Variable Support and Opposition to Fuels Treatments for Wildfire Risk Reduction: Melding Frameworks for Local Context and Collaborative Potential

Fuels reduction projects are an increasing focus of policy, funding, and management actions aimed at reducing wildfire risk to human populations while improving landscape health. This research used in-depth interviews to explore variable support or opposition to three fuels-reduction projects occurring in the same region of north central Washington State, USA. Results indicate that differential support or opposition to each project stemmed from a unique combination of social factors operating in each locality (e.g., past history with fuels treatments, values for public land, environmental advocacy networks), the relationships that local populations had with agency members conducting each treatment, and the ways that managers engaged populations in the design of each treatment. We used existing frameworks for understanding collaborative potential/environmental conflict and for documenting the influence of local social context on adaptive wildfire actions to help explain emergent lessons about support or opposition to each project.

Study Implications: Our results illustrate how support or opposition to proposed fuels-reduction treatments can emerge among socially diverse human “communities” occupying the same small region. We melded existing theoretical concepts and literature to advance an expanded framework for understanding the ways that local social context or circumstances interact with broader agency, political, or procedural processes to influence local support or opposition to fuels treatments. Case study lessons and the framework advance a more systematic process for deriving lessons about local response to proposed fuels treatments, including expanded means for forecasting or anticipating opposition and promoting collaborative development to improve implementation efficiency.