New types of investments needed to address barriers to scaling up wildfire risk mitigation.

Background: Wildfire mitigation is becoming increasingly urgent, but despite the availability of mitigation tools, such as prescribed fire, managed wildfire, and mechanical thinning, the USA has been unable to scale up mitigation. Limited agency capacity, inability to work across jurisdictions, lack of public support, and procedural delays have all been cited as barriers to mitigation. But in the context of limited resources and increasing urgency, how should agencies prioritize investments to address these barriers?

Results: To better understand different investments for scaling up mitigation, we examined how the wildfire problem is framed, building on existing social science demonstrating that agency approaches depend in part on how problems are framed.