Follow Hilary Franz’s leadership on wildfire: Seattle Times Editorial

Images of the unrelenting infernos ravaging Los Angeles are a potent reminder of the increasing threats wildfire poses to homes and human life, including in Washington state. Climate change has made fire seasons drier, longer and more dangerous, especially when paired with the overgrowth and undermanagement of natural lands. But this state is far better safeguarded from such disasters today, thanks to the bipartisan vision and unfailing tenacity of departing public lands Commissioner Hilary Franz.

That a former Seattle environmental nonprofit leader with a single City Council term of political experience transformed the state's wildfire response is a lesson in political courage every public servant should take to heart.

In 2016, the Democrat won just seven counties - and not a single one east of the Cascades - to take 53% of the vote over Republican Steve McLaughlin. Yet she became an exemplar who reached across the aisle and the Cascades to get results, making Washington safer.

To recap: Following devastating blazes on both sides of the Cascades that erupted on Labor Day 2020, Franz spearheaded a bold plan. Within a political domain spanning many interests - the timber industry, firefighter unions, environmentalists like herself, and more - she penned a bill adopted unanimously by the Legislature spending $500 million over eight years on the cause of protecting the state from fire.

The benefits are threefold: first, and perhaps most importantly, it funded snuffing fires quickly. Washington used to rely often on federal air response when dangerous blazes broke out. But during the 2020 fires, those resources were tied up elsewhere. Eight Vietnam-era helicopters grew to today's modern fleet of 44 under her plan. They are pre-positioned at sites around the state, available to even the most remote fire districts. Instead of relying on the feds, DNR owns 12 aircraft and negotiated exclusive use for 32 more - meaning they're here to fight Washington fires first.

Second, DNR is aggressively restoring forests with mechanical thinning and prescribed fire to reduce an overstock and dangerous amount of "fuels" in areas too long removed from natural fires that controlled such overgrowth. A 20-year plan, which Franz launched in 2018, will restore 1.2 million acres east of the Cascades. It's on track to finish in half the time. A great case in point is an entire buffer of treated woods that now protects the community of Roslyn like a moat against wildfire.

Third - and most pertinent to the fires raging in L.A. - is helping residents around the state create "defensible spaces" around their homes. That includes sealing vents and reducing close-in landscaping to protect buildings from burning embers, as well as inform residents on how to be ready should fires occur.

In the past four years since the 2021 legislation took effect, DNR and fire crews around the state kept 95% of blazes below 10 acres, leading to a decline in days of smoke-filled skies. No fire season since comes close to the 842,000 acres burned in 2020. Another way to look at it: Nearly 2,000 fires scorched almost 2 million acres in Oregon in 2024; about 1,500 fires in Washington burned just over 311,000 acres here.

Franz's work in the job drew praise from bipartisan colleagues in Olympia. J.T. Wilcox, the former longtime Republican representative from Yelm, said she stood alone as a public servant "willing to engage with others regardless of whether it was good for her politically."

"She's fearless," echoed Rep. Larry Springer, D-Kirkland, who with Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, was prime sponsor on her sprawling wildfire response bill. "She was not afraid to take on any challenge, irrespective of who was sitting across the table."

The indefatigable Franz didn't stop at wildfire in her job. Following the collapse of a commercial net pen of Atlantic salmon at Cypress Island in 2017, the commissioner led an effort that, just this month, banned such fish farming for good in DNR's aquatic lands. She viewed it as an environmental nonnegotiable, especially in the wake of the death of a baby orca this winter.

"While this can make fire all the more frightening, my hope is that it makes it unifying," she said.

Franz provided the spark that made wildfire a unifying cause.

"Together, all of us in Washington State, Eastern and Western, urban and rural, Republican and Democrat, share the burden and the responsibility of protecting our lands, our communities, and our firefighters," she told the committee.

That kind of bipartisanship, as noted by new Gov. Bob Ferguson in his inaugural address Wednesday, "is how we do our best work."

In his own introduction to the agency Wednesday, new Commissioner Dave Upthegrove pledged to continue building DNR's defenses against wildfire. But in announcing a six-month pause on state lands' timber sales with "structurally complex," forests, he's following a controversial campaign pledge that will undoubtedly consume precious hours of staff time. Let's hope that doesn't distract the new commissioner from the greatest priority of all: protecting the state from the growing threat of wildfire.

"We have already been able to set Washington state on a course of success, through the investments we've made," Franz told KUOW's Libby Denkmann last week. " … We can't turn back now."

Upthegrove would be wise to learn from Franz's example and continue the trajectory of climate resiliency and forest protection she has set for Washington's future.