Nesbitt, Holly K.

To mitigate the potential impacts of wildfire, communities across the United States (US) are increasingly engaging in collaborative wildfire planning. Planning involves identifying a set of goals or objectives, developing management strategies to get to that goal, and codifying the goals and objectives in a written document. This paper focuses on the goals and objectives codified in wildfire management plans as a mechanism to understand what communities value and therefore how they are managing their commons. However, there are tensions between having values tailored to match local context and values that reflect national policy priorities. On one hand, the concept of socio-ecological fit argues that governance structures are most effective when they match the scale and context of a specific socio-ecological system. In this perspective, values should match the specific types of wildfires that occur and the characteristics of the impacted communities in a particular place. Locally-determined values are also likely to incorporate local ecological knowledge gathered through extended time spent in a place. On the other hand, national governments have substantially more capacity than local communities. Their policy priorities are more likely to reflect the newest updates in science as well as growing concerns like climate change or environmental justice. Community-driven management may be slow to incorporate these changes, leading to slower adaptation of the system overall.