 The Kindest Cuts of All
by Craig Rawlings
Smallwood Utilization Network
a Division of the Montana Community Development Corporation
 How a Montana non-profit found federal funding for fuels reduction on private land (and why Conservation District managers should take note)
In the summer of 2004, under the hot blue skies of Northwestern Montana, government agents began knocking on the doors of homeowners.
They weren’t from the FBI. They were from the Northwest Regional Resource Conservation and Development (NWR RC&D) Council. They were community foresters, and they had good news for residents in the region’s Wildlands/Urban Interface (WUI): For every dollar you spend on fuels reduction around your property, our folks will pitch in three.
This forester squad had been created by Greg Larsen, who at that time was the NWR RC&D Coordinator. Headquartered in the small town of Libby, Montana, the RC&D Council is responsible for upholding the national RC&D mandate of “enhancing the environment and standard of living” and applying it to Sanders, Lincoln, Flathead, and Lake counties.
Finding the Money
Earlier that year, Greg had been searching for ways to fund fuel reduction projects on private land. As it turned out, one solution had already been created, thanks to a really bad fire season.
After the Fires of 2000 and the resulting National Fire Plan, Congress enacted two grant programs —both funded through the USDA Forest Service— to facilitate fire mitigation on private land. The Montana Department of Natural Resource (DNRC) had received a total of $4,000,000 from both grants, to be made available to at-risk Montana communities.
Greg’s counterparts at the Bitter Root RC&D in Hamilton, Montana had successfully applied to the DNRC and had entered into a contract to implement a thinning program. Using the Bitter Root RC&D’s experience as a blueprint, the NWR RC&D applied for both grant programs.
One of the programs is officially known as The Western States Fire Managers’ Wildland Urban Interface Grant Program. The NWR RC&D was granted $817,827 of this “Western States” money in 2004.
The second grant program is called The Community Protection Project, also known as Stevens Money, a reference to the Alaska senator who shepherded it through Congress. These grants are restricted to private tracts adjacent to federal lands. To date, the NWR RC&D has contracted for $699,843 worth of Stevens money.
Putting the Money to Work
Landing the grant money was only the first challenge; implementing a program was the next. As a first step, Greg arranged to hire seven foresters. All were U.S. Forest Service retirees, and each had a specialized skill such as fire management, economics, or forestry.
In August of 2005, Sue Wight succeeded Greg as the NRCS RC&D Coordinator. She was impressed by the new hires. “Together, they were a kind of ‘A’ team,” says Sue.
“They formed a network of knowledge and skills. Each had the contacts and bureaucratic experience to get a program off the ground quickly.”
The process worked like this: The DNRC decided which communities were most at risk for the kind of “crown” fire that could race from treetop to treetop. Then the community foresters spread out and assessed individual plots, rating them as either High, Moderate, or Low priority. They also assigned each plot a recommended treatment method, for instance thinning, pruning, brush disposal, or hand piling. Homeowners could either do the work themselves or hire a contractor.
To get the word out, the NWR RC&D issued press releases that led to newspaper stories about the program and its foresters. They also created public service radio ads. But the leading edge of the marketing effort remained the foresters’ door-knocking campaign.
The foresters have enjoyed this part of the process. During their Forest Service stints, most of them had been required to tell citizens what they were obliged to do. But in their new capacity, they were able “wear the white hats,” as Sue Wight puts it. “They could say, ‘Here’s how you can save your house — and get financial and technical help to do it.’”
Altering the Attitude
Converting homeowners to fire activists wasn’t quite as simple as it had seemed. Despite the considerable incentive of three-to-one matching funds (not to mention the protection of their houses), many homeowners held back, concerned about losing their privacy and the “woodsy” look of their land.
Overcoming that resistance turned out to be a matter of Follow the Leader. Once one homeowner’s property was made “fire wise,” others were reassured that the landscape still looked good — or even better.
However, in the ideal scenario, everyone in a community would start reducing fuels at the same time. That happened just north of Whitefish, Montana, at a new 550-acre subdivision called the Elkhorn. As Chief Community Forester Bill Swope recalls, “There were 35 landowners, and they had already realized that they had to act together — or one holdout could jeopardize everyone else.” In fact, a committee of the Elkhorn Homeowners Association had already made contact with the Montana DNRC, which referred it to the NWR RC&D Council.
Mr. Swope helped the homeowners’ committee through the grant application process. Then he assessed the property, beginning with a close look at the county fire plan. Next he created a menu of projects, prioritized by factors such as the likelihood of wildfire, the numbers of lives at stake, and the amount of property at risk.
Homeowners received about $600 an acre, which went to pay them (or their contractors) for activities like thinning, slashing, piling, chipping, and forming brush piles.
But under Bill Swope’s guidance, the community went even further. For instance, one landowner put in a pond big enough to supply 14 fire trucks with water for two days. What’s more, the unanimous buy-in of the homeowners created a kind of momentum that helped encourage the Montana DNRC to implement a firebreak on the state land bordering the subdivision.
Togetherness Breeds Effectiveness
Thanks to successes like the Elkhorn, word of mouth about the NWR RC&D’s programs has spread like, well, wildfire. That makes Sue Wight’s marketing tasks easier. These days, one of her challenges is to strengthen partnerships with other agencies. “For instance,” she says, “we should be working hand in hand with Conservation Districts.” Sue foresees a scenario in which a Conservation District administrator identifies a need, and then turns to a nearby RC&D to help apply for the grants and implement the program.
The current fuels reduction grant programs will be completed June 2008. As of Spring 2006, the two grants had treated a combined 500 acres, with an additional 700 acres under agreement. Ms. Wight thinks the effort has been an unqualified success. “It’s a win-win-win,” she concludes. “We’re reducing hazardous fuels in Northwest Montana’s WUI hotspots, while reducing the cost of fuel reduction for homeowners. At the same time, we’re helping to create much-needed jobs for forestry contractors.”
Those goals are part of the mandates for both RC&Ds and Conservation Districts. So far, one of the keys to success for Sue Wight’s programs has been the formation of partnerships among homeowners. She thinks an even bigger success could result from new and stronger partnerships among agencies.
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