In 2011, Eagle County had what it considered a robust Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), which it developed and then discussed with community leaders.

But after the devastation wrought by the 2020 fire season, in which three fires — Cameron Peak, East Troublesome, and Pine Gulch — consumed nearly half a million acres, Eric Lovgren, community mitigation officer for Eagle County, said it was clear that the plan needed immediate overhaul.

“The old plan, which was true of many other plans, was developed and then we sought the buy-in. With the new plan, we did stakeholder interviews at the beginning and then set goals for their concerns,” Lovgren said. “We were able to develop a truly collaborative CWPP.”

Eagle County’s CWPP has four goals: Reduce the risks to public health and safety posed by wildfires, reduce structural ignitability and improve community wildlife resilience, protect critical infrastructure, and protect ecosystems and natural resources from high severity events.

Under those goals, the CWPP put in place specific strategies and action items, including unified building codes for all new development, fuel breaks around structures, forest thinning projects and increasing firefighting capacity and response time.

Given that February has rolled around with much of the state still in winter drought, those goals are coming even more into focus. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as of Jan. 1, statewide snow water equivalent in Colorado was only 56% of median snowpack levels. The U.S. Drought Monitor shows the northwestern part of Colorado in deep drought and the dry spell is predicted to last weeks on the Western Slope.

Peter Goble, assistant state climatologist with the Colorado Climate Center at CSU, said this magnitude of snow deficits is unlikely to be made up for with more rain in the coming months. Goble warned that Colorado is at risk of spring and summer fires in 2026, adding, “Historically, most of our worst fire seasons are following very poor snowpack years.”

Eagle County’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan also considered the changing development landscape. The county’s 1,700 square miles is mainly mountainous and rapid population growth meant that much of the new development is outside the reach of fire protection services.

“Our agencies usually respond to fires with 1-2 structures at risk,” Lovgren said. “They’re not set up to deal with conflagrations of thousands of structures, nor are our water systems.”

To address this, Eagle County worked in tandem with both the Wildfire Collaborative, originally formed in 2009, a group of stakeholders who work to mitigate wildfire threats through collaboration and partnership, and the Eagle Valley Wildland Partnership.

“We began to share resources and expertise and eventually funding and people,” Lovgren said. “They helped to design, implement, and oversee things like forest thinning projects, tactical fuel break construction or begin to make available resources for homeowners like free home assessments so they know what to do on their property to reduce the risk of to their structure and the surrounding area.”

The coordinated collaborative effort across all expertise areas is what Lovgren says how the “needle is moved collectively across all fronts.”

The public reaction has been incredible, Lovgren said. The pace and scale of the work has grown apace, especially with the community curbside chipping program where all the material from mitigation efforts can be taken away free of charge. While the public is concerned about prescribed burns or changes, Lovegren said people are now beating the path to their door and taking an active role in protecting their communities.

While Eagle County is proud to be a leader mitigation efforts in Colorado, the scale of its programs isn’t something all counties are capable of matching. This isn’t a reason to not begin, Lovgren argued.

“We are a community of means,” Lovgren said. “Not all counties have the same type of means available but one place everyone can start is by empowering your residents, start a neighborhood ambassador program, coordinate with your fire districts and ask how you can support them to make their job easier. Start with small projects that are scalable.”

The investment in fire mitigation or full-time project management positions like a community mitigation officer is well worth the funds, Lovgren said. The return on investment for forest restoration is about $7 for every $1 spent and $4 in avoided losses for $1 spent on mitigation.

An example of just how effective mitigation efforts are is the Forest to Faucets Program.

Denver Water and the Rocky Mountain Region of the Forest Service partnered in 2010 and carried out fuel reduction projects across 900 acres above Silverthorne. The project saved an estimated $1 billion worth of homes and infrastructure from the 2018 Buffalo Fire.

Local response mechanisms and partnerships are more important than ever as the Trump administration has pulled some federal grants, and, according to Lovgren, longstanding projects aren’t getting funded anymore.

The Trump administration has initiated a campaign to shrink the size of the federal bureaucracy, defending its actions as a means to stamp out fraud and bloat. Additionally, it has pulled, suspended or threatened to stop the flow of federal dollars to programs it deems anathema to its preferred policies, particularly targeting funding for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and climate-related initiatives.

During the federal government shutdown in October 2025, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced plans to fire thousands of employees, including 200 in Colorado who worked in land management and research, leaving critical positions unfilled.

“It’s why we added the lodging tax increase on the ballot,” Lovgren said. “We need to add more local response mechanism in case the federal response changes. It’s a monumental change.”

Lovgren added: “I never thought it was a possibility … that people in Colorado could lose emergency support.”