A CWPP tells a community what work matters most — and it improves your position for the funding that pays for it. We write them, and we run the collaborative process a plan actually requires.
A Community Wildfire Protection Plan is a document authorised under Title I of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003. It identifies the wildfire risks facing a specific community and sets prioritised recommendations for reducing them.
Colorado takes them seriously. Senate Bill 09-001 mandates that a CWPP be completed and approved for each county, and the Colorado State Forest Service has established minimum standards for how they're developed.
They exist at three scales. Colorado's own CWPP registry distinguishes plans developed for entire counties, plans developed for fire protection districts, and local plans — which explicitly include HOAs, subdivisions and municipalities. A neighbourhood-scale plan is a recognised category, not an improvisation.
What that means practically is that a subdivision of ninety homes and a county of ninety thousand people are both legitimate CWPP applicants. The requirements are the same; the depth is not.
It's worth being clear about one thing: once a CWPP is adopted, implementing it is the community's responsibility, and there's no legal requirement to do so. The plan opens doors. It doesn't walk you through them.
Most communities don't know this, and it changes the conversation entirely.
The federal Community Wildfire Defense Grant supports the creation and updating of Community Wildfire Protection Plans. Local governments, tribal governments and non-profit organisations — including homeowner associations — can apply for up to $250,000 to create or update a plan, at a 10 percent match.
The same programme funds the implementation of projects within a plan less than ten years old, at a considerably higher ceiling with a 25 percent match.
For a board or a district, that's the difference between funding a plan outright and funding a match on one. It's usually the point at which a hypothetical becomes a decision.
Scale determines detail. A neighbourhood plan and a county plan meet the same requirements at very different levels of specificity, and a plan written at the wrong level of detail is either unusable or unaffordable.
A CWPP isn't a document you commission and receive. It's an agreement.
The plan has to be developed with the fire authority, local government and the state forest service at the table, and it has to be one they'll put their names to. That's a facilitation job as much as a technical one.
It's also where community plans most often stall — not in the assessment, but in getting three organisations to the same conclusion and holding them there through a process that runs for months.
Our background is on the fireline. That's the room where these conversations happen, and it's the reason we're comfortable running them.
We'll be straight with you about timescales. A plan is months of work, most of which is other people's calendars rather than ours.
Grant cycles run months ahead of the work they fund.
Colorado's main state programme closes applications in early October with awards announced the following March. Federal planning grants run to their own schedule. A community that decides in spring to plan and mitigate that summer has usually missed both.
So the useful conversation isn't whether to do a plan — it's which cycle you're aiming at, and working backwards from that date.
We'll do that with you at no charge. If the honest answer is that this year's window has closed, we'll tell you and help you plan for the next one.
Worth separating, because the terms get used interchangeably and they're different documents.
A defensible space plan is property-specific — one home, one lot, written for that structure. In Colorado these carry particular weight, including with homeowners associations, when written by a qualified source. We're certified by Jefferson County to write them.
A CWPP is community-wide strategy. It covers the whole planning area, deals with land you may not own, and involves agencies rather than just the owner.
Larger communities usually end up wanting both: the CWPP to set direction and unlock funding, and individual plans for the properties within it.
If your existing plan is more than five years old, that's worth knowing now rather than at the next application deadline.
What scale of plan you need, who has to be at the table, which funding cycle you should be aiming at, and whether a plan is even the right next step. No charge, and no obligation.
Request a Scoping CallCommunity wildfire protection planning across the Colorado foothills — Evergreen, Conifer, Bailey, Golden, Woodland Park and Nederland — and throughout Jefferson, Park, Teller, Boulder, Larimer, Douglas and El Paso counties.
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