Rangeland Fire Protection Associations muster locals

Bob Hoff remembers helping his dad fight fires southeast of Idaho Falls, as a teenager. “We and other farmers would take tractors and disks out to a fire, put it out, go home, and go back to work,” he recalls. Combating the 2016 Henry’s Creek Fire, seven miles east of Idaho Falls, started much the same. Farmers contained the fire to a canyon, with agency fire crews on site. “But it turned into a big storm before it was over,” says Hoff, referring to a blaze that ultimately scorched more than 60,000 acres, according to a Post Register report. There was confusion about jurisdiction and incident control and conflicts with frustrated landowners who risked arrest if they tried to prevent the fire from engulfing private ground. Those experiences sparked formation of the Henry’s Creek Rangeland Fire Protection Association in spring of 2017, one of nine RFPAs in Idaho. Hoff is chairman of the 19-member group that assists with protecting 914,696 acres in Bonneville County, stretching almost to Gray’s Lake National Wildlife Refuge and the Wyoming border. The Camas Creek RFPA had formed a year earlier, the second largest in Idaho, spanning 1,494,000 acres along the Continental Divide/Montana border in Clark County, plus the Birch Creek drainage of Lemhi County. RFPAs are groups of legally organized volunteers who join state and federal teams — and sometimes other entities — fighting rangeland wildfires, typically providing rapid initial response. This collaboration leverages the proximity and place-based knowledge of local residents who are familiar with the terrain and fuel loads, plus the location of fences, gates, roads, water sources, livestock, and land ownership in the mosaic of public and private lands in eastern Idaho. Three states authorize RFPAs: Idaho, Oregon and Nevada. Oregon established the first RFPA in the U.S. in 1964, followed by Idaho in 2012...MORE