Editor’s note: Megan Rangel-Lynch is the Program Coordinator for Fire Adapted Communities New Mexico (FACNM) through the Forest Stewards Guild. At the time of this blog’s writing, she was the Program Assistant Manager of Community Resilience for the Arizona Wildfire Initiative. Catrin Edgeley is an Assistant Professor at Northern Arizona University and an advisor to the Community Resilience facet. In this blog, Megan and Catrin share themes from a series of strategic meetings with Arizona community members and leaders about community resilience, hosted through the Arizona Wildfire Initiative.
The state-funded Arizona Wildfire Initiative (AZWI) was established in spring 2023 at the Northern Arizona University School of Forestry in collaboration with the Southwest Fire Science Consortium. One of AZWI’s primary goals was to advance wildfire resilience in communities across Arizona by assessing perception of wildfire risk, capacity to address that risk, and place-specific adaptation challenges and opportunities. AZWI staff have engaged in in-depth conversations with agency officials, local leadership, organization leaders, and residents over the past two years to support this process, partnering with key community members to co-produce tools and resources that address specific needs regarding wildfire risk and community preparedness.
Community Consultations
Between the spring and fall of 2024, AZWI staff met with over 100 Arizona residents, leaders, and officials across several key communities identified as having high fire risk by a board of state-level experts. Through these conversations, strengths, gaps, opportunities, and areas needing attention emerged — both at the community and state level.
While Arizona communities have socially distinct conditions, capacities, and challenges, the commonalities identified during these consultations provide valuable opportunities to improve wildfire adaptation policies and practices. Below, we share some common themes that emerged state-wide during this process.
Overarching Lessons and Emerging Recommendations
1. Be strategic when prioritizing wildfire risk reduction efforts
Many communities have access to cost-share grants for retrofitting or vegetation removal on a first come, first-served basis. While easier to administer and seemingly fair, this approach inadvertently may hinder work on high-risk properties where fuels management may produce a higher net benefit for the broader community (e.g. properties along evacuation routes or adjacent to high-risk areas). Solutions could include tiered cost-share structures based on household income or prioritization of properties where treatment would have the greatest impact on community safety.
2. Bundle wildfire risk concerns with prominent local issues
Connecting wildfire risk to local issues can encourage broader action by demonstrating its relevance relative to community values. For example, in areas where watershed health is a priority, highlighting the connection between protecting water quality and reducing hazardous vegetation to avoid high severity fires can make wildfire adaptation efforts more compelling.
3. Leverage geographic overlaps in federal and state grant awards
Understanding where federal and state grant funding overlaps can help leverage capacity and improve the efficiency of wildfire adaptation efforts. For instance, Community Wildfire Defense Grants are currently available to support community wildfire protection plan development or implementation — such as extending fuel breaks from public to private lands.
4. Recognize how the potential loss of insurance also acts as a motivator
The risk of losing home insurance is a strong motivator for self-funded mitigation on private property in more affluent areas of Arizona. Greater local capacity for collective mitigation efforts is needed, such as community chipper day events, with a focus on efforts that emphasize property owners’ financial responsibility. Paired with this is a need to go beyond the Firewise program – which is largely successful among wealthier, older populations with pre-existing structures like Homeowner’s Associations – to design programming better suited for rural, low-income, and socially disparate populations.
5. Include communities lacking formal, structured leadership in funding and partnership opportunities
Federal, state, and local entities and their collaborators should explore how to make partnership and funding opportunities more accessible for communities early along in their adaptation journey, or those without Homeowners’ Associations or other defined leadership structures. Many formal programs and collaborations to support community wildfire adaptation are easiest to implement in pre-structured spaces, leaving communities with a more horizontal structure behind. This may indicate the need for funds that support community meetings, relationship building, and small scale planning as a precursor to larger awards, or the need to include mechanisms that support more fragmented communities, such as placement of grant coordinators within existing locally trusted entities.
6. Address preconceived notions of fire risk in local planning
Local fire histories often shape a community’s preparations for future fire events, leading them to focus on familiar ignition risks while overlooking other potential threats. For instance, officials may prioritize planning for recreation-related fire risks on public lands while neglecting ignition risks on private lands. One approach to reduce assumptions may be to evaluate sources of risk more frequently and comprehensively to inform policies and approaches based on accurate trends rather than historical perceptions.
7. Incorporate businesses into community adaptation
Tourism can be a vital driver of a community’s economy, but it can also increase wildfire risk due to visitors’ lack of familiarity with fire-adapted ecosystems. Community-based businesses that support this industry are often excluded from wildfire planning, despite the economic impacts business closures can have on community stability during and after wildfires. Enhancing business adaptability through visitor education on fire safety, business continuity planning, and access to preparedness and recovery resources is essential to fostering holistic community resilience in wildfire-prone areas.
8. Use unknowns about wildfire as catalysts for collaboration
“Unknowns” about wildfire in Arizona’s ecosystems can serve as collaborative catalysts for place based discussions about wildfire resilience. For instance, uncertainty around fuels management in Sonoran ecosystems where little guidance exists can spark productive discussions between communities and experts.
These broader discussions provide opportunities to develop solutions and best practices that are culturally and ecologically appropriate.
Co-Produced Solutions
As the above themes emerged, AZWI staff collaborated with key community partners to develop tools and resources addressing shared challenges across the state. In response to concerns in Pinetop-Lakeside regarding the impact a wildfire could have on their tourism-dependent economy, AZWI developed a wildfire information packet specifically designed to be placed in short-term rentals. These packets introduce best practices for preventing accidental ignitions in wildfire-prone areas, share pertinent local information sources (e.g., stage restrictions), and introduce evacuation procedures for non-residents. AZWI also produced a workshop focused on guiding business owners through creating a continuity plan in the event of a disaster like wildfire, hosted in partnership with the local Chamber of Commerce. Workshop materials were based on recommendations and resources from various entities including the Small Business Administration, Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, and FEMA.
In Patagonia, Arizona, local leaders were enthusiastic about taking action but needed support structuring mitigation activities. AZWI staff trained local leaders on how to organize chipper days, supporting the development of community-based skill sets for organizing and educating one another. During this process, AZWI also developed a “How to organize a community chipper day” guide to help community members and local leaders elsewhere organize similar events. In order to best align events with local needs, the guide provides different structures and approaches to consider when planning to run a chipper day.
AZWI’s iterative approach emphasizes tailoring wildfire adaptation efforts to each community’s unique needs while addressing systemic challenges. By fostering collaboration, embracing local values, and strategically allocating resources, Arizona’s communities can learn to better live with wildfire and work toward resilience in a locally driven, place-based manner.
AZWI hopes the lessons learned through this community-driven approach will not only strengthen wildfire resilience across Arizona but also serve as a model for adaptation efforts beyond the state.
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