Launched more than a decade ago and hosted every spring, the Sustaining Our World Lecture explores complex issues of natural resource conservation and management in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Topics have ranged from large carnivore conservation to the human-nature connection, wildfire management, building tall with wood and more. Past speakers have included our own faculty, as well as many other academic fields and disciplines, including architects, environmental writers, elected officials and other prominent experts.

2025 Sustaining Our World Lecture: Climate Change and Resilience: How Science and Solutions Can Bring Society Together

Kane Hall 110 or virtual | 7 – 8 pm April 10, 2025
Speaker: Hilary Franz, Former Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands

Hilary Franz served as Washington State’s Commissioner of Public Lands from 2017 to 2025. In that role, Hilary led the state’s wildfire response and managed and stewarded six million acres of public lands, including aquatic, forest, agricultural, commercial, clean energy and residential lands. She has been recognized nationally and internationally for her work in climate change, wildfire response, forest conservation and restoration, clean energy, and salmon recovery.

In her 30-year career, Hilary has focused on cleaning up our waterways, restoring critical fish and wildlife habitat, and conserving forests and farmlands. She put in place the largest aquatic conservation easement in the world and the state’s first kelp and eelgrass preserves, and under her swift response and focused leadership, she helped Washington become the first place in the world to remove and ban aquatic fish farming from its waters.

As she watched over these decades the loss of forests to fires, disease and development, Hilary launched the Keep Washington Evergreen Initiative to restore one million acres of forests, conserve one million acres of forests and reforest one million acres of forests. After almost two million acres burned between 2014 and 2015, she led the transformation of Washington state’s wildfire response. First, developing the state’s first Forest Health Resilience Plan, and then leading the restoration of almost one million acres in just 7 years. She went on to invest in new technologies for wildfire prevention and prediction, launch a statewide community wildfire resilience program, and accelerate wildfire response through initial attack, expedited resource deployment, and increased aviation and ground resources. The success of this work is in the numbers so that in the last four years, even as the state continues to face increasing fires each year, 95% of fires have been kept to 10 acres or less and the number of acres burned annually are down to what they were in the early 2000s.

RSVP – this is a free event and open to the public