Ranching with Fire and Rangeland Fire Protection Associations: Livelihoods, Resiliency, and Adaptive Capacity of Rural Idaho

A majority of communities in Idaho are rural in character, and their ability to plan with fire is limited. The Rangeland Fire Protection Associations (RFPA) program, adopted by the Idaho Department of Lands within Idaho, is an effort to create better regional cohesion and allow ranchers to respond to fires on their land or their neighbors’ lands.

Rangeland Fire Protection Associations not only demonstrate great potential in rangeland fire protection but also capture the meaning of ‘social capital’ and ‘community adaptive capacity’ as resources and planning capacity. In addition, the creation and active participation of RFPAs will potentially increase the overall planning capacity in rural areas that often lack resources. We demonstrate this influence on planning capacity in rural regions at hand with Idaho’s first RFPA, located in Mountain Home, Idaho.