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. Okay, hi everyone. Russ here for the Forest of Frame podcast, and we're delighted to have a guest with us that I've had the pleasure of knowing for quite some time. Her name is Hilary Franz, and she's gonna talk about what she's doing now and in the future, because there's some new changes. But we've worked together on a lot of issues with forests and fires as it relates to Washington State and the West. And we did that because you were the commissioner of public lands for the state of Washington for quite some time. And that's how we got to meet and work together. And we worked together on a variety of issues. So with that, I'd like to welcome Hilary. And if you could just introduce yourself and tell the people watching and listening who Hilary Franz is and how did we get from where you've Thank you. So Russ, it is so great to be on here. I think it's surprising, actually, this is my first time on your podcast, because we've known each other for a long time. I always tell people everything that I know and learned, I learned from Russ. And it's actually a lot part of it is true. We've known each other for eight years. Well, no, now nine. Nine Yeah. So largely, I mean, so the last eight years I have been serving as the commissioner of public lands for Washington state. Uh, I always say most people don't even know what that person's job is and what they do. There's only five of us in the country. Uh, so maybe for your listeners and I'll just say a little bit about what that position is and then, and then we can talk about how we work together and things like that. So in that relative it's an elected position. For in Washington state that leads the Department of Natural Resources and many people like. they always think it's like state parks, you know, like Leslie on Parks and Rec. And there is no part of it that feels like Parks and Rec, but so I lived largely six agencies. One, I managed all the aquatic lands in the state. There's about 2.6 million acres of aquatic lands, the coast, the Puget Sound, your lakes, rivers, and streams. And we had a proprietary role. We leased those lands to ports, marinas, the Ferris wheel in Seattle. The floating homes, Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks were once, you know, our tenants, you say, and Sleepless in Seattle. And the revenue we generate from that goes to salmon habitat and restoration. And then I manage three million acres of uplands. These are lands above water. So two million acres of forest lands, which, you know, aren't, you know, a pretty significant job. They've had a huge impact. They're in every corner of Washington State, the Evergreen State. million acres of agriculture land, we're the I just say on that, to put it into perspective for those, the Colville National Forest, which is a relatively small national forest, but it's a national forest in Northeast Washington, it's 1.1 million acres. So you're talking about 2 million acres of forest. So on the stature of a mid-size national That's right, except for it's all spread out right east side for central Washington little less in the central part of state, because most of the southeast central our lands are far more grazing lands and then add high value and low value add. And then a lot of the forest for Department of Natural Resource Management is largely on the west side of the state. Where you know our management of those forest lands are critical to not only funding schools and counties to the tune of over $200 million. a biennium to actually huge support for the infrastructure that you know, is essential to actually keeping our forests healthy and preventing them from being converted or preventing them from burning up. And in some cases, the sort of forest products that came from our forest lands, in some mills were 50% of their entire wood supply. So you can imagine if all of a sudden, because I know there's this whole context around removing, you know, the management of forest lands for forest products away from public lands, right? You've seen it on the national side. It's clearly a movement happening, at least on the West Coast, on state lands. I think people aren't really understanding how close the relationship is of state lands and state forest lands to actually ensuring mills I think the other thing I think about there that a lot of people don't think about is, there's a part of the forest industry that doesn't mind if that were to happen, right? Because they have their own timberlands. And so you've got a demand that isn't diminishing, it's actually growing. And we're talking about putting more pressure on private land to supply that product. So that's gonna force that value up. So I think that there's this perception that the forest industry just wants to see every acre managed. The fact is that it's even worse on federal lands. I mean, they've kind of neglected and gotten mired down in all kinds of other reasons why they don't manage forests at scale on federal lands, but the state has by and large continued to see it as a valuable asset. And I think It's such a unique situation in that those trust lands were created to help fund schools. And we've got some challenges there, but I look at it like if the state lands can be managed and a lot of people think, oh, you're just clear cutting and replanting, but most of these areas and a lot of these areas, it's managed the very high degree of sustainability. I mean, that has to go through a threshold. But in many cases, the timber is coming as a result of needed management and it's going to the mills. But in the case of our state, because of the trust land situation, those funds are going to help build schools. And we're now able to send those logs to local mills. So all those people are paying taxes in the state that are going to fund all kinds of state programs. And then they can become mass timber schools. So now they go to a mass timber facility. We've got more jobs, more value, put those into schools. And I just, you bring that up and I think it's such a, it's a missed point for a lot of people where we have the ability to grow and utilize and be stewards of the land while we're building our schools from products that we created right here in the state. And I think that's just, there's a lot of layers to that, but it's pretty You know, the way I look at it is, I mean, if we think about our water system, right, we do not privatize our water system in the state, I mean, local, state, and federal government has an investment and a commitment to the importance of providing some of the basic things that people need. Water is one of them, right? I know there's a lot of challenges and concerns And unfortunately, a lack of trust and relationship with government at the local, state, and federal level. And I think our country and our state are in this sort of place right now of really questioning the relationship we have with government. You know, I come from, you know, a split family. I always say I had Republican, conservative, Grandparents, they're like, government takes my money and my land and work hard and support my family. And then I had my father who, you know, spent 36 years in public service and government, right? And I see both of their arguments and value points. I truly believe that government, when run right, when run efficiently and effectively with clear transparency and accountability, and I'm gonna just say accountability, accountability, That is about recognizing we need innovation and we need to build infrastructure, we need to support those critical things that our communities need for survival, we know what they are energy and water and transportation and I truly believe. food and wood are absolutely essential to the survival of us as a species, right? And not just survival, but thrive. And then your truly sustainable, you know, community, state, national government, you would say, we need X amount of our forest, in this country, in this state, to meet these needs, they've got to provide the critical wood resources that we need for our built environment, for all of the other products, and there's so many of them, including my phone, wood provides. We need to make sure we have enough forests that are also providing that clean water and that clean air, right? And the critical fish and wildlife habitat that we also depend on. And then we We need it for larger community benefit, in my mind, that says, yeah, we should be funding our schools, we should be funding all our local governments on a land basis that is going to ensure that they're continuing to believe and value those, you know, and that would be forestry, that would be agriculture. I think we make it far more complicated than it is because we oftentimes are sort of blinded to the full system. Ideally, I always said, like Washington State should say, how much forest land do we need to meet the social, economic, and environmental Right, things that we need as a state to thrive. And now, especially since we're the Evergreen State, let's go get it. How much should be in private and how much should be in public and well-managed and stewarded You know, as we start this, you know, you and I have had lots of conversations and we can dive right into things. There was one thing that I was thinking about when I started this that I wanted to bring up because I think it's such an interesting part of your past and you can see it because you're, you're a very passionate and I think competitive person. And, uh, You actually did something earlier in your life that was competitive, and you were a competitive figure skater. And I think that it's funny hearing that. I'd just like you to talk a little bit about that and how you think that shaped or maybe fit your personality into Okay, so there's quite a few ways. So first, I committed ice skater for 13 years from the age of five to 18, the most formative years really of our life. I was on the ice every morning, six days a week from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., which takes a lot to like 65 days a year. There isn't like a seasonal sport. It is full on, which really taught discipline, right? It taught the context of like, you have a job, you have to show up, you have a responsibility. Um, I would say second and incredibly competitive sport. I don't think most people who are outside of ice skating, but you were like on 24, seven and I joke, I did grow up with Tanya Harding, uh, every morning, you know, six days a week. Um, and you know, my motto became, uh, always avoid the crowbar and carry a blade. Uh, I always say it works in ice skating. I also have a black belt in kickboxing and And then three, it works in forestry and firefighting, right? So I always say I am a worthy one to bring to a fight, cause I'll be ready. And you know, this issue has had a lot of fights. I think the third thing that I haven't always talked so much about, but it actually was hugely influential in my work over the last eight years in government, right? Which is, you know, What I noticed, it's my first time in government was the last eight years in this role and agency we grew up from about 1500 people to around 2600. And when I walked in, I was really surprised about how the breadth of the work that organization has and we didn't even go through it all because I led wildfires, you know. passion and commitment and care of the people that work there. I mean, they truly care for their communities. They are part of their communities. They care for the lands, they care for the schools, they care for the service they provide and they want to do well. And at the same time, there was very much a sense of this fear, the fear of taking risks, right? And I know this plays out at the local level. It plays out at the federal level. Our agency isn't alone. It's sort of like, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. So just like hunker down, right? And it creates a paralyzation, like a really thinking out of the box, which our forests need, of thinking what are the partnerships, private and public, right? And NGO that we need to be moving. And how do we bring new technologies and innovation into it. And I realized that most of the challenge we face, they always like to say, we don't have enough money, we don't have enough time. We do. I'm just going to say, where there is a will, there is a way. It was more this real needing somebody who was going to say, no, where do we need to go? Why do we need to go there? And we will figure out the how if the why is important enough, right? And we did. You know that. Wildfire and forest restoration, perfect example. And I'll give you some examples of that as we go along here. Really, it was sort of helping bring people along with it and tell them, look, I got your back. And part of what ice skating taught me. which honestly, every kid should learn this, is that I fell a thousand times, I fell on my ass a thousand times a day. I mean, I got up in the morning at 3.30, from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., I am falling on my ass, just over and over and over. And you never say you suck. You should quit. You're a failure. Go back to something else. You're like, that is one more fall before I land that triple Lutz. That is one more fall before that next jump, right? And it's ingrained in you, right? And so I don't have a fear of falling down. I recognize I'm gonna fall down. I'm gonna learn from it. We're gonna do the after action review. We're gonna do the assessment. Like, how do we get better? And honestly, that culture has got to come to government. It needs to come. And we need the public to also, because that's part of the reason government is to be accepting and saying, yeah, okay. we're going to make mistakes, but there are no such thing as mistakes. That's lessons to be learned. And that's kind of the force or the energy that I brought to DNR, which is why we were able to accelerate the forest restoration work, right. That put on the map, right, that we didn't even have a forest health program before I got there. That's what helped us accelerate the wildfire response so that the last four years, we've kept 95% of our fires below 10 acres and the number of acres burned was I think too, when you stepped in, you're engaging. Yes, it's a partisan office and you ran for election, you got elected. then it's time to get to work. And I always appreciated that about you. And in our state, we're not that different than a lot of states where the urban centers are dominated by the Democratic Party, and the rural areas are dominated by the Republican Party, especially out West. It's very prominent. And one thing I appreciated is in the past, and we see it, some of it's very obvious and some of it's not, but You get a lot of people from rural parts of the state that the last thing they want to do is go to Seattle or go to a city and interact. But the same is true the other way. There's a lot of Democrats that are comfortable in an urban environment and don't want to leave that and go interchange with a room full of 15 Republicans. But what I always appreciated is that we didn't, you didn't really ever have talk about politics as it reflects parties. It was people working together. And what made me think about that is we have, we had started a collaborative effort in Northeast Washington called the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition. And when we first started, we were, you know, dare I say prohibited from really talking about and working on state lands. It was all dedicated to forest service because that was our scope and I think it was prior leadership just the way it was just wasn't really a thing. And I think part of that was necessary, but part of it was because, you know, when you're dealing with big bureaucratic kind of agencies, it can be really difficult to make change. And the Forest Service has a very different approach than the state in Washington state and the way that they manage and handle things. So we had, as a community, had to really pull that forward and try to get the Forest Service to do what's best for the community and do what's best for the forest. And what was interesting is there were a lot of environmental organizations that joined our group. And so it was a far more diverse set of stakeholders than you would find in most groups and in most communities. Because if you're in an urban community, it's usually dominated by stuff that's important there and then you have stuff in a rural community and it's dominated by the stuff that's important they're very different places but what we were doing is bring together people that there if you talked about politics it'd be very different but we talked about for us we were very much aligned cuz we all wanted the same things And the state, when you took over, you brought some people in the agency that had some experience. Andrew Spaeth, who had been at Sustainable Northwest, and then he was actually when, and I was on the board there, came to help facilitate the Northeast Washington Forest Coalition, then went to work at the state because as part of your leadership and transition, you interacted a lot more as an agency with the communities, and because of that, inserted and reinserted the DNR and its personnel in our forest health and forest restoration discussion, which I think is important. Before we talk more about that, and we could go into that, you know, in a deep dive, but I think it's important, and you touched on it, that so many states are different in the makeup of their public lands and their forests. And I didn't realize how different the state of Washington and the state of Oregon are. Oregon doesn't have the state lands that the state of Washington has. And then as you get back into other states in like the Midwest, There are some, like Wisconsin, I believe, has a huge county lands management. So their counties kept a lot of the forest land and they manage those from the county. So there are so many different makeups of how these things work from state to state, and then what jurisdictions, and you touched on it earlier, like how much Washington state has, but Idaho's different. Montana's different, all these states are different. So I think that's a challenge as well, because I think if there were more states like Washington, I think we'd have a better collective voice back to the federal lands on, hey, you've got to get your stuff together because we're all interconnected here. And I think that that's... It's hard because you talked about most people don't know what the Commissioner of Public Lands does, because there's only a few of them. It's because each state's makeup of what it owns and manages in terms of lands is quite a bit different. And the aquatic lands and the other things that that agency has to manage is a lot different. So anyway, I think that For what we're talking about here, why don't we move to the importance of forest health and forest restoration, especially in these fire adapted landscapes that we have in our state. That, I'll sort of piggyback on what you were just saying and then connect it to where we're going here on this. When I came into the agency, I mean, you, your family, so many people in the forestry business were like, probably were like, oh God, we just had the 2014 through 2016 wildfires, 2 million acres burned, three firefighters lost their lives in the twist fire. It was like Armageddon, holy shit. Like, a woman is an environmental attorney from Seattle, King County elected me. She knows nothing about wildfire. Like I openly admitted, my three boys would say, I couldn't even put out a kitchen fire. And all of a sudden I'm in charge of wildfire response for the state of Washington, which is largely, you know, it's 13 million acres and not the federal lands, but in all reality, it is all of the state with the exception of federal lands, but we provide support to the feds, right? mean, while we have only 2 million acres of forest land for forest restoration work, and again, most of them on the west side, which wasn't at that time as on fire as we now see it now. Yeah, no. And I'm coming in. And so you know, what I did first is I realized Like my back to the competitive comment like I am all about winning and not winning for Hillary whatever role that I'm in my job is to do the best that I can do the best that anyone can do in that role and I will work tirelessly to get to that. And that means learning a lot, right? And the way you learn is by listening. My grandfather taught me that well. It's like, you've got to go out and listen to the people who are on the front lines. And not just front lines for like the last year, but the front lines of the rapid change in the forest and the condition of the forest and what brought that change and front lines of wildfires. I mean, before you and I got on today, we were talking about the wildfires that Washington State has this year, right? It's like, but your family is on the front lines of it. Your business is on the front lines of those wildfires, right? And the only way someone, especially from the outside with no experience in that, is going to be able to be a great leader in that and create the kind of change that needs to happen in a rapid fire approach because we are on fire. It's by going to the people who are on the front lines and listening. And that's what I did. I have a motto that says, listen, learn, and then you can lead. If you get those out of order, you will fail yourself. You will fail the people of your team, your agents, and you will fail communities you're responsible and, in my mind, when it comes to wildfire, failure is not an option. That is not an option. And so that's what I did. I went out and, you know, My favorite story is, you know, I got on the job before I was even sworn into office, because I was already decades behind, let's be clear. I had no time to waste. So like the moment I was elected, I think I took two weeks off and then I started going out and talking. And I actually went to your area. I was up in the Okanagan, Colville area of like really looking at the Carlton complex, a number of those major fires. And just do it. I mean, government, is really sort of notorious for like reaction mode. Like whatever it is, it's react, react, housing crisis, mental health crisis, education crisis, transportation crisis. You know, I haven't even gotten to natural disasters yet, but right, like it's react, react, react. And I knew we're going to be doing that for a while, but we have to be proactive to reduce this reactive frame we're in. And so by going out into these communities and not meeting with just the people who elected me or meeting with the people who supported me, because they were not on the front lines, they have never responded to a fire, they haven't fought a fire, but going to the people who actually worked against me Because honestly, we are in it together. Everybody in the state is in it together. And before we get, let me just do this one thing. Like this is broken nationally and in our state, which is that we're becoming even more divided. Those people, like they are moving to where there are people who vote like them and think like them, right? On both sides. And we are creating at a state and national level, this polarization division between urban consumers, the people who are needing the food, the wood, the water, the energy, right? And producers, the ones who are producing the wood, producing the food, producing the water and energy. And they're becoming more and more divided as they're becoming more and more necessary for each other's survival. And That is what's going to honestly bring the demise of, I believe, or fear of demise or risk of demise of our democracy, I agree with you. I mean, I think one of the things that I hope people that watch this and listen to this pick up on is the need to go and engage and see what's really going on. Let's not take, and you can see it now, and it doesn't matter what your political persuasion, but if you, the first time you're ever quoted in a newspaper, you realize that you're not getting the actual thing that happened. If it's slanted forward against you, you even see it more so. If you just take that little piece, and I know people aren't even reading the newspaper now, but that was my kind of eye-opening scenario was I got interviewed for something and it wasn't, you know, earth shattering. But when I read it, I'm like, that's not what really went on there. the person was trying to capture it accurately and down the middle, it wasn't a political thing. I think that by putting too much stock in what we read online or what we see and not going and experiencing it or checking in to verify what it is that we read, it's really easy to sit in our area of comfort and just rely, rest on our laurels and say, oh, well, that's, you know, that's just that. And to put in perspective what I'm talking about with you, I didn't even think about it before today, but I think that we have been in the same place, whether we were meeting on purpose or, you know, in a similar event, I think in like eight or probably eight different counties in the state. We spoke together at the Sun Mountain Lodge years ago. We spoke together in Cle Elum one time. We've been at Janicki Industries in the Skagit Valley for a mass timber building, open house, of course, in Northeast Washington and Spokane and other places. So I think you exemplify the getting out there in doing it. And you did your award for do epic shit, which I thought was always cool. And you can't do epic anything unless you get out there and engage. And that's really the difference, I think, for a lot of people. And the difference between Difference Makers and those that just sit by is they don't do that extra step. And I would guess that you I mean, knowing some of the people that you created relationships, you probably wouldn't have thought that you were going to create some great relationships in rural parts of the state with people that are extremely conservative, like Joel Kretz. You got along with Joel, and he was kind of the curmudgeon of the Republicans in Olympia. I always like Joel because he's, you know, he's a straight straight. Yeah, we both said the same thing. I will say, I mean, I think this is the thing that I wish there's a couple of things I want people to take away. One, our forest don't play politics, and we should play politics with our forest. And our if we could take the politics out and actually just get on a, I always said, if you got on a forest landscape and you took two different, they're out there with their banter and their rhetoric, and they're totally opposite, and you put them on a forest landscape, pick any one of them, I truly believe we could get, reach agreement on that piece of ground, right? 500 acres, 1,000 acres, on what needs to happen there. But as long as they don't meet there and they don't actually get on the ground and say, what do we need to do here? Whether it's fighting a fire, restoring the wood or reforesting it, they're going to be up here in this sort of like polarization and using rhetoric to continue to divide. The second thing is, I have found literally my best friends are the people I, if you had asked me a decade ago, would we be best friends? Like here's a, just a bio description. I'd be like. Yeah. Right. And Joel is a perfect example. I know I tell this story all the time, but I have, I have a, I have another handful of these same ones. Right. But. He, you know, you can tell him a jovial, positive, high energy, right? Like usually always smiling even when the chips are down, right? Joel is like the opposite. I mean, Joel is holding it all back. I mean, he is as curmudgeony as they get. I, you know, I use that tenderly right now. But, and when I first met him, it was like, it was November of 20, I just won the election, two weeks had gone by and he's like, I mean, come on. He's like, holy fuck, sorry. Like, she? Oh, we're screwed, right? And I set up a meeting. He's the first legislator that I set up a meeting with because I knew that it wasn't about power. It wasn't about position. It was that his community himself and the people he was responsible for were most impacted by the fires in the- He literally lives on a mountainside. On a mountain. And he is there on the fires as like communities are burning, right? You know, and at threat of burning. And I'm like, I need to know. Like, how do we fix that? I never want that on my watch. Like, how do I fix that? And so I set up that meeting and like the first, my favorite line is always like, he told my staffers and I will let her talk and then I will kill her. And yeah, I've seen Joel shoot, so I know he can shoot straight. Not only only in words, but also in actions, he can shoot. And, um, and so I literally went in and I said, like, I know nothing about this, but I promise you, I want to learn, you're the one that can teach me and I promise you, like, and I, and so I set up a tour with him five days before Christmas. I drove up in a snowstorm. I spent an entire day. And this is what needs to change at our state, politics level, and our national level. I spent an entire day with him on the ground, just listening. And I saw what happened, the devastation of the fires. And for your listeners, we're talking the most northeast. It takes like seven hours into the mountainous, rugged terrain. snowstorm. There's like, I write, at first I was like, he's going to try and kill me, like I'm going on the edge of these roads, right, type of thing. But, and very few people will go there. It's too far. What's up there? Am I going to lose cell service? Yes, you are, right. And I went- It's glorious. I then also saw, you know, a forest restoration project where with my own eye, you can just see how a fire burned and literally stopped at the project. So with your own eyes, you move past rhetoric and all the data and the white papers and everything to, oh my God, forest restoration is our answer to wildfire response if we can go fast enough. You know, I almost wanna, I'm not sure it's, I was about to say it's like all those urbanites and how they manicured their yards, right? Well, it's like a natural park-like setting, you Yeah, and it's also a recognition that our forests, fire used to do this naturally through our forests, and they would figure out how many trees per acre and where, right, and all that. I will say just the closing on that is as I now was heading back home and had a seven hour drive in a snowstorm, right? It's Christmas shopping, whatever, right? You know, Joel asked me to have dinner with him that night. And so we went to the burger joint there in Wakanda and he sat there and he said, Hillary, you're the first commissioner of public lands to come to my community. and to actually spend time with me and see it with your own eyes." And then he said, you're the first statewide elected, statewide elected, like no governors, right? And I said to him, I go, Joel, this is not the last time that I will be here. And you have my word, I will not rest till we fix what's broken. this will be my top priority, which I, then it's about words and action has to follow. And I met every commitment I ever made to him. And that man has always had my back. The man would take a bullet for No, he would. And I think that that's, you know, if you were to go back to before you'd met him, you would have some preconceived notions of what he would be like. And I think it's just like what environmentalists are like to those that are in his shoes. He has preconceived notions of what somebody that is funding whatever it is to try to prevent forests from being managed or trees from being cut, what that would be like. But once you sit down and get to know people, It's nuanced. And I think the problem that we have is we view these forests in the way that we value them. So if you're a wilderness advocate, you view the forest as the wilderness. But let's be real. Not every acre of forest is wilderness. And when we're talking about managing forests, we're not often talking about anything that's either near or resembling wilderness. So when you talk to a logger or somebody that relies on the forest, they're talking about the front country. They're not talking about the back country. Many of these people are backcountry hunters or backcountry skiers. They love that area and they want it to remain that way. So we're fighting in many cases over positions without realizing where they're at on the landscape. So I think that's a key takeaway. And I think getting back to for us, it's not a political discussion, and we shouldn't play politics with it. We need to just take care of it, and we can. And what we're doing now, we've made some steps in the right directions, but we still have a long way to go. And I think that we have further to go than we've made it. I'll say that And we can't go backwards. It's like you're running a race. Don't go back to the beginning and start all over again. We know the things that are working and we know the things that are not working, right? So don't Something happened, but it's OK. One of the things I want you to touch on is, I want you to touch on what you're doing now. You just started a new role. Let's talk Okay, so let me first start by speaking. So I took some time off. People told me I should take three months off. I took three weeks off. That was really good. I went, I am obviously, and you guys got me addicted to forest, because what did I do? I went up, I didn't go to the beach and lie on the beach in some warm, sunny place in January, February. Instead, I went up. I actually went up through the Rockies up to near Jasper and, you know, folks, can remember just a little while ago Jasper burned down, the entire town of Jasper. And I wasn't as familiar with BC and BC's forest and sort of some of their wildfire forest health issues. And then I drove down, I'd hoped to go all the way from BC, the entire Rockies on But I did not get so far. I got to Montana. So that's to be continued another day. I will finish the rest of that journey. But I really spent my time actually out in the woods and actually in those woods that are struggling the most when I, you know, similar to Washington and Oregon and California's forest, but different to really understand sort of what is the forest health crisis that is actually existing in other parts of the country and also to our neighbors to the north. And I was on a speaking tour and then doing some work. And I said to you, actually, you and I had a conversation because I've been going out and doing something like, hey, what should I do next? You know, I'm too young to retire in my mind. I've still got a lot of life left in me. And I remember you and I having this conversation and it stuck with me. where I said to you that I am addicted to forest. I can't get out of the forestry space. Cause I had a lot of, you know, I've been in so many different arenas. I have a lot of other offers. I said, I can't get out of the forestry space. I can't get out of the wildfire space. Cause we're onto something, what we built here in Washington and we're not, but it is really a model for other states and other countries that are not ever going to be the size of Cal Fire. Right. And then I said, third, I cannot be at an organization that You have to be working with people who have got their hands and feet dirty, their boots dirty. Back to this context, like being on the ground is where you are understanding really what's going on and what's needed, but also where you're forging the relationships that are moving past this sort of like rhetoric and language, right? So I've waited my time and then I am honored to now be, I think I'm almost two weeks in as the new CEO and president of American Forest. I am still, sort of I say, I'm driving from a different fire hose than the one I did for the last eight years. What I'm most, there's so much I'm excited about. If you haven't, you can't tell i'm super Let me say this so first American forest is the oldest conservation organization in the nation so it's 150 years old this year. And it started I actually love going back to the history before I decided that I was going to go for this position. It got started 150 years ago to address the two threats to America's forest. And when I say America's forest, I'm not talking about federal lands, I'm talking all- All lands, all forests. United What the two threats to America's forest were 150 years And I'm like, wait, what? That's exactly why I loved going to Department of Natural Resources, why I loved heading up that agency, what I'm passionate and excited about. And it's still the same threats we have today. And I think it's only even more significant because you've got You do have a rapidly changing climate. You have the crisis that got us into this four years health crisis. You've got population growth, right? It's just, and so it's mission is the right mission, number one. Number two, they have already been working and leading at a federal level, you know, on everything from the fire funding fix that you and I remember on in 2018, the plan act to, you know, The work that's been the fix our forests act that is going on right now to how do we invest in forest restoration and forest reforestation. And so they have a federal policy and also they're not one that pick sides they actually like what is needed for our forest. and we work with everyone to drive to that result. So they're very much work across the aisle and work with diverse. And then the most important thing for me is they are on the ground getting their hands and boots dirty. So they are some of the largest scale reforestation restoration work in California, Oregon. They are working in Montana and Texas. They are in every corner of the country. Part of what, I'm besides what they're already doing and just lifting up more and going faster and further, which, you know, is urgently needed, as we know, is I want to build out even more the work that, you know, I you and I've been doing here in Washington State, which is about one is really pushing for a forward thinking wildfire response at a national level, like we need to have sort of the systems in place, the infrastructure in place for us to be able to get on these fires quickly, to contain them, put them out, and do it in a way that's understanding the ecology of our forests, right? And that we have more and more fuel on our forest, therefore our fires are going to get worse, and we have more communities living in that. And then the second part of that is that forest restoration work, the same forest restoration plan that we built here in Washington State, the 20-year plan to restore 1.25 million acres across jurisdictional boundaries. And we, what, a million acres treated, you know, restored in, you know, seven years. I'm excited about you getting into that role because I've witnessed it before. You're going to, in a good way, pour accelerant on the things that are going well and get much more in-depth and create such a larger impact there. And I think for those that are part of American forests that don't know you, I think I witnessed a very engaged DNR. Everybody was very excited to work with you. I never actually ran across anybody that said anything negative about you. And I think it's because you lead out front and you engage. And I think our country is starving for some sort of collective national level group to jump in and understand that these are Americas for us, and they are doesn't matter really what landscape they are in or whose ownership they are, if it's federal, state, or private, that we need to have a collective momentum to treat these forests in a way that they can help our communities, that we can fight wildfires and make sure that they're doing a positive thing for our environment, which they can, but they're, out of control right now. And we can do a lot about that, but we need to engage and we need to do it in a big way. And I'm excited for us to work together in that new role that you're gonna be in. And I think that it's exciting because as challenging as our forests and the forest management and wildfire and development are impacting those, it's tremendous opportunity for us to make change in a positive way. And you and I had the opportunity to go meet with the Forest Service in D.C., and one of the things that I shared with them, and I don't think that the Forest Service quite grasped this yet, But they have fallen so far from where they were originally. I mean, they were producing lots of timber, and they were very aggressive on the landscape. And although that did need to change, it changed way too far. And now they've got another three decades of not sure what to do, so doing very little. And I think that presents an incredible opportunity for us as Americans and those that are focused on our forests and what they can do for us to change that and turn the Forest Service and those federal lands into an example of what we need to do to manage our forests as a planet because I've been, I've had the good fortune of traveling throughout Canada and in Europe and other parts of the world to see great forestry and see not so great forestry and we have an incredible opportunity and we have these national forests that are a treasure. They're not all national parks. They're not all wilderness. There's a lot of lands that need to be actively managed that have roads and have been managed in the past. We have a tremendous amount. I would say well over 50 million acres of our public lands that are low hanging fruit that we can go get to right away before we get into a situation where we're arguing over whether or not that should be protected or that shouldn't because They, it's just, they all aren't the same these landscapes are variable they need variable management, and I'm really excited about your impact and your new role, and you've got my commitment to work with you and whatever role needs to happen to make it. to make it work. So yeah, I appreciate you very much for taking the time to join the Forest Frame podcast. Super exciting. And I would just say in that regard, it won't be the last time you're here and we're discussing this. And we can dig deeper into new topics as you get your feet on the ground on American forests. And with that, I would just ask you to add anything before So one, thank you for having me. And actually, I think I would love to come back maybe like three months, because we're going to have a couple of big announcements that are going to be happening in the next couple of months that I can't talk about. But some of the things that most excite me, how about I start there, is I remember your A to Z project and then I we started growing sort of our projects getting to the 10,000 was 10 now is it 50,000 10,000 first one was 54,000 acres yeah okay second one was 71. Okay, so you play big ball. Okay. And that's exactly how we need to play with our forests. Right. Um, given how bad the condition is how fast fires. We can, you know, our first big one was like 4000 and the whole context that I really want to be moving us is that we've got shared stewardship agreements with the federal government. that is at the scale that you've been working and even larger, that is at that period of time and saying, we're gonna do this soup to nuts. We're like every part of this, we're gonna bring those resource capacity and we're gonna drive for the project to get done, right? And we're already doing that. And it's just sort of ramping it up and doing it especially in those sort of real high intensity fire risk areas where the forest are needing urgent care, right? I think another one that is like, we've got a number of sort of policy legislation at the federal level we're working on, which I have, you and I danced a little bit on, you know, from our Washington. I would love to be coming back and talking about sort of some of the progress and some of the wins we've had and where it's going and having a federal conversation. Because I think people really, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what's, what the policies say, what they do. And let's have that conversation so we can help educate people who may be not sort of fully wrapped into the federal. There's also another conversation that most people don't know. We're running nurseries, seedling nurseries, like so many of our nurseries at the federal and state level are struggling and, or maybe not even an existing. And we, you know, you can't reforest these areas, whether it's our, you know, most rural natural landscape to our urban, if you don't have a seedling pipeline, And we believe we've got to be putting that infrastructure investment in, and that's some of the really exciting work we're already doing at American Forest, Yeah, I think that's a great spot to leave it on. I think it's one of those things with the changing nature of our catastrophic wildfires, is, you know, the amazing thing about our forests is they are resilient and they reforest themselves. But it's a lot more difficult to do when we wipe out hundreds, of thousands of acres and those seed stocks are burn up. And so we need to help get those back. So anyway, I'm excited about your new role and what you're going to do there. Thank you for coming on the podcast and 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