We can't keep fighting wildfires one fire at a time.

Every year the headlines ask the same questions: How did it start? How many acres are on fire? How many firefighters are on scene? What is the % contained? Important questions. Asked far too late.

This summer, friends from Montana to California to D.C. have been sending me photos of orange skies and smoke-filled horizons, and I keep coming back to the same thought. I've spent my career looking at waste differently: not as something to dispose of, but as a resource waiting to be unlocked. The more time I spend at the intersection of waste, biomass and energy infrastructure, the more I believe we're approaching wildfire the same way we used to approach waste, reacting instead of preventing.

We spend billions every year fighting fires after they're already catastrophic. And every year, they get bigger, more destructive, more expensive. That should make us ask a different question: are we solving the right problem?

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺

Hazardous fuel accumulation explains a lot of what's happening in dry Western forests. It explains far less in Canada's boreal forests, where stand-replacing fires are natural. And it doesn't fully explain the WUI fires in places like California, where wind, structure-to-structure ignition and continued development are the real drivers.

If we want better policy, we must stop hunting for one universal fix. We need to start thinking in systems.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻

Lightning strikes. Equipment fails. Campfires escape. Lines come down. The errant cigarette butt gets tossed. Those sparks have always existed.

What's changed is what they encounter: over a century of accumulated vegetation, heavier fuel loads, hotter and drier conditions, longer fire seasons, plus more homes built directly in fire-prone landscapes.

This isn't a knock on firefighters. It's recognition that we're asking emergency responders to solve a problem that started decades before the first spark and has built into a complex system of interrelated issues and coordination problems.

𝗪𝗲 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 — 𝘄𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻'𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁

Mechanical thinning. Prescribed fire. Used together, they work.

The problem is scale: removing biomass is expensive, transportation costs are high, permitting takes years, and responsibility is split across federal, state, tribal, provincial and private land.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 — 𝘆𝗲𝘁

The biggest value forest restoration creates isn't the wood removed. It's the catastrophe that never happens: lower suppression costs, protected watersheds, homes that never burn.

But almost none of that value reaches the contractor or landowner doing the work. That's a classic market failure, and it's why fuel reduction still depends almost entirely on public budgets and grants.

𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝘆 around new kinds of demand and market mechanisms

Forest restoration should be treated as critical infrastructure, not an environmental expense. The same biomass that represents wildfire risk can become part of the solution, engineered wood, biochar, renewable fuels, firm electricity.

At Kore Infrastructure, we've spent years converting low-value organic material into firm electricity and stable biocarbon. Our focus has been landfill-diverted waste, but the same principle applies to forest residue: without reliable end markets for removed biomass, restoration will never scale beyond grant cycles which, while very important, are prone to delay and politics.

𝗔 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘀𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀

We'll always need firefighters, aircraft, emergency response.

But success shouldn't be measured only by how well we fight fires after they start. It should be measured by how many acres are restored before fire season, how many communities never have to evacuate, how much value we create from material that would otherwise fuel the next megafire. We need to build a new kind of coordinated ecosystem of players, incentives, coordination and a systems-level view.

We can't eliminate wildfire. We can dramatically reduce how many become catastrophic. That work begins long before the first spark.

Where do you see the biggest bottleneck, permitting, financing, or the missing end markets? I'd like to hear how others are thinking about this.