[00:05:10] Host: So in the conservation lane, essentially, you raise money to buy land for conservation efforts and then support conservation legislation. Would that kind of sum up?

[00:05:25] Weinstein: A little bit more nuanced than that. I'll let Hugh jump in, but sometimes we're raising money, sometimes we're generating new funding, which is something I'll be talking about more. But we also have a number of attorneys, land protection specialists that are actually managing and facilitating the acquisition deals. We have landscape architects that work to design the parks and work to sub out contracts with local entities. The lane, the way Trust for Public Land distinguishes our work is by focusing on community. We want to, we see the world through the eyes of people, no matter where they are, and no matter what their context or circumstance is. We want to hear from community and figure out how to make their hometowns and counties and cities and states more livable, more walkable. We have a mission to make sure that every American is within a 10 minute walk of a park, a trail, a green space, an open space, because there are massive park inequities throughout this nation. And we know that there are just so many health, climate, and social benefits that come from helping more and more people have access to the outdoors. That's always been the lane TPL has driven down.

[00:06:52] Coxe: One of the ways we are different than, say, a local land trust that's interested in doing land conservation is that we have capacities that oftentimes you don't get at that local level. But we have, as David referred to, in-house staff attorneys that go through it or real estate experts that can help through that whole process of buying a property and then transferring it over. As a result, we end up working with a lot of local land trusts. That's the way we are brought into some of our land conservation projects. We rely on them and some of our staff to make determinations of what the community desires are. But then we have the ability to get the project done, particularly if it's a complex project or an expensive project. We have a very good track record of raising money, both philanthropically and also through public funding, that local land trusts usually just don't have the capacity to tap into that.

[00:08:00] Host: Who is the land being bought from? Is it usually private owners or is it like the US Forest Service or a combination of both?

[00:08:11] Coxe: No, it's almost always privately owned. And then the goal is to put it into public hands with public access. And the public hands can look very different, just as the entity that we buy it from can look very different from project to project. I think once upon a time, maybe the typical scenario would be an old ranching family, say in California, has reached the end of their time that they want to ranch, but they don't want to necessarily sell it on the open market or they might not want to develop it. And they would be motivated to conserve it. And so we would work with them. And then that ultimately might go to a local parks district. Depending on where it is, it might go to the federal government. So we've done projects where the land that we've purchased has gone into federal ownership, National Park Service, et cetera, et cetera, state ownership, local ownership, county ownership. Sometimes the local land trust will actually be the entity that will take it over, as long as they have a public benefit purpose or are a public entity. And again, almost all of our land conservation projects require that there be some form of public access on the land.

[00:09:41] Host: Is there, I mean, you mentioned that some of it goes back to the National Park Service, but was there an inspiration from what the National Parks started in 1916 to what the founders of TPL wanted to create almost like on a smaller scale?

[00:10:00] Weinstein: It's an interesting question. I think there are through lines certainly that inform what so many different conservation organizations do in this country. I'd say it might be more of a dotted through line. I wouldn't say it was a direct inspiration, but as Hugh says, we're most interested in figuring out how to work with landowners to think about their properties, whether that's old farmers and ranchers that want to, or I should say generational farmers and ranchers that want to keep their property in working hands and for their families that are facing a crisis of increasing property tax all the time. And so we can help defray some of those costs with easements so they can maintain that generational farming and ranching. We achieved one of the largest land backs, I think, in American history in Maine, working with tribes to identify parcels of lands that we have helped facilitate the purchase and conveyance back to tribal nations. So obviously quite different from any pedigree of a National Park Service concept. And then again, to just continue to complicate matters further as we just really want to avoid land conversions for so many different reasons. We really want to make sure more people are connected to all the benefits that come with the outdoors. So if it's a school district that already owns a property and we can help enhance that property and work with a school district and municipality to facilitate joint use agreements such that communities can use that land when schools are not in session, that now gets quite far away from a National Park pedigree. But I will just say, one good example where I live here in Bozeman is we have a vision for a 56-mile trail from the town of Livingston, Montana down to Yellowstone National Park. And so that will involve working with landowners that are interested in access to a new trail, connections to parks and open spaces along the way, and of course that connectivity, economic development, social cohesion, and all the other different benefits that would come from some grand vision of this nature. So it's been really fun to evolve both intrinsically and forward-thinking as an organization and also be reactive and adaptive to what's going on around us in the federal, state, and local communities with which we work.

[00:12:42] Host: I don't know if this is a basic question, but is there a difference between conservation and preservation? Yes.

[00:12:54] Weinstein: Hugh, do you want to take that or you want me to jump in first?

[00:12:57] Coxe: Yeah, well, I'll try. And I think people conflate those terms oftentimes, and I'm not sure that there's broad agreement as to what they mean necessarily. Conservation is focused on the health of the land and people's connection to the land. It can include very much still having working land involved. So it's a much more inclusive, broader perspective on turning private land into public land. Whereas I think preservation connotes more prescriptive uses around it for maybe selected groups and selected purposes, which is not always a negative per se, but it is often viewed as something that's very targeted and trying to keep it exactly as it was once upon a time.

[00:14:00] Host: Like untouched by the hand of a man or- Yes.

[00:14:03] Weinstein: Yeah. I always look back to that grand triad of Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir, right? You can kind of put the conservation concept in the camp of Gifford Pinchot and using a forest for products, but also maintaining working forest lands and other types of lands. And then, of course, the John Muir camp of more preservation. And Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote, “Leave it as it is. He cannot improve upon it. The ages that have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” As he talked about the Grand Canyon, that would be a preservation effort as opposed to making sure that people have access to the lands for recreation on, say, a working timber company's private property where they are allowing use, but are going to maintain sustainable harvesting of that timber.

[00:15:03] Host: I want to shift towards the topic of this series, and I want to look at how climate change has affected the work that TPL does, and specifically looking at this dramatic increase of frequency and intensity of wildfires across the country. And not just here in the West, because right now we have these massive fires in Oklahoma and Texas, and we had the fires in the Carolinas. How does this seemingly every year getting more and more intense affect what TPL does or how TPL does its job?

[00:15:45] Weinstein: Big question, Jon.

[00:15:47] Host: Absolutely, absolutely. This is my open the door and let you go question.

[00:15:52] Weinstein: I appreciate that. You know, I'll start out, but Hugh will probably have better specifics. From my desk, obviously, climate change is a pure and simple and existential threat. So not only does it affect the way in which TPL operates, it affects every single thing that we do. And I think as we are learning, this is definitely an all hands on deck approach. Every conservation organization, and I would argue every organization, every business, every human has their own lane in which they can work to do better on behalf of what we are facing to maintain, again, the crisis that we all face collectively. As that translates to Trust for Public Land and very specifically conversations around wildfire, I think the reason that we've been connected is because we are not wildfire experts at this organization. We are new to the wildfire space, but we are working with communities that are facing these realities. You know, one signature project of Trust for Public Land was conserving the land that holds the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. And we think about the most recent Los Angeles based fires and what that means, not just for iconography, but what that means for the communities that, you know, with which we work, in which we live, you know, Hugh's right there in the area. And so it matters a lot just based on the feedback that we get from local elected officials, our partners, stakeholders, and it informs just about everything that we do as we think about the work. And again, I'll wait till we get into the nitty gritty of how conservation finance at Trust for Public Land works and what I've experienced, but would like Hugh to maybe expand on that if you've got more to say.

[00:17:51] Coxe: I, so I've been with TPL for about five years and we have been very focused on what we've termed, we've been using this climate conservation. So looking at our conservation projects through a climate lens, and that is both for the health of the land, the health of the wildlife and the health of people. And so it takes a lot of different shapes and a lot of different forms. One instance, David made reference to our schoolyard work. Schoolyards, we'll just use as an example in LA, generally are paved. They oftentimes don't have shade and they heat up. They are hot places. They are not refuges. And so with the schoolyard work, we go in there and we try and find ways to create shade and create green space, create a space that is healthier and more livable as the world heats up in an urban space that's going to serve a lot of people. In a very different space, we also will look at large landscape scale conservation to make sure that there's refugia for wildlife as they start to go up in elevation or move through the landscape to be in areas that they can continue to survive as the climate changes. So it really ranges. We're looking at it, we're mapping it, we're analyzing it at the very small micro scale of schoolyard, and we're looking at it at the large landscape scale of where are things moving and how over time, what's it going to look like and how do we plan for that and how do we create the space where that can happen through land conservation.

[00:19:48] Host: Yeah, with regards to the fires, I mean, most people want to experience natural beauty through hiking or camping or fishing. I mean, one of the things that you're doing is opening these, creating these areas for people to enjoy, to be able to enjoy that beauty. And a lot of people want to live with this forest in their backyard. And it's this wildlife urban interface that is expanding and now it's becoming the people and their property and the electricity that we need and our campfires and recreational vehicles that are leading to this devastation. When we were looking at lives lost and property lost, so how do we balance creating natural spaces for the people when it's the people that are one of the major problems?

[00:20:54] Weinstein: Another good question, I would say, and I'm sure you've heard a lot of this throughout the series, but again, since Trust for Public Land is not specifically a wildfire expert organization, we think a lot about co-benefits. And so we all, I mean, I'm not sure if we all do, but most people understand the last 100, 150 years of wildfire policy in this country. And you think about something like the big blow up of 1910 that unleashed this philosophy of suppression for so many decades and fits and starts, 10 a.m. rules and Smokey the Bear when folks were overseas during World War II and then maybe getting a little bit better before huge fires in Yellowstone in the late 80s. And then we're finally getting to this place where fire ecology is becoming sophisticated enough that we understand that Trust for Public Land’s work can be on that preventative side to accomplish the mission that we have as an organization to help benefit the people we want to, which is all Americans and all visitors to America, and have the co-benefit of making sure that communities are adapted and ready for these catastrophic wildfires. So I don't think we need to focus too much on the fact that human beings are, as it were, at fault here. I think we need to work with communities to make sure that, A, they understand what's going on in our forests, and very importantly, understand what's going on in their own communities, as we've seen of late in places like Boulder and Hawaii and most recently in Los Angeles. And everybody's holding their breath. Like you said, Jon, Oklahoma's experiencing fires, and we all know that these things are going to continue to pop up, and there are going to be some massive conflagrations that are going to be really hard to manage and are going to result in more loss of property and life. So what are we all doing as people, as the human community, to make sure that communities are defended, that we're thinking harder about the built environment and how wildfire moves from the backcountry into urban areas? These catastrophic fires with the wind events that we've seen in places like California are pushing embers up to five miles in front of a fire. And this is what causes these big fires in the urban areas. And then you look at fence lines and building materials and shrubbery, and we're starting to see more and more policies enacted to combat these problems. But humans are not the problem. It's just how humans are acting with the natural land. And Hugh and I and Trust for Public Land and so many different other entities are thinking through how best to get ready for all these things and to fund and implement work that prepares communities for these types of events. And, you know, Hugh's work with utilities, my work with fire chiefs, this is how we're doing the work.

[00:24:14] Host: Are these, you know, we were talking about funding, and I think that this is a good opportunity for you, David, to talk a little bit about that financial element. Are these situations, these conflagrations, is climate change kind of changing the way funds are raised and allocated with Trust for Public Land?

[00:24:41] Weinstein: I would just say yes, because I think there's more and more recognition amongst the general public about the risks of wildfire, not just because of view sheds and the beauty of healthy forest versus a burned forest, which, again, as we all know, forests need lots of fire to make sure that we're maintaining a healthy balance in the ecosystem, but also all the health risks and impacts, not just direct fatalities and loss of property, but smoke in the air. And, you know, the fact that we do live in interconnected systems and that fires, as you've already mentioned, are not just isolated. You know, I think those massive fires in Canada in 2022 or 23, I mean, the big burn, the big blow up was about three million acres. The Canadian fires were about 50 million acres. So this is the size and scale that we're talking about that reaches around the globe. And so, yes, real quickly, conservation finance at Trust for Public Land began about 27, 28 years ago at this organization when, you know, we've done a long, we've long been in Washington, D.C., making sure that we're working with federal agencies and Congress to appropriate the kind of funds that we need to do conservation work. And we asked ourselves, as we looked around at municipal bonds for things like transportation and other types of infrastructure and health and libraries and public safety, we had a theory that voters would probably say yes to measures that had to do with conservation and parks and trails as well. And, you know, just last year, in the last political cycle, in the 28 years that Trust for Public Land has been doing this work, we have generated more than 110 billion, with a B, dollars for states, counties, municipalities and districts across the country. You know, I can talk to you if you'd like about the methodology of how we do this, but public opinion research is one major step in this process. And as we oft like to repeat, a number of our pollsters have traditionally talked about, you know, these three W's that, you know, no matter what you're doing out there, talk about water, wildlife, way of life. These things resonate with communities everywhere. Voters understand it, and they want to say yes, they're willing to tax themselves to make sure they've got clean water, that water is staying in rivers for recreation and drinking, that there are wildlife corridors that, again, in the co-benefit sense, have a lot to do with large landscape conservation and conservation easements and trails and other types of work. And then way of life really does have to do with those communities again, generational farmers and ranches. What do tribal communities need? What are folks in urban settings trying to deal with and accomplish? And of late, within the last 10 years alone, we've seen that fourth W pop, and that is wildfire. So there is a direct through line between the effects of climate change, wildfire, and how voters are thinking about it, that we, it's not like we're tapping into something. We are listening to county commissioners, state legislators, governors, even city councils and mayors, and they are broaching the topic with us. We are working with fire chiefs and other policy experts in the wildfire space, putting together packages and putting those packages in front of voters. They have a lot to do with wildfire. I've got a host of examples we could talk about. Voters are saying yes, because they understand the threat. They understand prevention more and more, and they understand that a history of suppression has put us to the, you know, in this place, but there's still time to turn the ship and think about the next hundred years.

[00:28:31] Host: Yeah. For example, if I may, we just here in California passed Proposition 4 with the support from Trust for Public Land, creating bonds for wildfire prevention, clean drinking water, and protecting communities and natural land from climate risks. But I'm curious, as you're mentioning these partnerships with governments, where does the priority lie? Does it lie more at that local level or the state, or federal? And I know that all are important, but what is the priority?

[00:29:09] Weinstein: I'm just going to say yes. Yeah. So, you know, if you take a look at what the Alliance for Wildfire Resilience is doing, this is kind of a newly formed umbrella group that hosts a number of the big organizations, policymakers, academics, practitioners. That group, AWR, is doing a great job of making sure they've got their arms around kind of the federal situation as far as federal policy and funding is concerned. You know, it comes out of the cohesive strategy of 2009 and then the follow-up to the cohesive strategy with President Biden's Wildfire Commission, and now AWR is working to translate hundreds of recommendations that came out of that most recent report into federal policy. At the state level, we are talking directly with governors and their agency staff about what their needs are, what their plans are, and how they're going to fund it. TPL works to figure out what we can do to play a role in making sure that that money is delivered. And then certainly on the ground, I'm sorry, I keep repeating “fire chief,” but these fire chiefs all over the country are experts not only in fire policy and implementation, but they're experts in their unique geographies. So, you know, we're working across the board to figure out where we fit in this larger equation. And like I said, with climate change in general, TPL sees a great role to focus on our commitments and our initiatives and working with communities, but also making sure we're being great partners with all these other entities and alliances and coalitions.

[00:30:52] Host: Hugh, I'd love to look at California specifically, since it's my state and, you know, it's where we've seen a lot of these recent fires. I'd love for you to talk about the wildfire resiliency program here in the state of California and in the geographic information system, if you will.

[00:31:14] Coxe: Okay. Yeah, sure. Happy to. I just want to touch on, I mean, you asked a very broad question earlier about-

[00:31:23] Host: That's what I'm good at, my broad questions.

[00:31:27] Coxe: Well, it's something that I think about an awful lot. I was actually glad that you asked it because it is, you know, the increase in wildfires that we see is a result of a lot of factors. It's a really complex set of inputs that have gotten us to where we are, climate change obviously being a substantial part of that. But it's also about communal decisions that have been made over many years by many people that were rational at the time, and, you know, based in desires of people, as you've rightly noted, to live close to nature. And so that's increased development. One of the impacts of that is this increased development in the wildland urban interface. We've seen that throughout the West, we've certainly seen it quite a bit in California, and there's a lot of literature out there to suggest that the increases over the last couple of decades in housing, in infrastructure, in things that both put people in harm's way, but also potentially create ignition sources in this wildland urban interface is an issue that is now coming to bear, is starting to be part of the cause of this conflagration, this wildfire crisis that we're seeing in California. Anyway, the program that we are working on in Southern California kind of flows out of some work that we did in looking at a landscape scale area in Southern California defined by the transverse ranges. Geographically, that runs from about Joshua Tree out to Lompoc and follows the spine of the mountain ranges that go on an east-west traverse. So most mountain systems in the U.S. are oriented north-south. The Transverse Ranges are oriented east-west. Within that, there is quite a bit of habitat diversity. It is also one of the largest metropolitan areas. And so we, a couple of years, started focusing on that as an area to really kind of dive in deeply to think about climate resilience, habitat protection, and equitable access. How do we provide the opportunities for people in that area to get into nature, whether they live close to nature or whether they live in an urban area? And we did a series of maps to kind of prioritize what were the most important areas or, you know, had multiple benefits that we could say this would be a distinct area that we want to focus on. And as we were finishing up some of that work, we became more and more involved in discussions around wildfire resilience and realized that what we didn't have here was a specific lens to think about, okay, how does wildfire and wildfire mitigation and prevention play a role in thinking about where do we want to be focused? Where do we want to put our priorities? Where do we want to invest our time and our money to get the most out of that? And so over the last year or so, we've started leaning into that through what's essentially a pilot project in the transverse range for wildfire resilience. And that has involved both doing some mapping to identify high-risk areas, but also leaning into lots of different partnerships and trying to gain knowledge both from experts and from local communities. So we're still in the midst of gathering data, doing additional mapping, identifying what are the best sources for saying what's a high-priority area. Not surprisingly, not everybody agrees what's going to be a high-priority area. And then kind of ground truthing that through some local discussions, both with organized conservancies and then also trying to tap into more local interest groups and things of that nature.

[00:35:56] Host: I was going to ask, what defines high risk? Is it where fires have occurred in the past? Or, I mean, what is the mathematics behind that?

[00:36:11] Coxe: It's a fascinating question, especially if you end up being a little bit of a data geek like I sometimes am now. So California has a set of maps you're probably aware of that are high fire hazard severity maps, and they're in the midst of changing those, particularly for the local response areas that the localities have responsibility for. And they have a number of inputs, including the lay of the land, so the aspect of land, the steepness of the slopes. They also look at fire history, and then they'll try to do some analysis of potential fuels that are there. Some of those are relatively static over time, and some of those are pretty dynamic. So fuels, particularly in Southern California, can change dramatically from season to season if you have a rainy season, you're going to have much more fuel loading. If you have an area that's been impacted and you might have gotten some invasives, you may have a whole different set of fuels that are more flammable. The California hazard maps are good for what they're used for, but they're not terribly granular. The insurance industry is highly motivated to have much more granular data so they can look on a property-by-property basis and say, you know, this is going to have a lot of hazards, a lot of potential for fire here, this one isn't. So we've actually been working with a private company that produces that type of data to see if we can incorporate some of that into our analysis. For the time being, we're mostly looking at historic fire perimeters, what has the state decided is a high-fire hazard area, and then where is the wildland-urban interface? So you can get a fire, and if it isn't going to impact building people, structures, fire can be healthy on the landscape. The real problem is when we start to lose property and lives. And so looking at those high-risk areas where those intersections come together. So that's, I guess, in a nutshell, that's sort of how we're trying to do the prioritization.

[00:38:30] Host: And how does climate change affect these high-risk denotations? I imagine rainfall and, you know, however the drought is affecting it is going to change on a year-to-year basis of what's high-risk and what's not.

[00:38:48] Coxe: Yeah, I think generally the literature that I've seen suggests that the changes are that you get spikier spikes. So the droughts are longer and more unforgiving. And then the wet years, by the same token, are wetter and last longer. And both of those can work to increase fire hazard. You know, on wet years, we get a lot of vegetation very quickly. And then if it swings back to a hot, dry summer, all that vegetation dries up and is fuel. So there's, from the literature that I've seen, there's quite a bit of evidence that these variations are going to be more extreme as a result of climate change. But kind of picking a part in any one location or any one year, how much is attributable to that, is a daunting task, even for our best scientists.

[00:39:48] Host: I want to look at another initiative that the Trust for Public Land works on or works with is restoring tribal land. And the indigenous tribes know how to use fire as a regenerative and protective tool against massive wildfires. So when you're looking at conservation, and David, I know you talked a little bit about this earlier, but when looking at conservation, how does the concept of starting fires gel with the concept of conserving land?

[00:40:26] Weinstein: I would answer by saying, great. As Hugh said, as long as it's got the borders, as it were, of places that can burn safely, that take care of a lot of that understory. And obviously, indigenous peoples have been burning productively and safely for millennia. And it's just, there is a lot of, trying to use my words carefully here, but the 20th century just kind of annihilated millennia of tradition and knowledge. And we are finally getting back to a place of understanding more, learning from indigenous people and not trying to compartmentalize indigenous history and practice and knowledge into a Western viewpoint about how fire ecology works. Again, Dr. Ken Lucero and Dr. Jennifer Santry at Trust for Public Lands organization, these are the directors of our indigenous and tribal programs, would have a lot more to say about the topic. But I think when it comes to Trust for Public Lands, specifically in indigenous practices, that's not really part of our lane. What we work on is working on community schoolyards on indigenous lands, as well as working with tribal nations to think through what land back work could look like, as well as local funding, economic development, and how conservation and recreation can be enacted and facilitated on tribal lands. So I also want to just be cautious about the things that I don't know.

[00:42:13] Host: Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, to add more to that, let's look at how our current administration and the slashing of funds and workers, how everything that 2025 has brought us, how that has affected Trust for Public Land and the work that you do.

[00:42:37] Weinstein: Yeah. Also a big question because of the various facets of our organization. Again, just to go back to the beginning, we've got four commitments, climate, health, equity, community, and we've got four initiatives to support that work or that vision. Lands, parks, trails, and community schoolyards. And so as you can imagine, the current administration's kind of whipsaw policies and decisions of the moment are making things unpredictable, just like they are for everybody else. And in certain instances, we've seen funds that have been appropriated through packages like the Inflation Reduction Act that are frozen at the moment. And we are working with Republicans, Democrats, independents, and everybody on the Hill to hopefully get a lot of those funds thawed. From my perspective and my desk as a conservation finance staffer or formerly, I would say that state and local work and funding has never been more important. It's always been important because of the extreme amount of leverage that occurs because so many different federal programs require local match, so many different state programs require local match. And when you're able to equip a community with funds at that very local level, even if it's a little sliver, you can leverage time and again, money at the state and federal level. I think there are a number of funders out there that are focused on wildfire resiliency, and there are a number of organizations that do similar work as Trust for Public Land that are thinking through, okay, we've always needed to do this work. This is a short-term administration, as it were. I mean, President Trump has termed out in four years here. So, what are we doing at the state and local work to ensure that good conservation practices and wildfire practitioner work is occurring and is funded? And how are we setting up the communities with which we work to be ready for the next administration and all subsequent administrations? We focus a lot at the local level on trying to make packages that last in perpetuity, and that has everything to do with what voters do and do not want. And so we're not here to dictate terms or to force Trust for Public Lands will on any community. We're here to work with a community and make sure that we're listening and then providing the strategic and technical assistance services that we have to accomplish those goals.

[00:45:17] Coxe: I might just, since we've discussed California specifically, just take note that in California, we have a wildfire task force that was started a number of years ago as the Forest Health and Resilience Task Force and then added wildfire and is now primarily focused on wildfire. And we are fortunate in the state of California to have quite a bit of funding through Prop 4, which you mentioned before, $1.5 billion of that is for wildfire resilience, and a task force that has been able to bring together a host of interests and expertise and develop policies that are very beneficial for the state and put in some consistency that I think even in these times where we may not be able to rely as much on federal resources will give us the ability to continue to move forward. They meet four times a year and it's open to the public and they have been an incredible resource for our program. We are trying to align ourselves pretty closely with what they are doing and they have some very robust discussions in these public sessions where they talk about things such as one of the things you referred to before, where traditional tribal practices and what are some of the barriers to that, as well as how do you take these broad state goals and right-size them at the community level and for specific projects. So, for instance, around the rebuilding of Paradise after it burned. It's a resource that's been important to us. It's sort of a guidepost for us. It's an example, I think, of a lot of good work that's being done in the public sector, but also by reaching out and partnering with a lot of other programs, a lot of other entities.

[00:47:18] Weinstein: And Jon, if I might add two more things for you. If you look at the 2012 bond measure that occurred in Flagstaff, Arizona, from a conservation finance perspective, that was a pretty landmark event. You know, it came on the heels of the 2010 Schultz fire and we talked earlier about how climate change is exasperating things. It's interesting to me, A, that a community saw that the federal government either wasn't working quickly enough or enough period to get work done and they were willing to tax themselves in order to create new programs and fund their community wildfire protection plan and do a lot of innovative things with a small chunk of funding. But, also, that when we talk about climate change, you saw a fire there that burned so hot that when we talk about climate forecasts in the future, and as Hugh said, the spike's getting spikier, you think about soil that was so heated that it became hydrophobic and would reject water absorption and the subsequent flooding that could occur. And it's just a fascinating example and just one of myriad examples and offshoots of this problem that I think is really interesting and notable to think about. And a lot of us have used that as a great example to be working with local communities about what it means to deliver on local funding. And then secondly, you know, I mentioned the Alliance for Wildfire Resilience, but Trust for Public Land actively also works with the California Fire Safe Council, the Headwaters Economics, which is based here in Bozeman, as well as their fiscally sponsored community planning and assistance for wildfire, which works with communities throughout the Intermountain West on their wildfire priorities. We're seeing more and more fire-adapted community networks pop up. So there's like an overall structure there, as well as state-based fire-adapted community networks and then a number of different funders that are helping to facilitate all this work, but also working hand in glove because they've got actual wildfire specialists within their ranks that are helping communities, helping organizations like Trust for Public Land deliver on this type of work. So I just wanted to make sure we mentioned some of our other great partners and maybe that might spur more conversations you could have in the future with people that know even more than you and me.

[00:49:47] Host: We'd like to thank David Weinstein, Hugh Cox, and Trust for Public Land. The Fire Problem is produced by Past Forward and Chapman University. To learn more about these issues, visit us at pastforward.org or follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.