Forest and Friends, October 29th
We’re coming up on the end of October, the days are getting cooler and we’ve got seasonal color in the trees. With the return of rains and cooler temperatures we set another fire season aside and look forward to the dark winter months. In Seattle, that can mean 90 consecutive days of rain in lucky years!
This has been a difficult year for forestry projects and the forestry industry. Many fires in the PNW and Mountain West, of course, but high interest rates and USFS uncertainty and staffing reductions all contribute to a decline in acres worked all up and down the mountain west and that means we’re not making up ground in areas that avoided the burn this season. With mills in Montrose and Flagstaff going under we’ve got two more points on the map where it’ll be harder to do work in the future – fuels management costs the USFS money to perform and those costs go up where there is no viable economic off-take for the thinned material. It can be a difference of several thousand dollars per acre, turning a project from possible to impossible. Of course, tariff wars and high interest rates keeping construction starts low is yet another contributor showing that intent isn’t always enough to overcome economics.
It is easy to see that something has to give when even the choice to send some wood to the mill instead of watching it go up in smoke is denied to us. Land management, without the option to manage becomes super frustrating. Back in June 2022 we were scouting a project in Michigan Bluff California, two months later the area would burn in the Mosquito Fire. This is the counter-factual for not taking action in the mountain west’s frequent fire forests, when we delay or abdicate our land stewardship obligation we lose our forested places. It is always the right time to make smarter land management decisions and get work in whenever time allows. Too much emphasis is placed on response, when we should be filling the autumn skies with smoke before the rains and the sound of machines reducing our land management debt. Active work leads to cleaner water, cleaner are, more resilient forests, larger trees, and more carbon stored in our forests. Carbon offsetting has fallen out of favor recently because those reserves and their buffers burn through and leave no recourse. You don’t preserve forests by locking them away, you preserve them by tending to the land’s needs and obligation. We’ve got some ideas about that and would love to share them with the local community.
Feel free to join us for dinner and a pint as we talk about climate! We’ll be geeking out, enjoying the taplist, menu, and friendship while we talk forests, startups, GIS, policy, etc. I’ll be wearing a hardhat and cruising vest – feel free to walk right up and join our table.
Forest and Friends is on; this Thursday the 29th, from 5pm-7:30 at Cascadia Pizza in Bellevue WA. Come talk forestry, climate, startups, smoke, and fire - it is especially relevant as this fire season churns along. Short notice, but hope to see some new folks!