 We're all here and I want to thank you everyone for logging in and joining our session today. The session is entitled the world is burning and we'll be hearing from our panelists on innovative private capital solutions to reducing the risk of wildfire. My name is Siobhan King and I lead product management for impact assets and I'm going to be the moderator of this panel today. And I'm joined by a set of stakeholders who are working on understanding and creating new solutions to our mega fire problem. And that includes Willie with lessy from the general manager of uber water agency. Dr Paul Hesburg, a research landscape ecologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the US Forest Service. I'm Connaker, a principal with the Rockefeller Foundation and Zach Knight CEO and co founder of Blue Forest Conservation. And for this first few minutes of the session will use a few slides and so as audience members, you can double click on the PowerPoint slides to make them bigger I can't do that for you so if you want to enlarge them, go ahead and do that yourself. And type any questions you have in the chat window I'll keep an eye on those and bring them to the group as when we get to the panel discussion. And so if we were on a room together, I would love to ask everyone by show of hands how many of you have been impacted by this year's wildfires. And I think a lot of hands would go up my hand would go up. This Zach's hand is up. I'm sure this whole group's hands up. The picture is taken near my home near San Francisco at 10 o'clock in the morning a few weeks ago, looking straight into the sun suns right there in front of you but you can't see it. Because this was one of the days where the fires in the West turned San Francisco into this apocalyptic orange sky, and it was just unreal and in the, the weeks before and after that. There was a lot of ash raining down, and wildfires have really smothered residents across the western United States and some of the worst air quality in the world with the haze reaching all the way to the east coast. Once a rare occurrence these mega fires which are, you know fires that are larger than 100,000 acres have become more common. This year we've had more than 6 million acres in the United States burned which is the equivalent to the size of the state of New Hampshire. Particularly we've lost 37 lives this year because of the wildfires. But there's good news and we're here to talk about the good news which is that the science and historical land management practices behind these wildfires is well understood, and the challenges in scaling some of those solution sets that we have and funding those solutions. And so, because understanding mega fires is the first step into understanding how to address them. I've asked Dr. Hesper to give us a talk and make us all experts on the context of these recent wildfires. Thank you. All right, so we notice that wildfires are changing the western US in fact they're changing western North America. And this slide basically shows a transition of a forest landscape from the early 20th century to the early 21st century. Next slide. Next slide. Thank you. So here's a look at a forest landscape from the interior of Washington State and on the top in 1930 you can see a landscape that was basically covered mostly by grasses with pine forest growing on the north slopes down in the valley bottoms. You can see early in the 21st century how a grass dominated landscape, even in the driest conditions has become dominated by trees. This is another landscape where we're a little bit higher in elevation and you can see how the driest aspects which you can see our sparsely tree in the top photo have filled in with trees. And so there's an awful lot more forested area and the forested area is now denser. Next slide. And these are further up in elevation that's Mount Rainier in the background and you can see how a once varied patchwork of forest age and size and density and non forest area has filled in with homogeneous forest. So up and down the environmental gradient forests have accrued and they've gotten denser. Next slide please. What caused this? Kimber harvesting, clear cut logging and selection cutting. Selection cutting is cutting the biggest and the best trees. Fire exclusion by livestock grazing, developing the built environment and fire suppression. And climate change. The climate since the middle 80s is warmer, it's drier and it's now often windier. Next slide please. What did that do to the landscape? It did a couple of important things that you need to know about. In the first case, seasonally dry forest between June and late September, they historically had a lot of fires and these fires were continually thinning out trees, reducing dead wood on the ground, reducing tree density, especially in the smaller sizes and so medium and large size trees tended to survive over time. And across big landscape areas what we saw is that patchwork that I showed you some examples of that patchwork got homogenized with forest, forest increase, they colonized grass and shrublands. And then the variety of ages of forest became homogenous with an awful lot of it middle to later aged. And that explains significant changes in fire severity. So the patchwork itself regulated future fire severity and future fire size. It stopped the flow of fire. Next slide please. What you get when you keep fire out of the woods is a lot of regeneration and release of trees. And this is the condition that speaks to the kind of fire severity we're seeing today. Next slide please. Let's look at a cartoon of that fire severity. I want you to only see a couple of things. Conditions in the top row are historical, 1800 conditions in the bottom row are 21st century. Hot colors, severe conditions, cool colors, less severe. What I'm trying to show you is how the structure of the forest on the left, while varied historically became more homogenized and that accounted for changes in dead wood on the ground fuel loading. Crown fire potential, which is the likelihood that fire from the forest floor will get up into the tree crowns and run and flame length, short versus long flame lengths. And that's important because fire suppression happens when flame lengths are short, four feet or less. Is there a path forward? There certainly is. Where we have the goal to reliably maintain forests, protect watersheds, water quality, water quantity, habitats for fish, wildlife and humans, a lot of forests need a hand down. They're maladapted to the current climate and the climate is getting moodier. Wildfire severity is unprecedented. It doesn't look anything like it did in 17, 18 or 1900. And modern wildfires are a blunt management tool. They're not working well enough to meet management objectives. There are better tools available. We can use managed wildfires burning in the right conditions and time of year. We can do prescribed burning in the back country. So those are wilderness areas, national parks and the like, or we can do thinning and prescribed burning where the fuels are too great to use fire alone tools. And this actually is a very large area and ongoing maintenance is essential. There's no one and done with making Western landscapes in better shape. There are two key impediments, our large scale funding and limited personnel for doing this proactive work. I think that's the last of my slides, Siobhan. Okay, great. Thank you so much, Paul. And I wanted to hear also, well, so first I think it's surprising to people sometimes to hear that in order that it can be healthy for forests to thin them and remove and burn them. And that's part of the solution set. And Willie, I'm wondering if maybe you could unmute yourself and you can tell us, as a water agency manager, how, you know, what is your interest in involvement in the wildfire discussion how do these fires impact our water systems, and why would your agency be interested in solving the problem at scale. Yeah, so that's a that's an excellent question. You know the source of our water is about 300,000 acres of the North Yuba watershed primarily in Northern California, and it's, I don't know, 80 to 90% forested with mixed conifer forest and the watershed into the north of us the Feather River watershed, literally just a month ago, and maybe it's still burning today experienced the 300,000 acre wildfire that started as the bear fire announced one of the complex fires. You know, a couple years ago we had the campfire, it's the Feather River watershed as well. In 2014, the American River watershed south of us burned about half of that watershed burned up in 150,000 acre fire and we have a sister agency plastic County Water Agency and experienced major fires across for removal of sediment and debris from their reservoir and so we're just really in a race against time to treat our watershed to make it resilient to the just threats from catastrophic wildfire, and we want to prevent, you know, this destructive fire we want to prevent the cost that will incur and cleaning up our reservoir, both the surface of the reservoir and sediment inputs, and we really want a healthy resilient forest that provides the quality and quantity of water that are naturally provided in our watershed. Our watershed is it's over stock because of fire exclusion, and we want to get it back to a more resilient natural state. That's really the primary reason why we're involved and we've been involved in the past few years. Great, thank you and Zach. Can you tell us a little bit about your, your work at Blue Forest, and I think you've shared with me that this is a $58 billion problem, and public funding alone won't get us there and so tell us about how we can bring private capital to the conversation and to the solution. Yeah, absolutely, Siobhan. I think it's worth building on a little bit of what Dr. Hesburgh said when you look through the Forest Service budget. Annually they get about five, five and a half billion dollars and about half a billion dollars we can use towards proactive restoration. But importantly, over the last 20 years, more and more of that budget has been siphoned off for fire suppression. Going back to 1995, that was probably 15% of the budget. In 2017, it was 56% of the budget for the Forest Service or $2.7 billion. And what that does is it creates this vicious cycle where we're spending more and more money suppressing fires and we're pulling that money away from the work that could actually prevent these fires in the first place. And again, to build off Dr. Hesburgh's point, we understand what needs to happen on this landscape from a scientific standpoint. And in fact, I'd argue the Forest Service has been involved in some form of landscape restoration for at least the last 50 years. So it's a known, it's a tried and true practice. We know that it works. And what we really have here is not a science problem, but a finance problem. That's how we look at it at Blue Forest and that sort of helped push us together along with our partners at the Forest Service and the World Resources Institute to create the Forest Resilience Bond. And at a high level, this is a public private partnership that allows private capital from groups like foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation, but also market rate impact investors like Calvert Impact Capital or insurance companies to cover the massive upfront costs associated with doing these restoration projects. Then again, are designed to reduce fires, but as Willie said, confer a number of benefits to other groups like water and electric utilities, flood control districts, state agencies. So we allow all of the beneficiaries to repay based on the benefits that they receive over a time period that makes sense for them. And in our first project, it really was a truly public private partnership, including government at the federal, state and local level. And I, something you said in there about that I sort of put out for put out at the beginning to but that we don't have a science problem we have a funding problem. And I think that's based on the understanding right that we know a lot about the solution set and forest thinning and prescribed burns and land management. But Paul, can you share some insights with us on how well do we understand these methods and sort of what are the limiting factors to going to scale we've mentioned the funding but are there others and how do they. What does that look like. Zach really encapsulated that 25 years ago I think 15 to 17% of the entire budget went to suppression. And as he mentioned it's 55 to 60% of the entire budget goes to fire suppression and what that's done is extracted resources. And that's one of the disciplines that can do the proactive work. But as he also suggested the proactive works been going on for a long time. The Forest Service is down 1213,000 boots on the ground employees. And so we did the proactive work and those resources have been shunted into the fire suppression, the fire preparedness workforce right now and so an awful lot of it is taking very well tested methods and apply them as is appropriate to the right places on the landscape to get the intended effects, and we understand how fire behavior is driven so we littered are manipulating the levers that control fire behavior. And so there's in the in the ground on the ground yeah you reduce dead wood on the ground there's less energy to ignite the canopies you raise the ground bases of the canopies, the flames can't get there and so the forest that you want for water or habitat or for for future wood products. They're there because you manipulated what drives fire behavior with the right tools. Right. Yeah, and I think some people in the audience might not know that we keep talking about the crown fire versus keeping and keeping the fire low in the forest floor and that really relates to the speed at which it can spread and the scale at which it can reach and so that's really important. And in talking about these solutions Adam, I know that the Rockefeller Foundation is really charged with scaling in taking solutions to scale and solving big problems. So, can you tell us about, you know, your interest and involvement in the forest resilience bond and what about this solution makes it well poised to, to reach that scale. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, and you're on mute. Still on mute. Is it working. No, you're good. Go ahead. No, listen, I think this is one of those issues and Zach and the others have really highlighted as well, which is where you know, our team has looked to support innovative financial structures where we think that the solution is very clear where the need is very clear. And where we can build towards the deployment and the sort of execution in time, but where the financing challenge is also very clear right and in this case you've got a situation where you've got number of beneficiaries who really do rely on the health and well being of those forest and are willing to put up dollars and really told you about that and why. And you've got for us that dramatically need this so for us we looked at this and sort of said alright, you know, are the dynamics here to really create a robust robust market or not and they are for us and it's not a complicated equation right it's, you know, what would attract an investor in the long run and that depends of course on who the investor is but if we assume it's a you know a larger sort of, you know, more institutional great investor, it's going to be the size of the ability to see and understand that market and produce consistent returns right over time and for us you know this is a tens of financing challenge that we don't see going away in the next five years right so this is one where we see an enormous market where investors could get you know really involved. We also looked at it from the perspective of you've got investors who are trying to build out their ESG or sustainable or impact portfolios or the lens with which they look at their entire portfolio in that way. And this is quite frankly unique offering right this is offerings from players they don't traditionally get to to backstop right the US Forest Service water agencies and utilities groups like that that are coming to them with an impact product that fits on the fixed income side and has some scale to it so you know we really looked at this and said yes you've got sort of an investable opportunity that makes a ton of sense now where I think the challenge lies and the others can talk to this far greater than I can but you know the next step is can we really execute on it over time and Zach's been working on this for a very long time on the first step of that which is just. How do we get these projects in a position where we're ready to go right how do we actually move them to the starting line, which takes grant capital like our own and you know we've obviously funded. Zach and the team to do exactly that right work with the Forest Service work with the water utilities work on the permitting work on the science all that kind of stuff. And then the next question is even if you have the money you know do you have enough people to go and deploy that scale and I think the others will tell you that that you don't yet. And that's a huge challenge as well. But again, I do those as things we can tackle we can overcome that kind of an issue when you have the market dynamics that we've got that are you know this big robust. And then returns producing market that I tend to think you've got something that makes sense and so, you know, for our own, our own team and it really came down to that was enough to sort of bet on the solution and and we're super excited that we got to you know the first pilot up and running and and quite frankly, for us it's about you know how do we get to or five or 10 more of those pilots up and running in the next two years because this idea does make sense, and we're excited to see it scale. And when you so I don't I'm curious for both you and that maybe could could respond on. You know you talked about for a certain set of investors the mark the compelling market sizes is is what they're looking for but for most investors they want things that look familiar and that's kind of and something where they understand the risks and this is a new structure a new product. So, I'm curious what the lessons learned have been in the fundraising process through your first bond and going into this to your upcoming bonds next year. And what's sort of the most effective way to pitch someone on this product, given that it's not something they've seen before. Zach, if it's okay I'll take the first 10 seconds and then I can let you because I think you've got a far better story to tell here but maybe building on my previous comments right around is the robust market we think this market has new players you know that are attractive from an investor perspective as the counterparty on the deal. But I think also you know, there's no no getting around sort of the risk return profile and we think this is another case where it makes a lot of sense and if you looked at where we started with this project you know Zach and I we started working on this years ago. And this is a far more complicated product where we were trying to hinge the returns on a lot more things than we are today. And really understanding that the investors don't want to see that level of, I'll call it what was innovation but but quite frankly isn't innovation it's complexity right and I think, you know we've learned a lot in that process but Zach, I'd love for you to sort of talk through because I think you probably can tell this story far better than I can. I will be quick about it I mean I think that the most important thing here is when you structure these investments, you need to do two things, you need to make it look and feel like something that's already in the portfolio of these institutional investors and what we really strive for here is something that looks and feels like infrastructure project finance. In the United States alone there's trillions of dollars invested in public private partnerships private infrastructure, and the like and the more that this looks like that we can take a new and innovative concept like the forest resilience bond, and we can start to make it boring. And that's actually the goal with all of this. I think the other challenge here is the size. We picked a project that was pretty good sized by Forest Service Standards it protects 15,000 acres with about 7,000 acres of treatment within that 15,000 acre project area. You know, we only needed to raise about $4 million for that project so for anybody that's watching this panel that's gone out and raised money before. It's actually a lot harder to raise just $4 million than it is to raise 40 or 400. And that really you know my backgrounds on Wall Street so I was aware of that people in the Forest Service they come crazy when I say something like that. They did work with a insurance company that they're small but they manage about $9 billion and what I heard from that portfolio manager was like, Are you sure we can't do 10 million that has to be just a single million. Because from an investor perspective it's the exact same amount of due diligence whether they're making a million dollar loan, or a $10 million loan. I think the biggest challenge from the Blue Forest perspective is how do we work with the Forest Service, the World Resources Institute and our other partners to increase the size of what we can actually offer to investors. And we're actually seeing that happen our next project that will involve Willie and the water agency will hopefully be between maybe $12 and $16 million. Not enormous from the standpoint as you compare to other investment opportunities and quite small. When you look at it against the general world of fixed income, but to be able to take something of size wise that big that quickly this will only be about two years or so after we close the first project. That's really meaningful and we need to sort of hit that slope and keep going here. Yeah, great. I have one more question before I think we have to go to our closing soon because this isn't a particularly long session at just 45 minutes. So time flies. But I wanted to take it a little bit from the forest and sort of implied wilderness that we've been talking about and the connection to communities. And, you know, Willie, maybe this comes through in our water systems. And I'm curious what, you know, this is an open question for everyone but how, you know, how does this the forest resilience bond or these practices connect with community resilience to wildfires. And is it just for people kind of living in that urban wild land interface or or just how do you how does that fit for you all. I'll go ahead and go first here. The resilience bond and the project that I work with Zach on, you know, that was really what we were hoping to be like a catalyst to future collaboration and future partnerships that's in the upper reaches of our watershed and there's definitely there's there's like summer homes in the area and in cabins and things but it's not near like a community per se or a year round community it's way up, you know, in the elevation. So what we were hoping to do is to show that, you know, there can be collaboration between, you know, water agencies and the Forest Service and groups like the Blue Forest Conservation Group and then there can be this funding mechanism that can work as well. And we really just wanted to show that all that works in an effort to have it be expanded, you know, throughout our watershed like Zach just mentioned and also throughout the Sierra Nevada or anywhere in western United States as far as I can tell. That's really it and I think that the next phase that Zach and I and others are working on is is a larger project that are around these communities these small communities of a few thousand people each in our foothills in our mid elevation areas in our in our watershed so that's really what we were hoping is they would expand and that's happening. So in addition to reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire in and around communities. I think a big aspect of community resilience is actually jobs right. We're working in Sierra County which I believe is one of the poorest if not the poorest counties in California. When we were, you know, 2.7 2.8% statewide uninsured unemployment, Sierra County was at 15.5% unemployment, right. So we don't only lack the people to do this work and the infrastructure with which to do it, but there are also unemployed people in these areas that can do this and when you look at the work on the ground. So wide variety of skill there's chainsaw work which you can get certified in a day or a weekend. Heavy machinery equipment that pays well that requires apprenticeship all the way to the burn bosses which by the way is the coolest job title out there that managed the prescribed fire on the landscape and you might need to train 3 to 5 years if not more. So it doesn't matter if you don't have a high school degree or what level of college you graduate school you have there are jobs in the forest for everyone. If we make the investments now to start to do this work reduce the risk. These are the other co benefits we talk about it's not just protecting air quality and source water, but it's creating jobs and really defining the restoration economy that folks probably are hearing quite a bit about it. Maybe if I can add one more thing on this since we all seem to love this question but, you know, as part of our diligence for the grants and the investment we went out and actually visited the forest right because living in New York at the Rockefeller Foundation we don't actually see any of these forests that burn we only see it if it gets really bad and the air quality tends to get affected over here as well. But so we went out we visited the time what was the it well is the rimfire burn, which I think at the time was still the largest in California, which has been blown out of the water now with the new burns that have come through this year and in previous years but one of the things that struck me on that visit was just the length of time of recovery right so it's not just the immediacy, which is enormous and I think you know I'm just looking at the chat and most common about the idea of, you know, air quality and friends and family living there like the stresses on our communities are very real right now. But the long term stresses are real as well right these are not exactly communities that have infinite options right they're not connected to urban centers in the same way they tend to be more remote and when we looked at the rimfire. You know some of the science community that was with us on the visit basically made the point they said well, you know this was a full devastating burn it was a big intense burn it lasted for a long time and therefore all you know all the sort of tree cover was removed. And the animals are gone but he said you know you're 100 to 150 years before this will realistically support wildlife again. And you're more like 1000 years before you'll have a diverse ecosystem that looked anything like you know what we wanted it to look like going into this thing right where it actually has lots of different species and and what not represented and so if you think about sort of what's lost in that many years right this isn't a 1020 year recovery we're talking about 100 plus years to get back to any usable forest in a way that it can support those communities whether we're using it for recreation whether we're using it for the jobs that Zach is describing whether we're using it for the water that really is describing I mean all of this is tied to a healthy system and you can't get it back quickly so when you say resilience I really think about like we got to avoid not just the plume of you know co2 and you know devastation that happens in the immediate fire we got to avoid the 150 year recovery window or 1000 year recovery window that we're looking at on some of these giant fires as well. Yeah, that's great thank you yeah. Okay well, we are, we just have about 12 minute flip so I'm going to do sort of one closing question and give you each a quick 30 seconds to a minute to tell me what the silver linings are from these unprecedented fires and what you're most excited about going forward you know this has been a tough year for everyone and those in the West are facing this extra weight of poor air quality and protecting our homes and loved ones. But it also feels different in terms of the awareness and the activation around the problem. So I'd love to go around and hear what each of you are are looking forward to or hope we can take out of this experience. And you can feel free to dive in or I'll call on someone first. You know I think that the cultural shift is probably the biggest thing that I've learned in the silver lining here I went to forestry school in the mid 1990s and you know, cutting down a tree or removing a tree from the forest was you know, it wasn't culturally accepted right or socially accepted right now, at least in California with these you know catastrophic wildfires we're seeing a need to manage our forest and so unfortunately it has taken these catastrophic you know multiple hundred thousand acre wildfires. So to educate us that something needs to be done, but I think we're past that I think we're at the point where we realize we need to do something. And now like, like you guys are telling us, Zach and Adam, it's not a science problem we're past that we just need to get the money and get to work and train the people. And so there's going to be opportunities with jobs and I think that we're in the right we're going the right direction. I know that's more than 30 seconds but thanks. I'll jump in quickly and say that I think we communicate really really well with the two to 3% of the world that's in this space and understands this I think what this year is bringing out is how do we talk to the other 97 or 98% of folks that don't understand that hey cutting down a tree is actually a good thing. And this in starting fires on the ground prescribed fire broadcast burning. It's actually a really healthy way to reinvigorate the natural fire cycle. From our perspective at Blue Forest, our model relies on people taking collective action we help and sort of nudge that along. As it takes place, but we always thought fire was enough to cause collective action and it hasn't been yet but I think this year it really is the turning point, whether you're at the federal state or local level. This is what everybody's talking about and something I'm hearing a lot about Sacramento to from the legislature. Thanks. Okay. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, I think we both saw the same window. No, listen, I think for me it was a little bit of Willie's comments that I think this is an expansion of the stakeholders and I really appreciate that we're getting more people connected in I can see. Robert Fish could you made the comment about stakeholders connecting and I think that's exactly the point we're trying to get to right here is that this touches so many more lives. And people are really engaging and I think what's cool about what Blue Forest did but but it's not the only example there's actually more and more of these examples of thinking about ecosystems as they interconnect into our resilience as we move our lives into our jobs as opposed to just things that we extract from or visit you know when we go on a hike that kind of thing so I think we're getting a much better understanding and in doing so you know people are getting created about how they get involved this is one example of that creativity but I think there's tons of this stuff emerging and I don't think that it relies so much I mean this topic tends not to be so partisan but but it doesn't rely on federal support anyway right we're moving towards a direction where the communities can take more ownership because you know we've got groups like you but county water agency that are involved and are getting really engaged directly and so I tend to see you know where the future is bright is this sort of increasing awareness that we can invest into our ecosystem right we can work with our ecosystems we can use those ecosystems in a way that benefits us without destroying them without without taking an exploitive nature so you know that's the silver lining for me unfortunately I think it's taken a long time for us to to get there but but listen we're here now and we can hopefully move at some scale. Yeah, thank you Adam alright, Dr Hasberg you get the last word. And then for everyone in the audience, go ahead and type some questions into the chat window we've got a few minutes that we can put those up to the panelists. I'd like to underscore something that Zach said that's really critically important. If you think about that the fire that burned down paradise. The flaming front was five miles away and it was embers coming from five miles away that ignited the town of paradise. So that 95 that 97% that are operating outside this space is our target we really need to have people understand that affect us throughout the West come from some distance away it's not just the municipal watershed or the built environment. The risks come from outside those domains as well and so we need to be thinking about big landscapes and we think need to be thinking about big pace and scale for these kinds of things. There isn't that much time and so working with that 97% is really critical in messaging and getting to scale. Yeah, that's great. I think we're all nodding along that resonates really well. Okay, we have a question from Todd Lenart in the chat. And so he his questions are their technologies that you think would help be more efficient with these efforts and he works for a group that is interested in learning how they can help. And somebody else, Stephanie mentioned CLT and mass timber. And I know that that's we've been talking about this in the con a little bit as a cost to implement all of these solutions like thinning and prescribed burns but there are also some economics in terms of like what you can do with the wood that's removed. And I know that's where CLT and mass timber come in since there's so few marketable products that can use the small wood that you're removing typically. But Zach or others I'd love to hear your response to Todd's question about the other technologies and if CLT or mass timber plays a role. So it certainly does and I may let our two forester, I call talk a little bit more about the species and the opportunity for things like CLT or orient this tram board veneer and even bioenergy and biochar in certain cases so I do think that's an important part. A lot of those technologies are actually pretty well understood and have been operating in Europe for in excess of 50 years we're just a little bit behind the game here in the US and sort of bringing some of these technologies to market. The other piece of this I just want to highlight as I let Willie or perhaps Dr. Hesburgh talk more about what we can do with the wood and how creating wood products campuses could really create jobs in these rural economies. Is to think about a different application of technology, which is how might we better understand the ecosystem service values or the positive benefits conferred by a healthy forest. And there's a tremendous amount of technology that's being used in that context to understand the change in forest carbon stocks to understand the change in fire risk and how some of that modeling takes place to understand the change in forest water use and how much more yield may be available for a system manager. So when we talk about what allows the financing to happen all that financial innovation is based on scientific innovation first until we can understand the benefits measure incredibly qualifying quantify them. It's really hard to get those stakeholders to the table and put dollars on the table in a real meaningful way. So I would call out not just the technology of what do we do with this small diameter wood that we're left with in the forest but also how do we understand the benefits from a healthy forest from that perspective. Well, she bong you got me going I mean I've just wrote down about 10 things I could talk about I don't think you want me to go on for 20 minutes but there are a lot of technologies that just, you know that they could be implemented right now right like, like we mentioned it's clt or mass timber biochar as a result of bioenergy both of which are understood and there's there's products out there and more to behind you know the simple thing like wood pellets I mean there's a global demand for wood pellets you know that can be in pellet mills can be in accommodate constructed in combination with bioenergy facilities. Then there's these other project products that are like they're just in their inception like cellulose products like similar to plastics but using like the wood material and creating packaging and other, you know more refined plastic time material and I know that's just kind of theory right now but there's, there are people working on that and I'm hoping to see see more out of that, but the weaknesses. We need long term commitments from the land managers and so in our area and I can only speak for the watershed that I work in. It's primarily the land's primary owned and managed by the US Forest Service. So, right now the way that their contracts work it's, you know, two to three to five year, you know, timber sale contracts you know that what I see is like a 30 year to 50 year old process that that's not thinking long term it's not thinking like innovatively and I'm in Dr. Hesburgh I know you're a Forest Service guy so I'm not criticizing it it's just we need to think differently we need to think if someone's going to bring in a $20 million max timber, you know, mill. They need a long term supply or a long term commitment and they're not I'm not saying that they need to be able to go out and clear cut the forest for 20 years, but they need a long term supply of this small woody material so that they can, you know put together a business and make a $20 million investment and we're just starting with these relationships and thinking outside the box I mean Zach and, and the forest resilience bond that's just one step and many steps we need to take to get these type of investments in in the forest but at least we've started it and we're having the conversation and if you would have said hey I'm going to be on a computer screen, you know five years ago if you would have said I'm going to be talking about this stuff today. I would say no way but here we are at least we're having the conversation. Yeah, that's great we're making progress. Absolutely right doesn't really when when I was a junior forester we had sustained yield units in the western United States that were the very thing that you're describing and when those contracts went out and they were no longer awarded. They simply disappeared and most people who are practicing today don't even remember that we invented that 60 years ago 65 years ago and it's time to be able to have some facsimile of sustain you. Especially for biomass. There's some need for technology innovation for how we visualize where we put mill infrastructure so is it permanent or is it temporary. How do we locate value added. Adding value to materials do we have a long haul for that or do we have a short haul is it possible for us to site temporary structures to be able to do that work and in hyper concentrate biomass for carbon sequestration or for fuel or mass timber. Each of these kinds of things are frontiers right now in research to in some cases it's reinventing something we already know about. Yeah, that's great and I, there's a few more questions in the chat that I would love to get to but actually we are at time. And I think unfortunately my primary objective as moderator is to keep us on time. So, I want to thank everyone for joining us today for the session I think it gives me some optimism, you know, when I am still daily checking our air quality reports here in San Francisco to see if it's safe to let my kids play and it gives me some optimism to know that we can look back five years and see how far we've come and hopefully in another five years we'll look back on this conversation and think that that was just the beginning. And I know that this group and Rockfeller and Blue Forest have been working together for years now on the forest resilience bond. From my perspective at impact assets we started partnering with them earlier this year to bring the opportunity to our impact investing community. And earlier this month we are excited that we just launched our wildfire resilience fund. So if you're interested in supporting Blue Forest in their work and pursuing this. You can reach out to our engagement team or to myself. You can email engagement at impact assets.org. And any donations that come into that fund now are actually being matched by the Rockfeller Foundation so we can double your impact and take this work even further. And if you want to follow up with any of the panelists on the hop in platform I think we can all message each other or find each other on LinkedIn and continue the conversation. Thank you all for joining me and look forward to what's to come. Thank you everyone.