After a century of putting fires out, Chelan County, Washington is now trying to convince people to start them on purpose.
The Cascadia Conservation District, based in Wenatchee, is hiring an outreach contractor to work with private landowners across Chelan County on prescribed fire education and capacity-building. The project, funded jointly by the Washington State Conservation Commission and Washington Department of Natural Resources, targets one of the most stubborn gaps in the region's wildfire strategy: roughly 40 percent of Washington's forestland is privately owned, and agencies can't conduct cross-boundary burns without landowner consent.
Chelan County is a high-stakes testing ground for this approach. The county's ponderosa pine and Douglas fir forests, surrounding Lake Chelan's tourist economy, Leavenworth's Bavarian-themed downtown and thousands of orchard operations, have accumulated dangerous fuel loads after decades of aggressive suppression. Neighboring counties absorbed some of the worst fire disasters in Washington history, including the 2014 Carlton Complex, which burned 256,000 acres and was the largest wildfire in state history at the time. Residents here have lost homes and endured weeks of hazardous smoke in nearly every fire season since.
Source: NationGraph.
The resistance to prescribed fire is real and understandable. Smoke complaints, liability fears after escaped burns, and a deep cultural wariness of intentional fire have all slowed progress. Insurance markets are tightening further, with some Chelan County homeowners losing coverage entirely amid wildfire risk, adding new urgency to reducing fuel loads before the next major fire season.
Washington has been building the policy infrastructure to support this shift. A 2021 state law directed $125 million toward forest health and wildfire response, with an explicit focus on prescribed fire. The federal Wildfire Crisis Strategy, launched in 2022, named the Central Washington Initiative, which includes Chelan County, as one of 10 national priority landscapes, directing significant federal dollars into the region. But money and policy don't move private landowners. Relationships do.
That's where Conservation Districts have an advantage. Unlike state or federal regulators, Cascadia CD operates as a trusted community neighbor with years of existing relationships across the county. The contractor they hire will build on that foundation, focusing on outreach, education and developing the technical know-how landowners need to participate in burns that cross public and private boundaries.
As NationGraph has reported previously, the educational push is part of a broader regional strategy to normalize prescribed fire before the next megafire forces the issue. The funding amount for this specific contract has not been disclosed. Cascadia CD's contact for the project is Patrick Haggerty at 509-881-7563.
