Wildfires Create New Intergovernmental Challenges

Wildfires in the United States have become more widespread and severe, more costly, and more likely to affect multiple property owners. Once thought of as a potential risk for individual landowners, wildfires increasingly are becoming a common threat for groups of owners and whole communities. Because federal agencies are very large owners of wildlands, they have developed the nation's largest capability for managing wildfires, and they are key players in developing a more collaborative approach to deal with this growing threat. This approach must involve multiple federal agencies, state, local, and tribal governments, fire departments, and many non-governmental cooperators. It creates many new interagency, intergovernmental, and public-private challenges for managing large efforts that cross jurisdictional boundaries. These new challenges include efforts to improve ecological health, fight fires, regulate development, find money, and create common knowledge. This article examines these emerging challenges to U.S. federalism, finds that a number of changes in current practices are needed, and concludes that a new intergovernmental approach would be beneficial. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.