All hands, which lands: examining the beneficiaries of cross-boundary fuels reduction in the WUI

Increasing segments of wildfire research are focused on prioritisation of fuels reduction treatments to reduce wildfire risk, yet fewer efforts have evaluated patterns of the private properties in proximity to ongoing management actions influenced by overlapping political, social, and managerial forces. The research presented here utilises geospatial and parcel data from Kittitas County, Washington, USA, to evaluate the relationship between past fuels reduction treatments and property characteristics of proximal residential properties. We also evaluate whether and how property characteristics of private parcels in proximity to fuels reduction treatments differ across actions undertaken by federal, state, county or private entities operating in the county. Our results suggest that secondary properties, those with higher building or land values, and larger properties are more likely to be near fuels treatments. We also found significant differences in the land and building values of properties benefiting from fuels treatments implemented by different agencies, with state landowner assistance programmes serving higher proportions of primary residences than other organisations. Our results suggest that parcel characteristics can help serve as high-level indicators of nuanced differences among patterns of landowners at risk from wildfire, and that agencies may be serving distinct ‘market segments’ of those populations.