Establish and promote trained local workforce capacity.
1. Establish a collaborative, broadly representative group with appropriate expertise and experience to explore and develop solutions to increase local recruitment and retention of tribal, volunteer, and private organization (for profit and/or non-profit) personnel for fire response.
2. Build upon the existing interagency wildland fire organization to create a network of local cross-trained crews for on-call response to fire emergencies, prescribed fire opportunities, and on-going fuels reduction treatments - a local fire brigade.
3. Develop interagency and intergovernmental policy and agreements that make a local fire brigade both possible and desirable.
4. Describe the concept in enough detail to create pilot projects. Include: training and certification of local groups and private contractors in prescribed fire and wildfire response, forest restoration, and fuels treatments.
- Review and revise contracting and agreement structures (including standard timber sale contracts) which currently inhibit the building of local capacity, including payment to organize local "on-call" crews for fuels treatments, prescribed fire, and wildland fire response.
- Develop mechanisms and agreements to mutually accept, recognize and/or standardize appropriate qualifications across state, Federal, Tribal, and local land and and fire management organizations.
- Develop and maintain local capacities through identification of collaborative partner roles, responsibilities, and set-aside actions in agreements that are subsequently incorporated by reference into socio-economic NEPA analyses.
- Create an agreement framework for set-asides, supplemental actions, and mobilization processes in local area operating plans (5-10 year plans with a process for annual supplemental addendum).
5. Create pilot projects in at least three adjacent counties, in one or more states, including a Tribal area.
6. In non-pilot areas, use the above identified mechanisms to begin building local capacity, as requested by local FAC Collaboratives and local organizations.
Lynn Jungwith
lynnj@hayfork.net
Short Term (0-2 years), Mid Term (2-4 years), Long Term (>4 years), & Ongoing
Collaborators - USFS, DOI, DOL, states, tribes, VFD reps, NACo, RFD orgs, NWCG, NGOs, private industry. IAFC, WGA, TNC, OES, EPA, state colleges. Supplemental info: When accomplished, these actions will facilitate the creation and maintenance of FACs, increase and more effectively utilize local workforce capacity, especially in rural areas, and foster a safer community and a more resilient local economy. April 2014 - Establishing model program for trained local workforce as part of the Blue Mountain Pilot Project in Oregon.
