The Forest of the Future

United by Fire is a nine-part narrative podcast series that takes you inside the harrowing 2020 wildfire season in Colorado through the voices of those who witnessed it firsthand. Hear from firefighters and residents who found themselves in the path of the flames, as well as ecologists, land managers, community planners and entrepreneurs who are working to build a more wildfire-resilient future. 

The series is hosted by Kristan Uhlenbrock, Executive Director of the Institute for Science & Policy. For more information and resources from this episode, check out the episode summary page. Enjoy the transcript, and to listen to the audio version visit institute.dmns.org/united-by-fire.

 

Leaving a Mark 

KRISTAN UHLENBROCK: I’ve learned to walk through landscapes differently since I started reporting on this podcast. Previously, when I’d come across a burn scar on a hike, my mind would wander to… I wonder which fire caused this… and maybe I’d think, Oh, those burned and dead trees look sad and a little apocalyptic. 

Now, my mind goes to a new place. I look for the path the wind directed the fire along, signs of erosion down the hillside, the quality of the soil, and indications of new growth. If there’s a stream, I check if the water is running clear. If there’s a forest on the opposite hillside, I wonder what kinds of trees are there and why they didn’t burn. 

I ask myself… How does this charred ecosystem hold both destruction and renewal? What will this landscape look like in the future? 

There are so many people I spoke with this past year who deserve credit for shaping my new way of thinking about fire, but one person in particular was the first to walk me through a burn scar and show me this new way of looking at things.  

TONY CHENG: There's no wind and here comes the sun. I think we're gonna have a really nice day today.  

KRISTAN: I’m with Tony Cheng from Colorado State University, who heads up the Colorado Forest Restoration Institute. We’re walking up to the trailhead for Heil Valley Ranch, a little ways north of Boulder. The foothills roll gently around me, forming a valley. To my right, there’s a broad stretch of burned land, still barren in parts.  

TONY: You can see how it started up high and raced down into the valley here. Eventually, it overtopped that ridge into a community and destroyed a couple dozen homes. 

KRISTAN: On October 17, 2020, the Cal-Wood Fire was another significant event in an already high-pressure fire season. It burned more than 10,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in Boulder County's history. 

TONY: I think it’s a good reminder of the kinds of fires we’ve been experiencing and are likely to face in the future. 

KRISTAN: We walk across a narrow creek and stop next to a tall, stately Ponderosa pine. Its reddish-brown bark is marked by patches of blackened fire damage. 

TONY: Here’s a little science tidbit: One of the unique adaptations of Ponderosa pine is its thick bark, which allows it to withstand quite a bit of heat. You can see that the fire scorched the tree up to about 15 or 20 feet, but the tree is still green and photosynthesizing. This tells us that it can withstand at least that much heat, which is actually quite a lot. 

KRISTAN: Wildfires vary in duration and intensity, which refers to how much heat is released. Each tree responds differently. Some trees respond well to low and moderate-intensity fires—some actually need that fire. However, high-intensity fires can damage trees from their roots to their crowns. Now, picture many of our forests, where the dense canopy allows fire to spread easily. It is in these fires that we see the greatest mortality. 

When a tree survives a fire, it often bears a scar. These scars, along with tree rings, give scientists a window into an area’s fire history and past climate. 

TONY: We now have fire histories and dendrochronological reconstructions from all around the world. With these, we can reconstruct past climates and even determine the season when fires occurred—whether in the spring or summer—based on the tree's growth. 

KRISTAN: Due to warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns, research shows that western forest ecosystems are becoming more susceptible to high-intensity fires. 

TONY: Here on the northern front range, we’ve had trees that are three, four, five, six, or even seven hundred years old. And the fires we’ve experienced in the last 25 years are the fires that have killed them.  

KRISTAN: This is United By Fire, a podcast where we explore hard truths about our landscapes and ourselves. In this episode, we examine how fire reshapes our landscapes and what the forests of Colorado might look like in the years to come. 

My name is Kristan Uhlenbrock. From the Institute for Science and Policy, this is episode eight. If you want the full story, I recommend starting with episode one.   

 

The Little Sapling 

KRISTAN: As we walk up the trail, I spot something unusual.  

KRISTAN (OFF MIC): I see little mesh net things on posts.  Do you know what those are?  

TONY: I was looking at them, and they might be plantings. That one’s down. Let’s go see if we can find one that’s still standing. A lot of these are for tree plantings to prevent critters from eating the small saplings. Let's check it out. Yeah, it looks like they are planting ponderosa pine seedlings. 

What we’re looking at is a bamboo post with a green mesh tube about two feet high, and inside that is a ponderosa pine sapling, likely hand-planted. We see them near stumps and downed logs. The reason folks do this is to shield the sapling from the sun and provide a little microclimate to help retain moisture. 

Looking at this one, though, it doesn’t look very happy. It’s turning brown, with not much green left. I think this is another sign that these trees really struggle to establish after a big fire, especially in an environment where the climate is becoming harsher and less conducive to tree growth. 

KRISTAN: When you think about Colorado’s forested landscapes, we have a rich diversity ranging from 5,000 to 12,000 feet in elevation. This means there’s a variety of tree types, ages, and densities, along with various adaptations to bugs, temperature, and precipitation. 

One thing to know about some of these areas is that it can be a harsh environment for trees to get started, especially after a big fire rolls through. How a forest grows back is a multifaceted question, and one critical factor is the seed source.  

TONY: There are some bigger, older trees and a lot of younger ones, but all of them appear to have been killed by the fire, leaving no seed source. I’m looking up at the tops of the branches, and there are no cones. In areas without a nearby seed source, especially with ponderosa pine, the seeds are heavy and don’t disperse far. 

KRISTAN: We are facing a seed stock deficit. So, if a land manager wanted to replant after a fire, finding, harvesting, and storing seeds becomes a complex operation. 

TONY: It might take seven years before trees in a whole forest stand produce enough cones to have viable seeds. We don’t really know when they decide to start producing cones. There was a big masting year around 2019, and when that happens, it’s all hands on deck—anybody you can get to help collect cones, you get them out there. 

KRISTAN: Collecting them is just one bottleneck. Tony says there aren’t even enough nurseries to store the seeds.  

TONY: But even when the seeds end up in the nursery, you still have to be able to germinate them. You know, anyone who’s even a hobby gardener knows that not all seeds will germinate. So you always have to account for some level of loss—a percentage of failure versus success. This is not a cheap endeavor. It’s hard to get them established in nurseries, then you have to transport them out here, and then you have to plant them. We just hiked up a short distance and we were winded. Now imagine trying to carry a hundred of these. So, if managers want trees to come back eventually, they’ll have to hand plant them, either through seeding or by planting saplings like the ones we see here. 

KRISTAN: In this small section of the Calwood burn scar, volunteers have been replanting thousands of saplings. Some have taken root, and some have not. There was also an effort to disperse seeds with a little less labor involved. 

TONY: There have been a lot of experiments with using drones to scatter the seeds, but these have had limited success. What you end up doing is feeding chipmunks and squirrels. 

KRISTAN: Reforestation is a massive undertaking, often not showing immediate results. For ponderosa pine, it takes decades to reach maturity. 

TONY: They’re very slow-growing. That’s because they’re adapted to pretty harsh environments—part of their evolutionary strategy. Let’s say, of the several dozen trees we see planted here, 50 percent survive. If we come back here next year, it’s probably going to look about the same. If we come back 15 years later, we might start seeing them a little taller, a little bushier. Hopefully, they’ve survived hard winters and summers. But it’s not a foregone conclusion that we’ll see a lot of survival. And for a forest like it was before 2020, very few of us will live long enough to see that. 

KRISTAN: There’s an old saying: the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is today. 

While we can’t change the past, we can focus on the steps we can take now to influence our future. It might be replanting a tree, but it might not. It’s hard to invest in something we may never see fully grown—or even know if it’s the best investment in the long run.  

TONY: I think our monkey minds are wired to focus on short-term losses and gains. Our ability to think about both, whether as individuals or from a policy standpoint, often suffers from that. Money is always scarce, and the larger question, especially when it comes to public lands, is whether it’s worth it. What are we getting by trying to reforest an area? Could we take those resources and do something else with them that might have a better return on investment for the environment, for climate mitigation, and for the things we care about? 

KRISTAN: As Tony and I look out over the burned hillside, it’s clear just how much the landscape has changed. We talk about what it might look like in the future—more grasslands across the valley, likely fewer trees. 

It’s a reminder of how critical the choices we make today are. 

TONY: Preventing or limiting forest loss will give you a lot more in the long term than trying to recover a forest after it's all been lost. So, maybe the better investment is to keep forests intact—conserve them and steward them in a way that they can continue to be forests in the face of a changing climate, more fires, and more stressors. Once we get to a place like this, that’s already experienced large-scale mortality, we’re starting from scratch. 

 

The Carbon Side 

KRISTAN: Tony’s comment about "starting from scratch" sticks with me. Because in many places, these changes are becoming permanent, and they’re causing broader consequences. 

Brian Kittler helps paint the bigger picture of what's at stake when we lose our forests—not just here in Colorado, but across the country. Brian works with the nonprofit American Forests. You may remember him from the previous episode. 

BRIAN KITTLER: Collectively, the forest sector counters about 16 percent of the emissions we produce annually as a country. And we think there are opportunities to contribute even more in terms of carbon reductions. Forests breathe in and absorb carbon, but they also release it. In places where fires are burning severely, a lot of that carbon is getting emitted. In places where forests are dying due to insects or disease, they’re no longer taking in that carbon. 

KRISTAN: Carbon is the building block of life. It’s in our atmosphere, waters, lands, and organisms. Carbon moves through a massive cycle of both natural and human processes—getting emitted, stored, and transformed. When our forests are growing, they act like giant carbon vacuum cleaners, pulling CO2 out of the air. 

They’re known as a carbon sink because they store more carbon than they release, meaning they can help address human-caused climate change. But when they’re hit with beetles, drought, or severe fires, they can flip and release more carbon than they store.  

BRIAN: There are nine states in the Western U.S., at last count, that are currently net emitters of carbon from their forests. Colorado is definitely one of those states. That’s a strong indicator that we have some real challenges with forest health and resilience. 

KRISTAN: This net emitter statistic might come as a shock to some. Forests in Colorado are emitting more carbon than they absorb. 

One of the more recent drivers of this statistic has been the scale of wildfires happening across our landscapes in the West—not only in Colorado but also in places like California. 

BRIAN: The 2020 wildfire season basically wiped out 18 years of climate progress in the state of California, the leading state in this country in terms of climate action. 

KRISTAN: The research Brian references indicates that the carbon emissions from the 2020 California wildfires negated any progress made by the state to reduce emissions since 2003—like their investments in electrifying the grid and the development of renewable energy. 

It makes me think about how wildfires could be another ticking climate time bomb, especially because, for the past 150 years in the U.S., we’ve been altering our forested landscapes. 

BRIAN: Some of that carbon burning right now in some of our forests was built up during the suppression era, during the fire exclusion era. So it was inevitable that this carbon would eventually be emitted. 

KRISTAN: Every time we lose a patch of forest, we’re not just losing trees—we’re sometimes losing decades or even centuries’ worth of stored carbon. 

But Brian adds that there are decisions we can make to counteract these emissions, including protecting forests in other regions. 

BRIAN: We need to think about forests that haven't yet experienced a significant loss in resilience and prioritize investments in those areas. At the same time, we need to think about how to invest in places that really need recovery. There are choices we can make now to help ensure that forests are better equipped to adapt to future climate conditions. Our goal is to help places like Colorado—currently net emitters of carbon—become carbon neutral or even carbon-positive in the future. 

KRISTAN: Brian explains that one way to help forests serve as carbon sinks is by financially supporting better forest management practices. 

BRIAN: One reason we’ve lost resilience in the Western U.S. is the lack of a strong forest products industry. Without it, our ability to utilize wood and manage these forests effectively is compromised. So, thinking about what we do with harvested wood products must be part of our overall carbon strategy. Mass timber, for example, is an excellent way to store carbon, especially when paired with restoration projects. When carbon is removed from a forest through timber harvesting and stored in a building, it can remain sequestered for decades. That’s one part of the solution. Another important piece is encouraging private investment in ecosystem markets. 

KRISTAN: Brian points to carbon markets and other financial incentives as potential tools to direct funds towards forest stewardship practices. For example, tech and airline companies are purchasing carbon credits to offset their emissions. Logging companies are being more selective about what they harvest in order to keep more carbon stored in forests. Large consumer brands are also exploring ways to prevent deforestation in their supply chains. While these activities hold promise, there are still many uncertainties about how effective they will be. If not done carefully, they could even cause more harm than good. Brian emphasizes that there’s no single solution, but a combination of public and private sector investments could make a significant impact. 

BRIAN: Policymakers and the private sector need to understand that we need investments in both emission reductions through energy efficiency, renewable energy, and technological solutions for emissions related to energy consumption. But we also need to invest in natural climate solutions. We won’t achieve a livable future on this planet without pursuing both pathways. 

 

The Ethics of Replanting  

KRISTAN: When we think about reforestation in a warming world, it’s not just about putting trees back on the landscape. It’s about answering complex questions of where, how, and why. To do that, we need to consider what has changed. In many ways, we’re facing a fundamentally different landscape. 

Camille Stevens-Rumann, a reforestation ecologist, grapples with these tough questions about the future. 

CAMILLE STEVENS-RUMANN: I think we’re reaching a point in many areas across the Western U.S. where the question isn’t just whether we should do something, or whether it will still be okay if we don’t. The real question is: If you want a forest, what are you going to do to keep it there? Or, how will you bring it back? 

KRISTAN: Not only are ecosystems enduring fires that burn hotter and larger, but they’re also facing a climate that’s warming at an unprecedented rate, making recovery a challenge. 

CAMILLE: I'll start with a positive: some places are bouncing back as forests, and they look great. But there are many areas struggling to regenerate as they once were. 

KRISTAN: Colorado's climate has shifted significantly in recent decades. Since 1980, the state's average annual temperature has risen by 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Looking ahead, it’s projected that by 2050, temperatures could climb another 2.5 to 5 degrees. 

CAMILLE: While a one- or two-degree increase may not seem like much on a daily basis, it’s a big deal for trees that established 200 or 300 years ago, expecting to thrive in a much cooler climate. For these trees, the challenge is different. It’s much harder for seedlings to establish themselves in this new, hotter climate. Older trees might survive, but to regenerate in this warmer environment is much more difficult. That’s why we’re seeing what we call regeneration failure or a lack of tree recovery, especially in lower-elevation areas.  

KRISTAN: Because of this, Camille says decisions can’t reflect how we’ve done things in the past. 

CAMILLE: It’s about ensuring that we think more broadly than just applying the same treatments from the last 30 years. Should we be planting the same tree species that were there before? Or should we consider species that were once at lower elevations and move them up? Maybe we should introduce entirely new species, because the forest we once had might no longer be suited to this environment. What does that look like? These are difficult questions, and there are a lot of moral implications involved—like the large, devastating effects of moving species around. So, how much should we do that? 

KRISTAN: Camille doesn’t have the answers to those questions. They are broader societal questions about what we value and how we choose to manage our lands. But she is working to anticipate what might survive in a warmer climate. She and a team of scientists are planting trees in different locations across the Cameron Peak burn scar. 

CAMILLE: We have a big planting project related to the 2020 fires, which is really exciting. Essentially, we’re testing where these trees might be successful now and in the future. For the Cameron Peak fire, we have a variety of forest types represented, all of which are found in Colorado. So, we’re planting all the species that are present in that area to see if certain species, like ponderosa pine, might do better at higher elevations. We want to know what the limits are for moving species up in elevation. Of course, we also know that there’s a point where it’s going to be too cold. We can’t just plant ponderosa pine at the highest elevations, because it would likely die from the snow and cold. So, it’s about finding that sweet spot. 

KRISTAN: Some of Camille’s recent research into Colorado’s montane forests – the ones found in our mountains – shows that factors like elevation, local climate, and even the origin of the seeds play a significant role in a tree’s ability to survive. 

CAMILLE: Everything did pretty poorly in our ponderosa pine-dominated forests, even ponderosa pine itself, which was a bit disappointing. So, we’re going to try planting pinyon pine next, which isn’t typically found in northern Colorado, but we thought we’d give it a shot to see if it might do better. This touches on the conversation about whether or not we want to be moving species around. But if our goal is to have a forest, we might need to think more creatively about the species we’re planting. 

KRISTAN: Climate and fire are in a feedback loop, not only in terms of carbon emissions but also in the evolution of the landscape. 

CAMILLE: Climate change is affecting what can regenerate after a fire, and what will likely persist in the future. This has significant consequences for future fires. If a forest turns into a grassland or shrubland, it’s much more prone to burning again quickly. A forest takes a long time to grow back and mature, but a field of grass can burn year after year. 

KRISTAN: Some people look at our dense forests and think they've always been that way. But in places like Colorado’s Front Range, fire suppression has shaped them into what they are today. So, the idea that a dense forest is a healthy forest isn’t always accurate. 

As humans, we often form emotional connections to the landscapes we love, which is why it can be so difficult when fire tears through and people want the land to return to how it was before. 

CAMILLE: I totally understand how challenging it is to witness such rapid change. It can feel devastating, right? We all have that special place we love. It's hard to think about how it’ll never be the same again. Even for me, studying these places, it’s tough. I know I won’t see them become the dense forest they once were, even if they’re on a path to recovery. But with climate change, that trajectory is uncertain. 

KRISTAN: Reforesting for the future is a journey filled with uncertainty, discovery, and even failure. But Camille finds hope in the small things along the way. 

CAMILLE: I always get excited when I see that one seedling. Every time I spot a baby tree in a burned area, I get a little spark of hope. It’s funny, because after measuring hundreds of thousands of trees in my career, you'd think I’d be over it. The undergrads I worked with this past week were laughing at me, saying, “Look, there’s a tree!” and I’d get all excited, like, “Yes, there it is!” 

But honestly, I have to hold onto hope that we can still make a difference. I have faith in our ecosystems. Will they look exactly like I remember them? Probably not. But are they resilient? Absolutely. And there are places I’ve visited that give me hope every day. They’re coming back—maybe in a different way, but still, there’s something special happening. Whether it’s an Aspen stand that’s rebounding, or new bird species showing up, or the thrill of morel hunting in post-fire landscapes—those moments are incredibly rewarding. So, yeah, I have to believe that we’ll figure this out. 

 

The State of Things 

TONY: We are living in an era of fire. 

KRISTAN: Here’s Tony again. 

TONY: We are living in an era of fire that we, as humans, have created. Through our actions—whether it’s being ignition sources, altering the climate, or managing and using land in ways that increase its flammability. However, it’s important to recognize that this is something we can change. It’s within our power, both as individuals and collectively. What we need to do is educate ourselves, collaborate, and be far more intentional and strategic about the decisions we make regarding our land. Our relationship with fire and the choices we make that contribute to a changing climate—those are all things we have control over.  

KRISTAN: As these climate-fueled wildfires race through our landscapes, their speed far outpaces our ability to adapt. But the science and tools to confront it are getting better. The challenge remains, however, that if we can’t come together and articulate our values—and what we think success looks like—it might not make much of a difference. 

TONY: Right now, we don’t have a clear definition of what problem we’re trying to solve when it comes to the fire crisis. What we’re doing now is just enacting a bunch of tactics that lack any real connection to a larger set of goals and strategies. I think we know enough now, from experience and science, to start working on true strategy. What I’m looking for is: what does success look like? I have yet to hear anyone at a policy level define what success will ultimately look like. And what are we willing to accept as losses if we fall short of that success? 

KRISTAN: Forests provide a lot of benefits—they clean our air and water, provide habitat for species, and help mitigate climate change. So the desire to keep a forest a forest or to reforest a landscape comes from the right intentions. And reforestation has picked up speed in recent years, not just in the U.S., but around the world. For example, the World Economic Forum launched the One Trillion Trees Initiative, and the United Nations declared 2021 to 2030 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. 

But there are many layers of questions surrounding our reforestation efforts that still don’t have clear answers. 

TONY: Reforestation is expensive. It’s technically challenging. We can’t replant an entire forest that’s been burned. Take the Hayman fire that burned in 2002, just southwest of Denver, Colorado. There are still large areas that have yet to recover. We can’t possibly replant 65,000 acres in the time it takes to regenerate a forest. We have to approach it incrementally, maybe a thousand or a couple thousand acres a year. So it might take 30, 40, or even 50 years to get there. 

KRISTAN: There is a general principle in the forestry world: right tree in the right place for the right reason. 

TONY: So we have to be strategic about where we plant and what we plant. Do we want to plant the species that existed before, or do we want to be more thoughtful and intentional about planting species that may be better suited for the future climate? Right now, there are no clear answers. There's a science question to answer, but there's also a human values and judgment aspect. Where should we plant, and what should we plant? And why? Why should we even do this in the first place? Could those resources be better spent, perhaps by helping homeowners harden their structures for the next fire? Or could they be used to help water providers improve their resilience to future fires and climate change? So, is reforestation even the highest priority we should focus on? 

KRISTAN: Tony likes to play the devil’s advocate on these issues, because they’re critical questions that require not just a lot of resources, but also broad public support. 

TONY: I think as more and more fires take over the landscape, we'll see more and more areas struggling to recover from fires, especially in terms of reforesting. I think the visibility of this issue will hopefully spark a more sustained conversation, which in turn will bring more attention and resources to the problem. 

KRISTAN: There's always a tension between the urgency to act and ensuring that there's meaningful engagement with the diverse people and values involved.  

TONY: The pithy answer is that progress moves at the speed of trust. And there really is no way around it. We can only work at a pace and scale where all of those partners are able to keep up in terms of their attention span, their capacity, their regulations, and their procedures. We can't just change all of those to make decisions faster, and in many ways, we probably shouldn’t. I think that kind of deliberation, even when there's a pressing need to act, is still important. We need to have patience and grace through this process. 

KRISTAN: It feels like we’re playing catch-up. The rules of the game are still a bit unclear, not all the players are on the field yet, and there’s no clear agreement on what success looks like. So, we’re in a tough spot. 

TONY: Whether we can do enough work to keep pace with the changing fire environment and climate change, I don’t think anyone knows that. But the alternative is to do nothing. We’ll just pick away at it, doing random, disconnected work that’s not strategic or collaborative. That’s not an option for me. This is a long game. It’s going to last way beyond my lifetime. 

 

Bird’s-Eye View 

RICK TURLEY (ON RADIO): So, a quick pre-flight briefing before we take off. We're at Northern Colorado Regional Airport, also known as K.F.N.L. That white trailer out there is our control tower. We'll need to get clearance from ground control and the tower before we head out. Once we take off, we'll be heading toward Longs Peak. 

KRISTAN: I’m hopping into a single-engine, four-seater plane at the tarmac of a regional airport just south of Fort Collins, Colorado. Pilot Rick Turley is getting us ready for takeoff so we can get an aerial view of some burn scars. 

RICK: Alright, we’ll need permission to taxi, then some engine checks before we can take off. NOCO Ground, Skylane 8768M, Jet Center, with Alpha, westbound departure, requesting taxi to runway 33. 68M, taxi via D. 

KRISTAN: Pilot Rick volunteers with a nonprofit, Lighthawk, which donated the plane for our use. In the co-pilot seat is Haley Strevey, the executive director of The Coalition for the Poudre River Watershed.  They work to address some of the most challenging water issues in a region smacked with multiple major wildfires in recent years.  

HALEY STREVEY: Today, we'll be flying over both the High Park burn area and the Cameron Peak Fire burn area. 

KRISTAN: The High Park Fire burned 90,000 acres in 2012, while Cameron Peak burned more than 200,000 acres in 2020. 

Having spent so much time walking through burn scars and observing trees from the ground level, this flight offered a chance to zoom out and see the larger scope of fire's impact on our landscape. 

As we ascend the canyon, the first thing I notice is the lasting impact of the High Park fire, still clearly visible even after all these years. 

HALEY: Where we're at right now, there wasn't a single tree left alive. Ten years later, a lot of the trees have fallen down, so it looks like matchsticks on the ground. You can still see some standing dead trees. 

KRISTAN: Right after the High Park Fire, Haley and her team didn’t do reforestation because the data showed it wasn’t worth it at the time. But over the past decade, she says research has advanced, indicating that replanting could be beneficial if done strategically. 

HALEY: So right now, we're actually flying over the area where the Cameron Peak Fire ran into the High Park Fire. The High Park Fire actually acted as a fuel break for the Cameron Peak Fire. We're in the Cameron Peak area now, heading toward the ignition zone. 

RICK: We're at 12,000 feet right now and still climbing.  

KRISTAN: We’re soaring just a couple thousand feet above the ground, which sits at 10,000 feet. Out my window, I see tall mountains and steep valleys. It’s breathtakingly beautiful—even with the blackened, dead trees. 

HALEY: If you look down, you can see the area that burned. We're basically in the alpine, right at the tree line. The trees burned all the way up to the tree line, which is pretty rare. If you look behind you, Kristen, you can see some of the high mountain reservoirs and how much of the forest burned around them. Our forests need fire, but they need fire that burns at a lower severity, with some mixed severity in certain areas. It’s okay if some trees die; we want some to die. We just don’t want stand-replacing fire. When a fire burns this severely, it’s almost like a moonscape—there’s nothing left. However, I’ve seen plenty of areas that burned at lower severity. If you go back there now, especially four years later, they look absolutely beautiful—new trees coming back, wildflowers, shrubs, amazing wildlife habitat. We need fire, but we need good fire. Our forests need fire, but they need fire that doesn’t burn 200,000 acres in four months. 

KRISTAN: The scale of these massive fires is astounding to witness from the air. Much of the landscape is not bouncing back as you might expect with a smaller fire. 

There’s no way we can manually reforest such a large area. What we need is an ecosystem that can recover on its own. But that’s not always the case in this new era we’re living in, and it’s leaving us with difficult tradeoffs about how we should invest every precious dollar. 

We know that trees are beneficial to the health of people and the planet. Yet, how we get to a healthy, resilient forest is incredibly complicated. As a society, we need to accept that what we thought we knew, or what we thought something should look like, might not be what we need for the future. So perhaps we should open our minds to not trying to put things back the way they were, but to what they could be. 

This is United by Fire. Next time, we’ll explore the importance of diverse voices and perspectives in forest management and how compromise can lead to progress.

Credits

KRISTAN: Laws of Notion is a production of the Institute for Science and Policy at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. To learn more visit lawsofnotion.org. 

I’m your host Kristan Uhlenbrock. This episode was produced by me, Carson Frame, and Tricia Waddell with support from Nicole Delaney, and fact-checking by Kate Long. Sound design by Seth Samuel. Original music by Ryan Flores. For a full list of credits, check out the show notes.  

To listen to the audio version, or for more information and additional resources on wildfires in Colorado, please visit institute.dmns.org/united-by-fire.

Check out all the seasons of the Laws of Notion podcast at lawsofnotion.org. 

  

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