Preemptive purchase of land or development rights in fire-prone areas, whether before or after a fire, is one recommendation of a 2014 white paper published by Headwaters Economics, a Montana nonprofit research group that focuses on land management. Funds could come from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund or local bond elections, it said.
The key is weighing the cost of protecting homes against the value of the property. Northern California’s Sierra foothills showed promise, Headwaters executive director Ray Rasker said.
“We looked at some fires that cost $700,000 per home,” Rasker said. “Pretty soon you look at the situation where it would have been cheaper to just buy the open space.”
Like most critics of current practices, though, Rasker sees land buyouts as only secondary to a more urgent effort to discourage new development in fire-prone areas.
The Headwaters report found that only about 16% of what is called the wildland-urban interface has been developed in the West, leaving room for huge increases in fire vulnerability if local planning boards continue to approve developments there.