I'm John Bachelor. This is the new John Bachelor show CBS Audio Network. It's a great pleasure to welcome Holly Freck of the Property Environment and Research Center, Perk of Bozeman, Montana. Recently Holly and her colleague Jonathan Wood have published a new guide to American

forests.

It's entitled Six America's Forests, Reforms to Restore National Forests, and Tackle

the Wildfire Crisis. forms to restore national force and tackle the wildfire crisis.

Wildfire crisis, Holly, congratulations and good evening.

Wildlife crisis is vaguely appropriate to the scale of this. In California in 2020 I covered these fires.

They ranged right up to the edge and into the wealthiest parts of the

state and also the most remote and beautiful parts of the state. The statistics say

9600 fires burn 4.7, 4.4 million acres, 4% of the state's roughly 100 million acres in California alone.

You're describing something much more vast.

These wildfires, do they weigh on the states where they range across or do people shrug

and say business as usual we live out west?

Good evening to you, Holly.

Good evening and thank you so much for inviting me John for sure people feel these fires heavily heavily when they come across the landscape and even if it's not in your own state but another state we are often suffering the smoke that's coming from other states.

California fires, Idaho fires, we feel those here in Montana.

And we had a number of fires here in Montana last year,

one right in our backyard that took out 28 homes.

And these fires, I thought they're part of nature.

You know, you read about Native Americans who had forest fires

and they dealt with it.

I thought it was part of nature, but it turns out I learned from your book it's not part of nature.

There are federal lands the number I have is vast.

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