Every year, wildfires ravage the American West. According to NOAA and the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), in 2025 alone 72,068 fires burned across more than 5 million acres in the US*. In the wake of these fires, a question looms: what now? Careful forest management could help prevent future fires in a post-burn area, but this requires balancing removal of fuel sources with maintaining crucial habitat. This week’s guest, Noelle Foster, is searching for this Goldilocks method of management. Noelle is a first year graduate student in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Sciences, studying the effects of megafire on wildlife in Western Oregon. She focuses on how burn severity, time since fire, and habitat characteristics shape how an ecosystem recovers after a wildfire.

One of the major management practices Noelle has been researching is timber salvage after wildfire. Salvage logging after wildfire is a complex decision that involves ecological, economic and logistical considerations. For private land owners, salvage logging can recover some of the economic value of a burned stand, reduce heavy fuels and improve safety around homes and roads. However, even burned timber can provide crucial habitat for recovering wildlife. So, with all these stakeholders at play, what’s the best course of action?

To hear all about the globe-trotting, softball playing, bird loving Noelle, tune in to KBVR 88.7FM at 7PM PST on March 1st for the live show, or check out the show on our podcast pages.


*NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Monthly Wildfires Report for Annual 2025, published online January 2026, retrieved on March 1, 2026 from https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/fire/202513. DOI: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/metadata/landing-page/bin/iso?id=gov.noaa.ncdc:C00774