State lines, fire lines, and lines of authority: Rangeland fire management and bottom-up cooperative federalism
Introduction
Environmental governance of federal lands in the United States has traditionally emphasized top-down forms of authority based in the capacity and expertise of federal agencies (Babcock, 1996). However, new governance arrangements have created opportunities to incorporate authority based in local- and state-level actors and organizations. In so doing, they mirror patterns of environmental governance that have become more common globally, including those theorized as coproduction (Ostrom, 1996), network governance (Howlett and Ramesh, 2014), polycentric governance (Bixler, 2014), and multilevel governance (Jessop, 2013). A persistent dilemma in all of these models relates to the latitude for local autonomy, innovation, and discretion within nested systems where traditional centralized authority remains present to some extent (Charnley and Poe, 2007; Ekroos et al., 2017; Reed and Bruyneel, 2010). Although new environmental governance arrangements promise greater local responsiveness, legitimacy, and use of local knowledge, their implementation is often complicated by disputes regarding decision-making power within systems characterized by blurred boundaries of authority (Keast et al., 2006).
Federal land management in the United States has undergone a transformation in recent decades as agencies such as the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have confronted new fiscal, political, and ecological realities (Cowart and Fairfax, 1988; Koontz et al., 2004). Federal land managers increasingly rely upon non-federal actors (state and local governments, NGOs, resource users, and private-sector entities) to lend resources, expertise, and legitimacy to planning and project implementation (Fleming et al., 2015; Maier and Abrams, 2018; Scarlett and McKinney, 2016). These arrangements have resulted in noteworthy successes, but in some cases have reinvigorated longstanding tensions regarding the authority of non-federal actors on the federal domain—tensions borne of the outsized presence of federal holdings in much of the West (e.g., 62% of the territory within the State of Idaho and 53% of the territory within the State of Oregon is federal property) and of a broader movement toward “cooperative federalism” in U.S. public administration since the mid-twentieth century.
Although cooperative federalism in the US has historically taken the form of federal policies that use incentives to enlist non-federal actors as partners in policy implementation, there are also instances of “bottom-up” cooperative federalism in which local or state governments design policies that are then coordinated “upward” with federal agencies and authorities. An example of this comes from the Rangeland Fire Protection Association (RFPA) programs that have emerged in some Western states. RFPAs are volunteer wildland fire teams organized as registered nonprofit organizations, with authority and responsibility to respond to wildfires on state and private lands within their boundaries (Stasiewicz and Paveglio, 2017). State laws authorize local ranchers, landowners, and other community members with livelihood interests in rangeland to manage fire on private and state lands that are otherwise unprotected by state or rural fire districts or other professional or volunteer fire crews. Although state-level governments cannot authorize RFPA management of the abundant federal lands that are interwoven with state and private rangeland properties, the existence of the programs creates a set of actors and a supportive framework capable of coordinating with federal agencies on federal lands, and federal agencies have developed mechanisms for cooperation with individual RFPAs (Abrams et al., 2017). In some cases, putting these cooperative arrangements into practice has resulted in disputes regarding the limits of state and private authority on the federal estate.
The RFPA model thus represents a somewhat novel institutional arrangement, given that it is designed and organized at local to regional levels with the intention of coordinating upward. To date, there has been relatively limited investigation into the dynamics of such models. Our purpose here is to examine the institutionalization of RFPA programs in Oregon and Idaho as examples of a particular strain of new environmental governance models. We analyze RFPAs as operating in the “shadow of hierarchical power” (Whitehead, 2003, p. 11) within multilevel governance systems characterized by tensions between discretion and accountability (Rayner, 2015). Comparing adjacent geographies separated by a state line provides an opportunity to examine the evolution of federal-state-resource user relationships in ecologically similar but politically distinct contexts.
Section snippets
New environmental governance and wildfire
New models of environmental governance, with their related modes of public administration, are replete with questions regarding authority, legitimacy, and knowledge within the multi-stakeholder networks typical of these approaches (Fleming et al., 2015; Kettl, 2000; Reed and Bruyneel, 2010; Skelcher, 2005). In many cases, the effectiveness of multilevel and decentralized models is hampered by a failure to devolve sufficient authority and latitude for decision-making to local actors (DeCaro et
RFPAs, ranching, and the state nexus
Due to the peculiarities of late nineteenth and early twentieth century land disposal policies, many western cattle producers run their herds on a combination of a privately owned, usually well-watered, “base” property and allotments of federal and sometimes state lands on which the base property owner holds grazing permits (Coggins and Lindeberg-Johnson, 1982; Hage, 1990; Wilkinson, 1992). The BLM and US Forest Service oversee these renewable grazing permits, which specify the total number of
Methods
To better understand the dynamics of federal-state-RFPA relations in Oregon and Idaho, we conducted four case studies of individual RFPAs complemented by examination of the broader state and federal contexts in which the RFPAs are embedded. Our selected Oregon cases were the Crane and Jordan Valley RFPAs, and our Idaho cases were the Mountain Home and Owyhee RFPAs (Fig. 1). Case-study RFPAs were purposively selected due to their previous experience responding to wildfires and their distribution
Comparing the Oregon and Idaho models
Although the Idaho and Oregon programs are broadly similar in design, they are not identical. The most prominent difference is found in how the state programs structure the relationships between RFPAs, state government, and federal agencies. With grounding in ORS 477.100, the Oregon program frames the protection of property from fire as a fundamental right of all land and property owners, whereas in Idaho fire protection is framed as a privilege bestowed upon those who comply with federal
Discussion
The RFPA experience illustrates a changing federal role in wildfire and public land management, one that increasingly incorporates novel nonfederal actors, as observed by Davis (2001). This particular model of bottom-up cooperative federalism unleashes the potential of very motivated human infrastructure and holds possibilities to simultaneously address issues of efficacy and legitimacy in fire management on remote rangeland landscapes. However, consistent with Fleming’ s et al. (2015)
Conclusions
The landscape of environmental governance in the US West is undergoing substantial change. Among the recent innovations introduced into this highly contested region are a series of initiatives that strive to provide greater authority to states, civil society organizations, and resource users to meet broadly shared resource objectives on federally owned lands. Such initiatives increasingly grapple with a common set of dilemmas regarding the limits of non-federal authority in the shadow of
Declarations of interest
None.
Funding
This work was supported by the United States Joint Fire Science Program [grant number 14-2-01-29].
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to sincerely thank the Rangeland Fire Protection Association members, state and federal agency representatives, and others that generously contributed their time and insights to this project. Thanks to James Meacham, Alethea Steingisser, and Dylan Molnar for their collaboration and support of the spatial components of this project.
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