Lanterna Rally

Author: Marisa Heiling

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

The United States Forest Service is spending increasing amounts of the federal budget fighting wildfires on public lands in the west. However, in reality, the money is not spent protecting the federal lands but protecting adjacent private property known as the wildland/urban interface (WUI). The combination of increased property development in the WUI, historically mismanaged forests that cause fuel build up, and increasingly frequent and intense fires due to climate change have fueled an expensive problem for federal taxpayers. Current strategies to deal with this issue include relying on state and local government codes and ordinances to manage the WUI modeled after the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code (IWUIC) and in collaboration with local organizations. However, without federal resources to implement these laws, communities can opt out of zoning laws altogether preventing public management of the WUI. This article proposes that land in the WUI is managed through conservation easements. The easements can encompass elements of the IWUIC and require certain landscaping and building materials consistent with home ignition zone (HIZ) research. Additionally, conservation easements provide tax incentives to landowners to protect their own land against wildfires instead of spending money protecting the land during a fire, which allows the Forest Service to provide other services to the public. Conservation easements have the flexibility to include strict enforcement regimes through the government, neighbors, and land trusts. As conservation easements grow in popularity, state legislatures may try to involve themselves; the consequences of which are yet unknown.