Episode
John Melvin, CAL FIRE
- Podcast
- The Woodpreneur Podcast
- Published
- Jul 9, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2743
- Processing state
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- https://stevekex.podbean.com/e/john-melvin-cal-fire/
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Summary
Every tree tells a story. The question is whether we treat it like a resource or throw it away like waste. In this episode of the Woodpreneur Podcast, host Jennifer Alger welcomes John Melvin, Assistant Deputy Director of Resource Protection and Improvement at CAL FIRE. The two have worked together in the urban wood movement for over 15 years, and this conversation traces the journey from its earliest days to a program now granting hundreds of millions of dollars. A central theme is language. John makes the case that calling removed urban trees "waste" teaches the public to see them as garbage. Reframing the conversation around resource and value opens doors for municipalities to build wood utilization into their arborist service contracts, saving disposal costs while keeping material out of landfills. He walks through CAL FIRE's role in building the urban wood industry from the ground up, starting in the late nineties with five mobile sawmills and four dehumidification kilns made from converted shipping containers. Those early investments seeded real businesses and put a sawmill at Palomar College that still runs today. As the program grew, CAL FIRE funded urban wood utilization grants and backed the creation of the USRW Certified Urban Wood Standards. Today the scope is enormous. John highlights the green schoolyards initiative transforming over 170 paved campuses into outdoor learning spaces with tree canopy and urban wood features. He also discusses AB 2251, the legislative mandate to increase California's urban tree canopy by ten percent by 2035, and a forthcoming strategic plan to get there. Chapters 00:00 Growing Up in the Woods and Choosing Forestry 03:17 Losing a Childhood Home in the Caldor Fire 10:00 Municipalities, Cost Avoidance, and Policy Solutions 16:28…