Wildfire Insurance in North Idaho: What Carriers Want

Quick answer: what is happening and what to do

Homeowners around Sagle, Sandpoint, and the rest of Bonner County are getting non-renewal letters, big premium jumps, and coverage conditions tied to wildfire risk. This is not your imagination and it is not your agent’s fault. Insurers are scoring your parcel with software that reads aerial imagery, and in this county a lot of parcels score badly.

Three things are worth knowing up front.

Idaho has no safety net. There is no state FAIR Plan here. If the standard market drops you, your fallback is surplus lines, which costs more, often excludes or limits wildfire, and carries no guaranty fund protection.

Vegetation is only part of the score, and not the biggest part. The research is clear that the roof, the vents, the eaves, and the first five feet around the house matter more than anything you do at a hundred feet. Anyone who tells you that mulching your property alone will save your house is selling you something.

The vegetation part is still real, it is scored, and it is the part we do. Ladder fuels, crown spacing, brush, and driveway access all feed the score, and all of them are fixable.

What we offer for this specifically: a written defensible space assessment. Joey or a project manager from Premier Land Service walks your parcel, measures the zones, photographs the conditions, and gives you a written report with dated photos, measured distances, and a zone by zone work list. It is built to be handed straight to your agent or your carrier, because a verbal "we cleaned it up" does not move a risk score. If you want the work done after that, we do that too, through our fire fuels reduction service.

Call 208-603-4777 or email info@premierlandservice.com.

What is actually happening in the Idaho insurance market

This is not anecdotal anymore. The state made insurers hand over their numbers.

In April 2025, the Idaho Department of Insurance issued Bulletin 25-02, a mandatory data call to every company writing homeowners and dwelling fire coverage in the state, specifically about wildfire. Director Dean Cameron put the problem plainly: in 2023 Idaho had 91 property insurance companies, and roughly 22 to 25 of those had non-renewed some or all of their policies, partly because of wildfire concerns, leaving some homeowners with no property insurance at all.

The results that came back were worse than most people expected.

What the state found	2022	2023	2024
Average Idaho homeowners premium	$1,308	$1,468	$1,798
Non-renewal rate	0.84%	6.55%	n/a

That is a 37.5% premium increase in two years, and a non-renewal rate that went up nearly eightfold in a single year. Idaho insurers non-renewed 27,798 homeowners and dwelling fire policies in 2023. The Department could not account for where roughly 32,000 dropped policies ended up.

Worth noting honestly: national rate trackers show Idaho premiums roughly flat in 2025 and 2026. The state’s own data ends at 2024. So the sharpest part of the premium spike may be behind us. Availability is the ongoing problem, not just price.

Idaho has no FAIR Plan

Most states have a FAIR Plan, an insurer of last resort that has to write you a basic policy when nobody else will. Washington has one. Oregon has one. California, Colorado, and New Mexico have them. As of late 2024, 33 states had a residual property plan.

Idaho does not.

When the standard market will not write your house here, you go to surplus lines. Idaho’s own Department of Insurance warns what that means: wildfire exclusions, higher deductibles, higher rates, the possibility of mid-year cancellation, and no guaranty fund protection if the carrier fails. The Department’s own words are that a healthy insurance market does not rely on surplus lines for traditional products such as homeowners coverage.

That is the single biggest reason to take this seriously here rather than assume something will catch you.

Why Bonner County specifically

Two different measurements, both bad, and they say slightly different things.

Verisk, the company whose scores insurers actually buy, ranks Bonner County in Idaho’s worst five. In Verisk’s 2025 wildfire risk report, 45% of structures in Bonner County fall in the high-to-extreme wildfire risk bands. The statewide figure is 8.76%. That is roughly five times the state rate.

The federal risk data agrees. USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities data puts 78.1% of the buildings in Bonner County and 77.8% in Boundary County as directly exposed to wildfire, meaning reachable by flame rather than just embers. The Idaho statewide figure is 45%.

Here is the part that matters for how you read those numbers. The town cores of Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene are only about 6 to 7% directly exposed. The exposure is concentrated in unincorporated rural acreage. In other words, it is concentrated on exactly the kind of parcel most of our customers own.

And this is not theoretical. The Sunset Fire destroyed 20 structures in Bonner County in August 2025, including six houses. In 2026 the Upper Smith and Turner Hill fires near Bonners Ferry pushed Level 3 evacuations. Statewide, Idaho had roughly 700,000 acres burned by August 19, 2026, and the Idaho Department of Lands suppression fund hit zero in June.

One more, from just across the line: the Spokane Complex Fire in August 2026 damaged or destroyed more than 700 homes and forced 65,000 people to evacuate. AM Best warned afterward that insurers with concentrated Washington exposure may re-examine their wildfire appetite. Carriers do not draw their maps at the state line.

Got a letter? If your carrier non-renewed you, added a wildfire surcharge, or told you to create defensible space before they will renew, that letter has a clock on it. Call 208-603-4777 or email info@premierlandservice.com and we will get you scheduled for an assessment. Bring the letter. It usually tells us what they measured.

How insurers actually score your property

Your carrier is probably not sending anyone to look at your place. They are buying a score.

The dominant one is Verisk FireLine. Others in use are CoreLogic’s wildfire risk score and ZestyAI’s Z-FIRE. They work off aerial and satellite imagery plus terrain data, and they run without anyone knocking on your door.

FireLine scores run 0 to 30, in these bands:

Score	Band
0	Negligible
1	Low
2 to 3	Moderate
4 to 12	High
13 to 30	Extreme

What carriers do with that number varies a lot, and this is why shopping matters. Bamboo declines anything at 2 or above. Mercury declines above 12. Horace Mann writes only negligible-to-low and gives no mitigation discount. State Farm says it does not use a third-party wildfire score at all. Below a score of 13, FireLine is reported to drive 30 to 50% of the underwriting decision.

On a parcel in a county where 45% of structures sit in the high-to-extreme bands, picking the right carrier may do more for you than any single piece of mitigation work. Ask your agent directly which model the carrier uses and what their cutoff is. That is a fair question and a good agent will answer it.

What the model is actually looking at

FireLine scores three things: fuel, slope, and access.

It measures defensible space at 5 feet and 30 feet from the structure, and it measures vegetation and neighboring buildings at 100 feet and 200 feet. Slope matters because fire moves uphill fast. Access matters because if a truck cannot get in and turn around, the house is a write-off before it burns.

That last one gets ignored constantly. Your driveway is part of your insurance score.

What actually works, honestly

This is the part where most contractors in our line of work will oversell. We are not going to.

A 2025 study in Nature Communications put numbers on it:

Treatment	Structure survival
Home hardening alone	25%
Home hardening plus Zone 0	40%
Home hardening plus Zones 0 and 1	48%

The structure comes first. A Class A roof, screened vents, enclosed eaves, and noncombustible siding do more than anything happening at a hundred feet. Analysis of more than 41,000 structures lost in California fires found enclosed eaves explained more variation in whether a house survived than any other structural feature. Roof, siding, windows, and eaves together produced a 54% damage-avoidance rate, versus 36% for any single measure alone.

We do not do roofs, vents, or siding. If that work is undone on your house, get it done, because it outranks everything we can do for you.

The first five feet matter more than the next ninety-five. IBHS testing across 17 experiments found that more than 25% fuel coverage in Zone 0, the strip from the wall out to five feet, drives damage or destruction risk to nearly 90%. An ember-resistant buffer in that strip cuts ignition risk roughly in half. Zone 0 should be gravel or bare mineral soil. No bark mulch, no shrubs, no woodpile, no wood fence tied into the house. In the LA fires, 65% of surveyed fences were wood and acted as a fuse straight into the structure.

Clearing everything is not the answer, and the research says so. Effective clearance works out to about 36% of woody cover removed, with no measurable benefit past roughly 40%. At least 60% of your woody cover can stay. Clearing past 100 feet adds nothing meaningful. If someone quotes you a job to strip your whole parcel bare in the name of fire safety, they are selling you work you do not need and taking your shade, your privacy, and your property value with it.

What a mulch layer actually does, since people get this wrong in both directions

There are two bad takes on forestry mulching. One is that it makes your parcel fireproof. The other is that you have just laid down a bed of kindling. Neither is right, and the research is specific enough to settle it.

A mulch layer does not carry fire well. This is the part critics miss. Compacted, ground-up material sitting in contact with soil is hard to light and slow to move.

In paired Florida sites, flame height on the masticated ground was 33% of the untreated site
In Canadian trials, fine mulch at low wind speeds did not burn at all except where it was directly torched. Regular mulch spread at 0.16 m per minute. Coarse mulch at 0.27 m per minute. Those are crawling speeds
When fire ran into a treated block at 12 m per minute with head fire intensity around 10,000 kW per meter, intensity inside the treatment dropped to 6,000 to 8,000 kW per meter
In chipped versus untreated plots, 80% of untreated plots carried fire versus roughly 50% of chipped plots

The Forest Service summarizes it this way: compared to natural fuel beds, fires in masticated fuel beds may burn with lower flame lengths and rates of spread.

The dirt matters, and you are right about that too. British Columbia’s fuel management review states plainly that increased soil contact is likely to decrease the probability of ignition and fire behaviour and can increase the rate of decomposition. It also notes that where material was mixed into mineral soil, only the top few centimeters dried enough to ignite, and that decomposition is accelerated by mixing mineral soil into the chips. Compacted beds also lose moisture at a slower rate than loose material, which offsets the drying you would otherwise get from opening the canopy up to sun and wind.

So a dirty, compacted, soil-mixed layer is genuinely less flammable than a clean fluffy one. That is not a rationalization, it is the documented mechanism.

What it does do is smolder, exactly as you have seen. Here is the honest tradeoff, and it is not about flame length. The same Forest Service line finishes: lower flame lengths and rates of spread, but also longer residence times that can promote greater heating of soils and vegetation. In prescribed fire experiments, smoldering combustion in masticated beds lasted 6 to 22 hours.

And it gets more stubborn with age, not less. A study burning material from sites 2 to 16 years post-treatment found older fuels burned with shorter flames and lower fireline intensity, but smoldered more than 50% longer than freshly mulched debris.

That is precisely the behavior you described when you tried to burn it.

Which means the real risks from a mulch layer are these three, and none of them is a running fire:

Long-duration soil heating that can cook roots and cambium on the trees you paid to keep. This is the documented cause of unexpected overstory mortality after burning masticated ground
Mop-up difficulty. A bed that smolders for a day is a bed that hides fire and reburns
Persistent heat and ember production next to anything you are trying to protect

That last one is the only reason Zone 0 stays bare. Not because chips will race across your yard, but because you do not want something capable of smoldering for 22 hours sitting against your siding or under your deck.

The practical rules that come out of this:

Keep the layer shallow. The repeated recommendation is under 8 cm, roughly 3 inches, which also lets native plants come back through and cover it
Get it into the dirt. Soil contact is what kills ignition probability and speeds decomposition
Keep it out of Zone 0 entirely, and keep depth down within 30 feet of structures
Do not leave deep continuous mats around the base of retained trees

One clarification on something related, because it gets quoted at people. A 2024 Forest Service analysis found that thinning alone reduced fire severity 27%, a result that was not statistically significant, while thinning followed by prescribed burning reduced it 72%. That study is about conventional thinning that fells trees and leaves slash on the ground, which is a very different fuel bed from mulched material: loose, elevated, well-aerated slash is the worst case for fire behavior. It is an argument for dealing with your slash, not an argument against mulching. Mulching is one of the ways you deal with it.

The same work found fuel treatments lose about half their effect after ten years: a 66% severity reduction at ten years or less, versus 28% past ten years. This is a maintenance cycle, not a one-time purchase.

The zones, with Idaho numbers

Idaho Department of Lands publishes specific figures. These are the ones to work to.

Zone	Distance	Crown spacing	Pruning height
Zone 0	0 to 5 ft	No vegetation. Gravel or bare soil.	n/a
Zone 1	4 to 30 ft	15 ft between crowns	Prune to 18 ft
Zone 2	30 to 100 ft	10 ft between crowns	Prune to 10 ft

Idaho Firewise runs slightly different numbers in the outer zone: 12 feet between canopy tops from 30 to 60 feet, and 6 feet from 60 to 100 feet. On slopes, spacing should widen. The common standard is 10 feet under 20% slope, 20 feet at 20 to 40%, and 30 feet above 40%. A lot of ground in Sagle and around the lake is steeper than people think, so this matters here.

Other specifics worth doing:

Firewood at least 30 feet from the house, on a gravel pad, not stacked against the siding or under the deck
Propane at least 10 feet out with 10 feet of clear space around it
Grass mowed to 4 inches and kept there
Nothing stored under decks, and ignition-resistant decking within 10 feet of the house
Driveway cleared 10 feet on both sides and trimmed to 13.5 feet overhead
Turnouts and a turnaround on long driveways. Kootenai County’s subdivision standard is one pullout per 400 feet, with turnarounds at least 50 feet from structures
Address numbers at least 4 inches tall
If your parcel sits outside a fire district, and plenty of Bonner County parcels do, contract with one. Idaho Code allows it, and fire station proximity is a direct input to some risk models

Turning the work into actual insurance value

Doing the work is half of it. Getting credit for it is the other half, and this is where most people stop.

The re-score is carrier-initiated. This is the single most important sentence in this article. FireLine re-scores happen when your insurer asks for one. ZestyAI refreshes its imagery two to four times a year but only folds it into your score when an insurer requests it. Nobody is going to notice your work and lower your rate on their own.

So after the work is done: photograph everything with dates, keep the invoices, write down measured distances, and then formally ask your carrier in writing to request a revised score. Follow up.

Get certified if you can. IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home became available in Idaho on April 14, 2026. It costs $125 and involves a third-party in-person evaluation, with 60 days to fix anything that fails. CSAA pays 5% for Base and 10% for Plus. State Farm has offered 4 to 18% off the wildfire portion of premium in Colorado, and has said certification may be required for coverage in some high-risk areas. Note that a detached shed, shop, or garage within 30 feet of the house caps you at Base.

The biggest opportunity here is Firewise, and almost nobody in this county is using it. Idaho has 34 recognized Firewise USA sites. Exactly one is in the entire Panhandle, East of Hayden Lake in Kootenai County. Bonner County has zero. Boundary County has zero.

Firewise recognition is the largest published mitigation credit anywhere we found: 11% at CSAA, and USAA’s Firewise discount has been approved in Idaho since August 2020. Requirements are 8 to 2,500 dwellings, a volunteer board and resident leader, a risk assessment refreshed every five years, a three-year action plan, and one volunteer hour per dwelling per year.

One volunteer hour per house per year, for a double-digit discount, in a county where insurers are actively pulling back. If you are in a subdivision, an HOA, or just a road with eight or more houses on it, this is worth a conversation with your neighbors.

Neighborhood or HOA? We do group projects, and they price better per acre than one parcel at a time because the equipment stays put. If your road or subdivision wants to treat several properties together, or wants to get a Firewise site going, call 208-603-4777. We will come talk to the group.

What changes in the coming months and years

January 1, 2027: you get a real reason in writing

Idaho House Bill 562 passed in 2026 and takes effect January 1, 2027. From that date, an insurer must give 60 days notice before non-renewing or cancelling a homeowners, dwelling fire, or renters policy, and must give a specific stated reason. The Department of Insurance has said in Bulletin 26-12 that a general reference to underwriting or company guidelines, without more detail, does not satisfy the requirement.

This matters practically. Today a non-renewal can arrive as a vague letter with 30 days on it. Starting in 2027 you get twice the runway and an actual reason, which is the thing you need in order to fix the problem or shop it properly.

The bill was carried by Representative Mark Sauter, who represents District 1 including Sandpoint. His stated reason for writing it was that an above average number of his constituents had received non-renewal or cancellation letters in the previous year or two. That is our legislator, describing our neighbors.

What did not pass

Being straight about this: House Bill 618 would have required insurers to disclose your wildfire score, explain how it was calculated, and produce a revised score within 30 days of your request after mitigation. It died in committee. So for now you have no legal right to see your own score or to demand a re-score.

A state wildfire mitigation grant fund has now failed three times in the legislature.

What is moving anyway

The NAIC, the national body of state insurance regulators, approved development of a model law for state mitigation programs and added wildfire to property and casualty risk-based capital in March 2026. Model laws tend to arrive in individual states a few years later. Colorado’s wildfire model transparency requirements took effect July 1, 2026. The pattern across the West is that transparency and mitigation-discount rules show up in one state and then spread.

Our read: expect Idaho to revisit score transparency in the 2027 or 2028 session, and expect carriers to keep tightening in the meantime. The direction of travel is toward documented, inspected, certified mitigation rather than a box you check on an application.

Cost that is landing on forest landowners directly

House Bill 511 became law in 2026 and raised the Idaho Department of Lands structure surcharge on improved private forest parcels from $40 to $100 per year. IDL’s fire preparedness fund was projected to run a deficit by 2030. Fire protection is getting more expensive on both sides, the insurance side and the state side.

Money that exists for this work

There is real cost-share money, but there is a structural catch worth understanding before you get your hopes up.

Neither the IDL hazardous fuels reduction program nor the current federal pass-through accepts applications from individual landowners. Money reaches your parcel only inside a sponsored multi-property project, and those projects carry a ten-year maintenance covenant.

When it works, it works well. On the Careywood North project in Bonner County, 100 acres of treatment, the documented landowner share was about $6,000 of a $600,000 project.

Program	What it covers	How to get in
IDL hazardous fuels projects	Fuels reduction on private forest land	Through a sponsored area project, not individually. Contact IDL Priest Lake or Sandpoint
NRCS EQIP	Forest stand improvement, firebreaks, brush management	Apply through your local NRCS field office
Community Wildfire Defense Grant	Community-scale planning and treatment	Through a community or county sponsor. Round 4 solicitation expected late 2026
Scattered Lands Shared Stewardship	173,942-acre project reaching west of Lake Pend Oreille	Through the project, near Sagle

Two things to watch locally. Bonner County’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan dates to 2016 with a 2019 update, which puts it right at the edge of the ten-year currency test that federal grant programs apply. Boundary County’s plan is from August 2003. Kootenai County has a FEMA-approved 2026 hazard mitigation plan and is in the best funding position of the three.

If you want your county to keep pulling federal fuels money into private ground, an up-to-date CWPP is the mechanism. That is a county commissioner conversation, not a contractor conversation, but it affects what we can help you pay for.

What this looks like on an actual parcel

A typical job on a wooded Sagle or Sandpoint parcel with an insurance problem runs in this order.

Walk it and identify what is driving the score. Usually it is continuous ladder fuel and crown closure right up to the structure, plus a driveway a fire engine cannot use.
Clear the structure zones first. The 0 to 30 foot band gets priority because that is where the measured benefit is and where two of the four FireLine measurement points sit.
Thin to crown spacing from 30 to 100 feet. Not clearcut. Spacing, ladder fuel removal, and limbing.
Deal with the material. Mulched down and worked into contact with soil, kept under about 3 inches, and kept out of the structure zones. Heavier material gets hauled or piled for burning in a sensible spot. Merchantable logs go out as logs.
Open the access. Driveway width, overhead clearance, a turnaround an engine can actually use.
Document everything with dated photos and measurements so you have something to hand your carrier.

Most parcels are phased over two or three seasons. Structure zones and access first, because that is what moves both actual survivability and the score.

The treatment side of this is our fire fuels reduction work, and on most parcels it runs through forestry mulching plus selective removal. If you want to understand what that costs, we broke it down in forestry mulching cost per acre in North Idaho.

Common questions

Can my insurance company drop me just because of trees?

Yes. In Idaho there is no rule preventing it. Roughly 22 to 25 of the state’s 91 property insurers have non-renewed policies at least partly over wildfire, and Idaho’s non-renewal rate hit 6.55% in 2023. Starting January 1, 2027, they must give you 60 days notice and a specific reason, but they can still do it.

How far out do I need to clear?

100 feet is the working number, and past that the research shows no meaningful additional benefit. Idaho Department of Lands specifies no vegetation from 0 to 5 feet, 15 foot crown spacing from 4 to 30 feet, and 10 foot crown spacing from 30 to 100 feet. On slopes over 20% you want wider spacing.

What is Zone 0?

The first 5 feet measured horizontally out from your siding, including out from the edge of any attached deck, and including the space underneath the deck. It should be gravel, pavers, or bare mineral soil. No bark mulch, no shrubs, no firewood, and no wood fence tied into the house.

Do I have to cut down all my trees?

No, and you should not. Effective defensible space works out to removing about 36% of woody cover, with no measurable benefit past roughly 40%. At least 60% of your woody cover can stay. Anyone quoting you a job to strip the parcel bare is selling you work you do not need.

Will clearing actually lower my premium?

Only if your carrier re-scores you, and re-scores are carrier-initiated. Nobody notices your work automatically. Do the work, document it with dated photos and measured distances, then formally ask your carrier in writing to request a revised score.

Does Idaho have a FAIR Plan if nobody will insure me?

No. Idaho has no state insurer of last resort. Your fallback is surplus lines, which costs more, often limits or excludes wildfire, and carries no guaranty fund protection.

Is there any funding to help pay for the work?

Yes, but generally not for individual landowners applying on their own. Cost-share money reaches a parcel through sponsored multi-property projects with a ten-year maintenance covenant. On the Careywood North project here in Bonner County, the landowner share was about $6,000 out of a $600,000 project.

Does forestry mulching create a fire hazard?

Not the way people assume. Compacted mulch in contact with soil is hard to ignite and spreads slowly. Measured flame heights on masticated ground have run about a third of untreated ground. The real tradeoff is that it smolders for a long time once lit, which is why depth matters, why it belongs worked into the dirt, and why it stays out of the first 5 feet around your house.

When to call

Call us if any of these apply:

You got a non-renewal or cancellation letter
Your renewal came back with a wildfire surcharge, a separate wildfire deductible, or a big jump you cannot explain
Your agent told you the carrier wants defensible space work before they will write or renew
You are buying a parcel and the insurance quote came back ugly, or your closing is threatened
Timber is closed up around the house and you have not touched it in ten years
Your driveway is too tight or too overgrown for a fire engine

Call 208-603-4777 or email info@premierlandservice.com. Joey or a project manager from Premier Land Service will walk the property with you and put together a phased plan with real numbers.

We will tell you honestly which parts of your risk we can fix and which parts belong to a roofer, a window installer, or your agent. Wildfire risk, like drainage problems and forest health, gets worse and more expensive every season it is ignored. The difference with this one is that there is now a letter from your insurance company attached to the deadline.

Sources

Idaho Department of Insurance, Bulletin 25-02 property insurance data call: https://doi.idaho.gov/pressrelease/idaho-department-of-insurance-issues-property-insurance-market-data-call/
Idaho Department of Insurance, Bulletin 26-12 on non-renewal notice requirements: https://doi.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/ID/B26-12.pdf
Idaho Department of Insurance, surplus lines consumer infographic: https://doi.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/NewsReleases//Infographics/surplus-lines_V2.pdf
Capital Press on the Idaho data call results: https://capitalpress.com/2025/10/23/idaho-insurance-data-show-growing-role-of-wildfire/
Idaho Legislature, House Bill 562: https://legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2026/legislation/H0562/
Idaho Legislature, House Bill 618 text: https://legiscan.com/ID/text/H0618/id/3356726/Idaho-2026-H0618-Introduced.pdf
Idaho Legislature, House Bill 511 text: https://legiscan.com/ID/text/H0511/id/3328668/Idaho-2026-H0511-Introduced.pdf
Representative Mark Sauter legislative update: https://marksauterforidaho.org/news/legislative-update-20260418
Verisk 2025 Wildfire Risk Report: https://www.verisk.com/490779/siteassets/media/campaigns/gated/underwriting/wildfire-risk-report-2025.pdf
Verisk FireLine product datasheet: https://www.verisk.com/siteassets/media/downloads/underwriting/location/location-fireline.pdf
Verisk on FireLine score bands: https://www.verisk.com/blog/the-difference-between-fireline-and-ppc/
United Policyholders on carrier score cutoffs: https://uphelp.org/do-you-know-your-homes-wildfire-risk-score-your-insurance-company-does/
USFS Wildfire Risk to Communities: https://wildfirerisk.org/
NAIC on FAIR Plans: https://content.naic.org/insurance-topics/fair-access-to-insurance-requirements-plans
Nature Communications 2025 on mitigation and structure survival: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-63386-2
Syphard and Keeley 2019 on structure loss factors: https://www.firesaferoadregs.org/s/factors-associated-with-structure-loss-2013-2018-California-wildfires-Syphard-fire-2019.pdf
Syphard et al. on defensible space distance: https://consbio.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Syphard_defensibleSpace.pdf
Davis et al. 2024, US Forest Service, on treatment effectiveness: https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs_journals/2024/rmrs_2024_davis_k001.pdf
Kreye et al. 2014, fire behavior in masticated fuels, a review: https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2014_kreye001.pdf
Peterson et al., US Forest Service, on mastication and prescribed burning: https://research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/69378.pdf
Lyon et al., fire behaviour in masticated forest fuels, lab and prescribed fire experiments: https://www.publish.csiro.au/wf/wf17145
Knapp and Kreye 2016, effect of fuelbed aging on masticated fuel behaviour: https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/knapp/psw_2016_knapp002_kreye.pdf
British Columbia fuel management methods literature review, chipping, mastication and mulching: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/public-safety-and-emergency-services/wildfire-status/prevention/fire-fuel-management/fuelmngmtmethodsinbc_litreview_smc2024.pdf
Northern Rockies Fire Science Network, burning masticated fuels research brief: https://www.nrfirescience.org/sites/default/files/NRFSN_ResearchBrief4_BurningMasticatedFuels_Vf.pdf
IBHS 2025 year in review research summary: https://ibhs.org/2025-year-in-review/
IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home standard: https://wildfireprepared.org/wp-content/uploads/WFPH-Technical-Standard.pdf
IBHS Wildfire Prepared incentives and state availability: https://wildfireprepared.org/incentives/
Idaho Department of Lands home protection zone evaluation: https://www.idl.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/FMH-821-Attachment-2-Idaho-Wildfire-Home-Protection-Zone-Evaluation-Homeowner.pdf
Idaho Personal Wildland Fire Action Guide: https://www.idl.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/Idaho-Personal-Wildland-Fire-Action-Guide.pdf
Idaho Firewise defensible landscapes: https://idahofirewise.org/firewise-landscapes/
NFPA Firewise USA site requirements: https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/wildfire/firewise-usa/become-a-firewise-usa-site
NFPA Firewise USA state participant listing: https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/wildfire/firewise-usa/firewise-usa-sites/state-listing-of-participants
CSAA wildfire mitigation discounts: https://csaa-insurance.aaa.com/wildfire_discount
IDL Careywood North project fact sheet: https://www.idl.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/FY25WSFM-Bonner-Careywood-North.pdf
IDL legislation fact sheet on the structure surcharge: https://www.idl.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Legislation-Fact-Sheet.pdf
AM Best on wildfire appetite after the Spokane Complex Fire: https://news.ambest.com/NewsContent.aspx?refnum=276211