Santa Fe County Community Wildfire Protection Plan Update

By Santa Fe County 

The Santa Fe County Fire Department is developing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) update. A CWPP is a plan designed to identify and mitigate wildfire hazards to communities and infrastructure located in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), which is an area located between wildland and human development. The CWPP makes recommendations for hazardous fuels reduction, public outreach and education, structural ignitability reduction, and fire response capabilities.

In 2008, Santa Fe County completed its first CWPP, which was partially updated in 2015. The development of the County CWPP has facilitated collaboration among local, state, and federal officials, as well as non-governmental stakeholders and private citizens. The “2020 Update of the Santa Fe County CWPP” (SCCWPP) reviews, verifies, and/or identifies potential new priority areas where mitigation measures are needed to protect irreplaceable life, property, and critical infrastructure in the County, from wildfire.

Due to restrictions on public gatherings related to Covid-19, the County has chosen to use a story map (an interactive project website designed to tell a story with maps) as the primary two-way communication tool to provide information and gather community input about the project. The Story Map will provide a platform for the Plan moving forward and facilitates easy updates of information as conditions change in the County.

A CWPP is designed to assist the County and landowners in ensuring that a future catastrophic wildfire is avoided or mitigated by assessing areas at risk and recommending measures to decrease those risks. For many years the County and partners have been successful in planning and implementing many wildfire mitigation actions, including thousands of acres of hazardous fuel treatment projects on public and private land; organizing public outreach and education campaigns that focus on wildfire prevention and the importance of defensible space; and better preparing communities that are at high to extreme risk of wildfire by utilizing the Fire Adapted Community concepts. Much of this work has been achieved through interagency collaboration, working with communities and across ownership boundaries to develop landscape-level wildfire mitigation solutions. This CWPP effort builds upon that long history of collaboration.

The Core Team are continuing to work together to review and revise the original CWPP to ensure the plan is applicable to the communities it is designed to serve. The goal is that all recommended projects are designed to greatly reduce wildfire risk to residents and ensure that communities can live safely in this fire-prone environment.

Now it is time to review, revise, and refocus previously proposed implementation measures to ensure that the county-wide CWPP remains active and effective. All are invited to learn more about the project by visiting the Story Map, linked from the County’s Wildland webpage. In August, the public will be invited to provide feedback on the Draft Plan.

The CWPP will be a guiding document for fire and emergency managers, as well as agencies who manage land within the County. The CWPP is designed to serve County residents, and we encourage your interest and engagement in the process. For more information, please contact Remington Gillum, Santa Fe County, Fire Prevention Specialist rgillum@santafecountynm.gov or 505-995-6532; or Vicky Amato, Project Manager, atvamato@swca.com.