Governing across jurisdictions in post-wildfire response and recovery: An analysis of the 2022 Hermit's Peak Calf Canyon Wildfire

Post-fire response and recovery is an increasingly important topic given more catastrophic, extensive, and frequent fires in the US West. Given the lack of research on policy challenges in this arena, we investigated the following questions: 1) What roles do land managers and agencies play during post-wildfire response and recovery efforts? and, 2) What are the policy and other governance facilitators, challenges, and recommendations for improving post-wildfire response and recovery? We conducted qualitative interviews with 22 individuals who had intimate knowledge of and held leadership roles in the response and recovery efforts to the 2022 Hermit's Peak Calf Canyon Fire. We found that every local, state, and federal actor had a different focus during the initial emergency response, and actors self-organized to address immediate challenges. Challenges included inflexible policies, limited capacity and knowledge of post-fire contexts, limited incentives for cross-boundary work, and difficulty adapting federal approaches to local contexts. Consistent with prior literature, we found facilitating factors included local champions, the formation of boundary organizations, and the use of existing collaborative authorities and federal funding support for post-fire response efforts. Interviewee recommendations were to expand workforce capacity, provide more education on post-wildfire programs and ecology, pursue legislative changes, and develop navigator positions. We explore these suggestions in detail, and consider whether they align with governance institutions that are known to support greater adaptiveness, something that is missing from the existing literature.