Across the US, communities are increasingly grappling with impacts of wildfire — from growing pressure on water systems and instability in insurance markets to serious health risks from smoke exposure. State legislators are uniquely positioned to respond to these escalating challenges.
Unlike federal agencies, states have direct authority over key areas related to wildfire preparedness and prevention including land-use, public health, and water regulation — all of which shape how communities prepare for and live with wildfire risk.
In April 2026, COMPASS, in conjunction with the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators (NCEL), facilitated a briefing to provide state legislators and their staff with science-informed policy recommendations, equipping them to respond to the growing wildfire crisis in their jurisdictions. The briefing focused on how wildfire intersects with water supplies, housing and development insurance markets, and public health.
The briefing featured four experts working across wildfire science, public health, insurance, and state governance:
- Dr. Alistair Hayden, Assistant Professor of Practice in Cornell University’s Department of Public & Ecosystem Health
- Dr. Marion Wittman, Program Officer for the Moore Foundation’s Wildfire Resilience Initiative
- Dave Jones, former California Insurance Commissioner and current Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment
- Oregon State Senator Jeff Golden
Together, the panelists explored how state policy can help communities prepare for and adapt to a shifting fire landscape, emphasizing four key themes:
Expanding development is increasing exposure to wildfire risk
Wildfire has always been a vital part of the landscape and how humans interact with the environment. However, the expansion of human development further into the wildland-urban interface (WUI) — areas where homes and infrastructure border fire-prone vegetation — has increased both human exposure to fire and the scale of potential loss.
Sen. Golden pointed to the positive impacts of landscape-scale mitigation efforts, including prescribed burns across large connected areas, noting that these efforts can reduce the severity of future fires and protect nearby communities.
On the insurance front, Jones explained that states play a role in ensuring that insurers actually take these mitigation efforts into account when setting rates or determining coverage. In Colorado, for instance, legislation requires insurers to consider both landscape-scale management and risk-reduction actions taken by individual property owners. In California, a state-organized claims fund supports prescribed fire practitioners who cannot get liability coverage from private insurers. Together, these policies can help support wildfire mitigation efforts and make communities more resilient to potential wildfire impacts.
Communities need to prepare for a shifting climate
A shifting climate has intensified wildfire conditions and amplified wildfire impacts contributing to longer fire seasons, hotter and drier conditions, and more widespread burns. Adapting to a changing climate will require communities to shift how they view fire and organize themselves around it.
“The future will be smokier,” Dr. Hayden noted.
Panelists emphasized the importance of strengthening preparedness and investing in wildfire resilience actions like public health planning, air quality monitoring and forecasting, emergency communication systems, and informed fire and land stewardship.
“Simply put, being proactive is cheaper, safer, and more effective,” Dr. Wittman noted, adding, “Despite a growing wildfire water crisis, we have more knowledge, strategies, and tools than ever to address it.”
States have tools available to mitigate the effects of wildfire now
Panelists repeatedly emphasized that the knowledge and tools to protect communities already exist.
Dr. Hayden explained that communities are increasingly adopting strategies to address wildfire smoke. For example, monitoring and forecasting, which can be conducted across scales and by institutions ranging from state agencies to university partners, has been proven to save lives. In addition, community protection plans, often modeled on extreme heat and cold events, have been proven to protect vulnerable and exposed populations during smoke events across the country. “These actions have been developed for other hazards, so they’re not new and have been tested already,” Dr Hayden noted.
Sen. Golden also mentioned the role of modernizing equipment used to detect fire ignitions, allowing federal, state and local jurisdictions to better coordinate decisions about which fires can safely burn and which would need to be extinguished.
Collaboration across disciplines is essential
Bringing together diverse expertise from various disciplines — like health science, water ecology, state policy, and insurance expertise — is vital to prepare communities to live sustainably with wildfire.
During her presentation, Dr. Wittman specifically discussed how economists, water ecologists, and forest managers can work together to create finance models that incentivize effective forest management in order to better protect watersheds exposed to fire risk. These investments can reduce wildfire risk while also protecting water quality, ecosystems, and local economies.
More broadly, the discussion also highlighted the importance of building partnerships across agencies, jurisdictions, and communities to develop long-term, durable approaches to wildfire resilience. As Dr. Hayden noted, “Though we all represent specific places, this issue really spans political jurisdictions.”
You can view the recording of the briefing below or at this link.
Thank you to the four experts for sharing their time and knowledge, and the National Council of Environmental Legislators, for their collaboration in putting together this briefing!
Learn more about our wildfire work in federal policy with the Federation of American Scientists’ Wildland Fire Policy Accelerator.
