In The Wilderness Society’s report, Targeting the Community Fire Planning Zone:
Mapping Matters, landscape ecologist Bo Wilmer and forest ecologist Dr. Greg Aplet
find these definitions to be both immensely important and extremely elusive. Community
Fire Planning Zones (CFPZ) — areas in and around communities where federal,
state and local fire managers should focus their efforts to mitigate fire risk —
include tens of millions of acres, much of which is private land. In order to successfully
tackle such an immense planning challenge, protection strategies must be tightly
focused and well-informed. But because each state uses a different method to designate
communities at risk, no national-scale definition of the CFPZ exists today. The
coordination of local and national fire-safe activities suffers as a result.
The National Fire Plan has rightly placed its emphasis on the importance of reducing
wildfire risk within communities and on the public lands nearby. Before our
nation can protect the hundreds of western communities currently at risk, however,
we must first understand where they are.
