The Community Wildfire Protection Plan, as described in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, brings together diverse local interests to discuss their mutual concerns for public safety, community sustainability and natural resources.

Overview

Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPP) are authorized and defined in Title I of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) passed by Congress on November 21, 2003 and signed into law by President Bush on December 3, 2003.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act places renewed emphasis on community planning by extending a variety of benefits to communities with a wildfire protection plan in place. Critical among these benefits is the option of establishing a localized definition and boundary for the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and the opportunity to help shape fuels treatment priorities for surrounding federal and non-federal lands.

CWPP offers a positive, solution-oriented environment in which to address challenges such as: local firefighting capability, the need for defensible space around homes and subdivisions, and where and how to prioritize land management on both federal and non-federal land.

Key Components

Participants

• Must include local government, local fire authority, local CSFS representatives and representatives of relevant federal land management agencies, as well as other relevant non-governmental partners.
• Partners should assess community risks and values, identify protection priorities, and establish fuels treatment projects.

Plan Components Include:

• A description of the community's wildland-urban interface (WUI) problem areas, preferably with a map and narrative.
• Information on the community's preparedness to respond to a wildland fire.
• A community risk analysis that considers, at a minimum, fuel hazards, risk of wildfire occurrence, and community values to be protected both in the immediate vicinity and the surrounding zone where potential fire spread poses a realistic threat.
• Identification of fuels treatment priorities on the ground and methods of treatment.
• Ways to reduce structural ignitability.
• An implementation plan.

Level of Specificity

• A CWPP can be developed for any level of "community," from a homeowner's association or mountain town to a county or metropolitan city.
• Information contained in the plan should be at a level of specificity appropriate for the community.
• County level plans can be used as an umbrella for community plans but should not be considered a substitute. A county plan will not provide the detail needed for project level planning.

Adapting Existing Plans and Combining Related Plans

• If an existing plan already meets the majority of the CWPP criteria, a community plan can be adapted to meet the remainder of the criteria. This need to be done in collaboration with community members and relevant partners as listed above.