OUTCOME: Capacity

Problem

Local organizations and communities in the North Coast Region lack sufficient capacity to conduct all the necessary hazardous fuel management, fire prevention, preparedness and response, ecosystem restoration, and other work needed to create landscape, ecosystem, and community resilience.

Solution

Year-round Local Capacity - Build and enhance the capacity in North Coast communities and organizations to implement high-priority actions to improve community and ecosystem resilience and to participate in and contribute to regional collaborative initiatives.

Background and Context

Ecosystem stewardship, fire prevention and preparedness, active fire response, as well as post-fire land stewardship, restoration, and cleanup are critical roles that are currently implemented by an array of entities with varying levels of funding and jurisdictional authority, including federal and state agencies, Tribal fire departments, fire protection districts, volunteer fire departments, Fire Safe Councils, Firewise Communities, COPE groups, CBOs, and RCDs, among others. Many of the economically disadvantaged and vulnerable communities in the region do not have adequate year-round capacity to support the numerous activities that are needed to ensure long-term ecosystem and community resilience. These communities are the stewards of high-value natural resources, including watersheds that sequester carbon, provide clean water, and support biological diversity. Many of these areas also have heavy hazardous fuel loads due to fire suppression, drought, pests and diseases, and invasive species.

Capacity limitations include lack of the year-round, cross-trained workforce to do the needed work, as well as the lack of strong career pathways that provide this workforce with well-paying jobs, advancement opportunities, living wages, benefits, and other incentives. Other limitations include lack of resources such as funding, infrastructure, and equipment, and lack of organizational and administrative capacity in regional entities to support the work. Lack of capacity is especially acute in under-resourced communities that are most vulnerable to large, damaging wildfires and other climate-related impacts. Capacity may not be consistent across the region, and even in areas with high local capacity, these communities are often not networked at the regional scale, nor tied into regional capacity and collaborative infrastructure. In the absence of local capacity, reliance on outside federal and state resources may result in higher costs, fewer local jobs and local revenues, and fewer on-the-ground projects implemented.

Benefits of a local, year-round, cross-trained workforce

  • Local personnel can react to fires faster and more efficiently, leading to lower costs and better outcomes.
  • Local personnel will allow for proactive preparation for fires, by providing capacity for hazardous fuel load reduction, fire resilient landscape stewardship planning, home hardening, outreach, and other actions.
  • Local personnel can work on ecosystem and watershed health, including pre- and post-fire habitat restoration, protection and enhancement of local cultural resources, and other local priorities at any time of the year.
  • Local personnel for managed fire events reduces the impact on national resources during fire season.
  • Local personnel can expand the capacity to conduct prescribed burns when conditions are appropriate.
  • Funding stays in local economies, creating a virtuous cycle of more local hiring and capacity building via the private sector.

Recommendations

For the North Coast region, NCRP will utilize regional data and local knowledge to identify communities at risk based on a variety of factors including hazardous fuel loading, watershed health and biodiversity, and community vulnerabilities and resources. The Communities at Risk Assessment will provide preliminary prioritization information for further in-depth assessments and evaluations. Starting with the most vulnerable communities, NCRP will perform additional assessment and conduct in-depth interviews to understand and document community capacity assets and needs. These data will then be used to assist community agencies and CBOs in acquiring and deploying resources to continue building local trained, year-round capacity to carry out ecosystem health, fire prevention, and fire preparedness projects and to participate in wildfire response. Local cross-trained personnel who can do this work year-round deserve pensioned, career-track jobs with advancement opportunities. Creating such jobs will enhance economic opportunities for local residents to build meaningful careers in North Coast communities.

NCRP and its partners will advocate for state, federal, and philanthropic partners to make stable baseline funding available to individual entities for long term organizational capacity building, and systematic approaches to training in organizational and programmatic development and growth. NCRP will evaluate and quantify a regionwide approach to building organizational capacity and technical assistance that is flexible enough to address entities’ varying needs. Building organizational capacity and administrative functions applies to all types of implementing partners, including nonprofits, Tribes and Tribal entities, volunteer fire departments, local Fire Safe Councils, and more.  Although their structures and requirements differ, there is a need to expand core competencies in a wide range of partners to support the effective implementation of this Regional Priority Plan and other initiatives.

All of the recommendations and actions listed here are intended to be applied to all North Coast communities, including Tribes and Tribal communities. The following Solution, Tribal Capacity, contains additional considerations specific to North Coast Tribes and Tribal communities.

Actions

  • Work with key local leaders and collaborators in each community to identify the actions needed to achieve community and landscape health & resilience – both on the ground work, as well as planning, permitting, project development, community engagement, and volunteer coordination.
  • Work with key local leaders and collaborators in each community to identify the appropriate local entities to carry out different components of work in each of these communities (i.e., County/Tribal governments, RCDs, FSCs, VFDs, other CBOs, local businesses), or identify gaps if capacity does not exist.
  • Identify existing and needed capacity of entities to conduct work, including financing, jurisdictional authorities or governance models, personnel, equipment, and infrastructure.
  • Establish a set of performance metrics to evaluate progress towards capacity goals

  • Local fire response: trained and certified crews, permanent equipment, and other infrastructure (secure fire stations, communication towers, water tanks, other accessible water sources, etc).
  • Vegetation management, community protection, and defensible space activities in the WUI.
  • Home hardening: education, outreach, retrofitting.
  • Post-fire recovery: timber salvage, hazard tree reduction, clean-up of hazardous materials.
  • Restoration and reforestation.

  • Obtain long-term funding to support the identified community capacity needs.
  • Analyze the economic benefits and ROI projected to result from implementation.

Recruit and retain natural resource professionals, including RPFs and fire planners, to provide technical assistance for project design, permitting, and planning.

  • Expand flexibility in existing grant programs to explicitly fund capacity building such as participation in training, coordination and partnership development, planning, and peer mentoring.

Provide hands-on organizational capacity building consultants and coaches. NCRP staff, technical consultants, and other partners can support North Coast entities in building capacity.

  • Foundational leadership skills, planning and growing an organization.
  • Collaborative leadership.
  • Grant writing, project development, and project scoping workshops geared toward forest and/or fire management contexts.
  • Grant management.

Encourage and facilitate peer learning events and networks for a wide range of skills and competencies, modeled on the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network (staffed by the Watershed Research and Training Center, based in the North Coast region.)

Support the development and growth of Tribal training centers and programs in the North Coast region to expand Tribal capacity for beneficial fire, climate and community resilience, and other Tribally-identified priorities (See Fire Resilient Forests – Beneficial Fire Capacity Solution).

Create mechanisms for county land use planners and decision-makers to coordinate, cross-train and consult with one another and to provide regional land use priorities, zoning tools and incentive programs that align with the North Coast Regional Resilience Plan (See Community Health & Safety – Land Use Policy Solution).

Advocate for expansion of the DOC Forest Health Watershed Coordinators program to support several Forest Health Watershed Coordinators to support training and technical assistance for project design & implementation throughout the region. Explore the feasibility of expanding this program to include administrative capacity for a centralized grant application, management, and reporting system at the watershed or regional scale.

Support diverse, inclusive local and regional partnerships that develop shared vision by identifying shared values, addressing both direct and indirect threats to these shared values, and creating strategies that turn these threats to opportunities for collaboration and growth.

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