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When we talk about wildfire resilience in the American West, the conversation usually turns to forests, fuel loads, prescribed burns, and forest thinning. But there's another piece of the puzzle that's been hiding in plain sight: our rivers.

Healthy watersheds, with their sprawling floodplains, wet meadows, and tangled riparian corridors, don't burn the way degraded ones do. They store water on the landscape, create refuge for wildlife, and trap the ash and sediment that can devastate communities downstream after a fire passes. And yet, the practitioners doing river restoration work and the practitioners managing for wildfire risk have largely been operating in separate worlds.

In this episode, we explore the growing movement to change that. We sit down with Warren Colyer, National Restoration Director for Trout Unlimited, and Julie Shapiro, Director of the Center for Natural Resources at the Keystone Policy Center, to talk about the new community of practice they're building together — a dedicated network designed to connect on-the-ground restoration practitioners with the latest science, case studies, and each other.

It's a story about what healthy rivers can do, what we lose when we take them apart, and what becomes possible when the right people finally find each other.

Please help us continue this podcast by making a financial donation to Keystone Policy Center.

Listen to previous episodes of this podcast at Keystone's website or by subscribing to it through any podcast provider.