return. This can take centuries, not decades, not years, and given changing climate conditions, I'm not sure we will have periods between fires long enough for the cycle to complete, we seem to be looking at forest -> burn -> brush -> burn -> brush -> burn -> brush .. etc. We .. in my area .. are getting much more frequent dry lighting and large fires than we have ever had in recorded history. The opportunities for mature forest to re-form under these conditions seem nil. In fact it seems the only chance of restoration is via human intervention, not via natural processes. This situation seems likely to last for centuries, maybe tens of centuries, and the new equilibrium, if there is one, won't be the one we're used to. I suspect much of North America, if humans just vanished, would turn into a land of brush and grasses with very little "reclamation" by forest as we know it because of the increased rate of lightning fires driven by global warming. Once turned to brush and grasses, it is very difficult to return to forest because conditions don't last enough years in a row for that to happen. IMHO of course! MIB