This is Forest to Frame, where we explore how restoring forests creates beautiful spaces. A podcast dedicated to conversations with industry leaders shaping the future of the forest industry. And now, here's your host, Russ Vaagen. Hey, everybody, Russ here for another episode of Forced Frame. And, you know, it's at the recording of this, it's summertime 2025. And we've had our first set of wildfires. And it's something that you can remember, but when you're in the thick of it, depending where you're at, it, it's something that you really have to experience to understand, and it's not fun. It's not necessarily always as scary as the media points out, but if it's close to your home, it's a very helpless feeling. And fortunately, I haven't had to go through that, but some people I know have, and this area is, you know, it's where we've had historic, natural wildfires in the past and so we have fire adapted landscapes that are used to wildfire and some cases they have homes in them that have too much vegetation that wildfires are going to come through there, and then you have hot periods of the summer. and wind. And, you know, whether it's just a hot part of the year and strong conditions, or it's climate change, it doesn't really matter what your stance is on that. The fact is that it's hot, and it's very difficult to put fires out when it's hot. And if you've ever been in that situation where you've had any kind of fire, whether it's fireworks, or whether it's a, you know, you're doing some yard debris cleanup, and you have a fire start to get away from you or burn something you didn't intend. And unless you're fully equipped, it's very difficult to get that under control. I can be and then if the winds pick up years ago, I remember I was burning some debris at my house out in the country, which is totally legitimate. And it was, it was in I think it was the fall. And there was a lot of dry grass, we had some rain, and I started this debris pile. And it was not windy at all and then all of a sudden gust of wind kicked up and fortunately it was a small you know a little bigger than a campfire but it was a fire burning some wood debris and brush and limbs and things and it very quickly like started to start spot fires downwind and I know a lot of people who've had that kind of experience happen to them and it's very scary. And so it's, my point is it's very hard to control when that happens. But the other things that go on is like just the, when the fires happen, whether they're all over the place and they're large or they're just locally burning and they're blowing your way, you get inundated with the smell of smoke and it's, You know, growing up, I associated the smell of smoke with campfires and other, you know, good, positive things. And as the last, uh, you know, 15 or so years, we've had periods where there's smoke in the skies for days, if not weeks, and you can just kind of, you're just constantly inundated with that smell of smoke and. It's different depending on the level of severity of the wildfires. The ones that we've been having thus far are about 50 miles away from the town of Colville, and the wind is periodically blowing the smoke in our area. So we'll get a day or two of smoky smell, and then it'll shift. And when you're surrounded by wildfires, it doesn't matter which way the wind shifts. You just kind of get smoke all the time. And it's... it's like something you feel like you can't escape. I know for me, I try to keep everything buttoned up on the house, try to keep the indoor air quality as clean as can be, but that's not always easy either. But this time there was a lot of friends of ours and relatives that had homes in the way. And fortunately, most of them, I think all of them at this point had their homes saved, but Primarily, these fires were on, at least where the homes were, surrounded by private land that was managed. And I've seen some video and some photos and, you know, a lot of those trees that are there survived. The brush is what was catching fire, the grasses, the bushes, the small trees, and those were all burned. But a lot of the trees where it had been thinned out or just, you know, kind of open, hillsides with periodic trees, those trees didn't die because the fire didn't crown out, if you will, get the crown tops of the trees and burn those out. And when they don't crown out, they don't kill the tree, which is a great thing because you can recover from those fires rather quickly. The next year, grass comes up and you'll see some remnants of it for a few years, but it goes away. But if you burn everything and you have a stand replacement fire, like we see a lot of times on our federal lands that aren't managed as actively, that just means that the tree spacings are much closer together. They start with really thick trees low, and then they start growing up higher into the canopy, and then those trees are also touching. And so when you get a fire, it just goes up into that canopy. And I think it just highlights the need for us to manage our forests, us to thin out these forests, to remove the trees that historically wouldn't be there in that late cereal stage up in the canopy. In many cases in our area, there should be more Western larch and ponderosa pine. And there's a lot of Douglas fir, a lot of lodgepole pine, a lot of others. But the Douglas fir and some of the spruce, their limbs go almost all the way to the ground until they get real mature, and then the limbs start to die off and kind of naturally prune themselves. But when they go to the forest floor, I don't know if you've ever burned fur limbs and needles, and they're green, and you would think, okay, that's not going to burn very well. It's like, I've heard people say it's like turpentine. Well, I've never burnt turpentine, but it's like a like there's some sort of gasoline or something on those they just start crackling and they they burst into flames and so they're very flammable and they burn like crazy where some of these other trees don't have that same thing so when you have the ponderosa pine and the western larch that are fire adapted they have thick bark the limbs naturally get pruned up high, so a low severity fire goes through there. The more we can get these forests back into that condition, the more we can deal with wildfire and we have more of a lower intensity smoke, even if we have large acreages that burn. And that's kind of the goal that I think our forest management on federal forest should seek and There's a big debate on that right now, and I think everybody wants to see it, but it's to what extent, I think, the more we can focus on leaving the forest in a condition. That will be very similar to what it would have been naturally and in a condition that can withstand wildfire I think. the more people that will be on board with it. And then where that happens, I think we should have that, should be imperative that we do that in the wildland urban interface. That's the roaded landscape where all the homes are. And then the next layer back from that is like an area, we always called it the restoration zone, but I think that we need to have a very focused approach where it's active and kind of heavy handed in the wildland urban interface. And then it becomes more of a mosaic of management where it's a little less intensive, and then it gets closer to the backcountry, we leave it alone a little bit more. And that allows fire from the wildland urban interface to be fought before if it was started man-made before it goes into the backcountry and vice versa lightning fire coming from the backcountry can be fought and stopped before it comes to those homes and I think that we need to be really pursuing a future of infrastructure that allows us to manage that. And in many cases, like Northeast Washington, we have an infrastructure of mills. There's pulp and paper mills around here, pellet plants, particle board plants, biomass to energy, we really have that whole circular economy covered. Other areas have literally nothing. So they have to thin forest without any market. We need to develop a process by which they can manage those. But it's wildfire season. It's a little somber and it's a little bit, there's a little bit of reality that sets in every time you see these wildfires start. So we, you know, pray for those that are being affected by it and have lost, in some cases, everything they own. we hope to minimize that as much as possible. I really appreciate all the firefighting that's gone on, the state of Washington and the contractors that are out there with helicopters and fixed wing dropping fire retardant, dropping water on the fire, keep it at bay, save the homes and limit the damage from these wildfires is certainly appreciated. So with that, I'll close out this episode. Just want you to think a little bit about wildfire season and You know, it's really about the fuel in the forest. How much debris is out there that can burn and how can we positively affect that by removing that debris and turning it into products and economic opportunities and reducing the smoke, turning it into beautiful buildings? I think that's something if we do it right, everybody can get behind. Thank you very Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. And if you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell a