Engagement in local and collaborative wildfire risk mitigation planning across the western U.S.-Evaluating participation and diversity in Community Wildfire Protection Plans.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

Community Participation/*methods ; Conservation of Natural Resources/*methods ; Risk Management/*organization & administration ; Wildfires/*prevention & control; Cooperative Behavior ; Cultural Diversity ; Fires/prevention & control ; Geography ; Government Programs/methods ; Government Programs/organization & administration ; History, 21st Century ; Humans ; Risk Management/methods ; United States

Since their introduction two decades ago, Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) have become a common planning tool for improving community preparedness and risk mitigation in fire-prone regions, and for strengthening coordination among federal and state land management agencies, local government, and residents. While CWPPs have been the focus of case studies, there are limited large-scale studies to understand the extent of, and factors responsible for, variation in stakeholder participation-a core element of the CWPP model. This article describes the scale and scope of participation in CWPPs across the western United States. We provide a detailed account of participants in over 1,000 CWPPs in 11 states and examine how levels of participation and stakeholder diversity vary as a function of factors related to planning process, planning context, and the broader geographic context in which plans were developed. We find that CWPPs vary substantially both by count and diversity of participants and that the former varies as a function of the geographic scale of the plan, while the latter varies largely as a function of the diversity of landowners within the jurisdiction. More than half of participants represented local interests, indicating a high degree of local engagement in hazard mitigation. Surprisingly, plan participation and diversity were unrelated to wildfire hazard. These findings suggest that CWPPs have been largely successful in their intent to engage diverse stakeholders in preparing for and mitigating wildfire risk, but that important challenges remain. We discuss the implications of this work and examine how the planning process and context for CWPPs may be changing.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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Date Created: 20220209 Date Completed: 20220304 Latest Revision: 20231103

20231215

PMC8827427

10.1371/journal.pone.0263757

35139137