Helping create resilient communities amid fire-dependant forests: Community Wildfire Protection Planning

Healthy forests and resilient communities are interdependent goals. Protection of life and property is job one of fire management. It is also a pre-requisite to restoring the natural and necessary process of fire on which the health of our forests depends.

Community Wildfire Protection Plans can effectively prioritize use of scarce resources in reducing wildland fire risk, helping build resilient communities in a dynamic world. Since 2006, SRCA has been the only environmental group in the country to have dedicated full-time staff focused on partnering with local communities to develop community fire plans.

Partnering with Communities
In that time we have partnered with local communities to help produce 10 plans encompassing 870,000 acres where 29,000 Coloradoans live along Colorado’s Front Range. The following links provide two-page summary sheets (pdf) with project accomplishments and maps.

Program Area Map

Allenspark
Clear Creek County
Custer County
Fall River
Gold Hill
HWY 115
Palmer Lake
Ridgewood
Sunshine
Ute Pass

Lessons Learned: Analyzing Community and Agency Effectiveness in Community Protection
In a nutshell, CWPPs are fire risk reduction plans developed by local communities to prioritize hazardous fuel reduction treatments on both federal and non-federal land. The potential of these plans, however, is not being realized given inadequate guidance, inattention to detail, and competing priorities. Synthesizing our experience to date, Community Wildfire Protection Plans: Lessons Learned details the problem and identifies solutions various stakeholders can advance to ensure these important plans live up to their potential. This analysis looks at 70 CWPPs in Colorado’s ten-county Front Range and suggests a few shortcomings of note: 1) non-specific project identification by communities; 2) inadequate community definition of the wildland-urban interface; and 3) missed opportunities in agency alignment of hazardous fuels projects with CWPP recommendations. No single stakeholder is at fault and no one stakeholder can advance solutions solo. Improving the planning process and ultimately the fire risk reduction impact on the ground should be owned by all parties involved.

• Click here to view a two page synopsis of the report
• Click here to view the full report

For more information, please contact: John Chapman, SRCA CWPP Coordinator, at 303-650-5818 x113 or at john@cecenviro.org.