Community wildfire protection plan

A Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) is a Healthy Forests Restoration Act planning document for an at-risk community. Local government, the local fire department, and the state forestry agency must agree to it. It prioritizes hazardous-fuel work and recommends ways to reduce structural ignitability. It is not adopted code, not Firewise USA recognition, and not a lot-by-lot mandate.

You are looking at a county PDF titled Community Wildfire Protection Plan, then at a building permit that never mentions it. The PDF is a collaborative fuels plan. The permit is the adopted code for the house. Those are two documents.

This page is the programs explainer. Firewise USA site recognition is the NFPA how-to. Do not treat a CWPP map as adopted code.

Why it matters

People treat the CWPP as R327, as a Firewise plaque, and as a planting list. HFRA wrote it as a way for a community to tell the Forest Service and BLM where fuel work should go. Interior’s wildland-fire page says the same thing in plain language. The plan can change what happens on nearby federal land. It does not stamp your vents.

How it works

HFRA (2003) defines a CWPP in 16 U.S.C. § 6511. Three contents are required:

1. Collaboration. The plan is developed in that collaborative setting and agreed to by local government, the local fire department, and the state agency responsible for forest management, in consultation with interested parties and nearby federal land managers.
2. Prioritized fuel reduction. The plan identifies and prioritizes treatment areas and recommends types and methods of treatment on federal and non-federal land to protect at-risk communities and essential infrastructure.
3. Structural ignitability. The plan recommends measures to reduce structural ignitability throughout the at-risk community.

The 2004 Preparing a Community Wildfire Protection Plan handbook restates those three minima. It is not a legal document. It says a CWPP can be simple or complex, and that it can cover wildfire response, hazard mitigation, preparedness, structure protection, or all of those.

DOI’s community-planning page adds the practical stake. The process lets a community influence where and how federal agencies implement fuel-reduction projects on federal land, and how additional federal funds may support work on non-federal land.

The paths

1. Find the plan that covers the lot. In Deschutes County, Project Wildfire publishes seven CWPPs: Greater Redmond, Greater Bend, Sunriver, Greater La Pine, Greater Sisters, Upper Deschutes River, and East and West Deschutes County. Each is revised on a five-year cycle. Open the current signed PDF, not a summary magazine.

2. Read who signed it. HFRA names three agreeing entities. The Greater Sisters Country CWPP (2025, signatures March 2026) is signed by local fire chiefs, the ODF unit forester, and local government as that statute requires. If those three are missing, you do not have an HFRA CWPP.

3. Use it for fuels and access priorities, not for the permit. The Sisters plan’s stated recommendations are reduce hazardous fuels on public land, reduce hazardous fuels on private land, reduce structural vulnerability, increase education, and identify and protect critical transportation routes. That last item is why this page links fire-apparatus access, rural water, and one road out. Those guides still cite the fire code and the county book, not the CWPP as if it were ORSC.

4. Do not treat it as a mandate on the lot. The Sisters declaration of agreement says the plan is not legally binding and does not create mandates or requirements on individual jurisdictions. It is a planning tool. R327, where a department adopted it, is the construction rule. OSFM’s checklist is public defensible-space guidance. Keep them apart.

5. Grants may ask for a CWPP. The Sisters plan states that for communities seeking National Fire Plan grant funding, a completed CWPP has become a de facto requirement. That is a funding fact in that PDF, not a construction rule. This page does not print a grant amount.

What people mix up

• Treating a CWPP boundary as R327 adoption.
• Treating a CWPP as Firewise USA recognition.
• Treating “recommends measures to reduce structural ignitability” as a listed vent.
• Treating a five-year-old summary flyer as the signed plan.
• Scraping a CWPP map into a drawing set as if it were a site plan.

How to check

1. Open Project Wildfire’s CWPP list if the lot is in Deschutes County. Elsewhere, ask the county forester or the state forestry office for the current plan.
2. Confirm the PDF is the signed revision, not a 2018 magazine wrap.
3. Check the declaration of agreement for local government, fire, and state forestry signatures.
4. Read whether the plan says it is binding. The Sisters 2025 plan says it is not.
5. For the house, open the adopted WUI book and the drawings. For the site, open Firewise only if you are actually filing a site. For the first five feet, open Zone 0.

Limits

This page does not write your CWPP. It does not reprint a county map. It does not decide R327 adoption. FireApproved is not Project Wildfire, not ODF, and not the Forest Service. Other Oregon counties publish their own plans. Open that county’s PDF. Do not paste Sisters language onto a Jackson County lot.

Related records

• Firewise USA site recognition
• Firewise USA
• Zone bands
• Home-hardening ladder
• Oregon defensible-space checklist
• Fire-apparatus access
• Rural water supply
• Landscaping