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I began working on community based fire management planning with the Trinity County Fire Safe Council in the 1990's and helped to develop the county's first fire plan.

The process we used to develop the plan is documented in Community Participation in Fire Management Planning: The Trinity County Fire Safe Council's Fire Plan USDA Forest Service Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-189. 2008

• Abstract: In 1999, Trinity County CA, initiated a participatory fire management planning effort. Since that time, the Trinity County Fire Safe Council has completed critical portions of a fire safe plan and has begun to implement projects defined in the plan. Completion of a GIS based, landscape scale fuels reduction element in the plan defined by volunteer fire fighters, agency staff and community members has been a highlight of the past 3 years' work. Current efforts are focused on implementing fuels reduction projects. This paper reports on the plan development process, project implementation, and the challenges of involving landowners, particularly absentee owners, in fuels reduction activities. A demonstration effect is noted, in which a few landowners participate initially and model creation of defensible space for neighbors, who join later. The critical role of volunteer fire departments as first responders on many fire starts and the lack of funding support they face are discussed.

My most recent work in this area has been with my graduate student, Michelle Fuller:

Everett, Yvonne and Michelle Fuller. 2011. Fire Safe Councils in the Interface. Society and Natural Resources. Vol. 24 No 4:319-333.

• Abstract: Legislators exhort government agencies to work with the public to reduce fire hazards in the wildland-urban interface. However, working with an unorganized ''public'' is a challenge for agencies. We present survey research on fire safe councils in California, community-based groups that work to reduce wildfire hazards with a range of innovative mitigation activities. We find that many fire safe councils exhibit high capacity for bonding and bridging forms of social capital that enable them to work within their communities and with government agencies to improve fire management. Two sources of strength in this potentially expandable organizational model are (1) the grass-roots character of most councils, which emerge from and reflect their communities' specific needs and capacities, and (2) a statewide coalition of federal and state fire and land management agencies with other stakeholders, which legitimizes agency staff involvement at a local level and streamlines access to funding.

Henry's Lake, Idaho

From 2009-2012, I worked in collaboration with several colleagues lead by Robert Van Kirk on assessing changes in water management in the Henry's Fork Watershed, Idaho. Visit the links to the website and brochure.

Publications:

Everett, Yvonne and Michelle Fuller. 2011. Fire Safe Councils in the Interface. Society and Natural Resources. Vol. 24 No 4:319-333.

Everett, Yvonne. 2010 The Role of Fire Safe Councils in California. Fremontia. Vol. 38, no. 2 and vol. 38, no. 3: 42-45. April and July 2010.

Presentations:

Everett, Yvonne. Building Community Resilience to Hazard: Coastal Communities in Northern California. Paper presented July, 2009 International Society for Society and Natural Resources Meetings, Vienna, Austria.