Here’s the thing about wildfire prevention and mitigation: There’s no off-season.

While Santa Cruz County has been fortunate to have made it through the summer of 2025 with minimal wildfire threats, those charged with protecting residents, businesses and the environment from such hazards understand that there’s no telling when the next one will occur.

With that in mind, the county is embarking on a long-overdue Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP), a strategic initiative designed to mitigate wildfire risks through collaborative planning and local action.

The effort is being spearheaded by the Santa Cruz County Office of Emergency Management and funded by the State of Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management via a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It will incorporate input from stakeholders throughout the county, including the Sonoita-Elgin and Patagonia Volunteer fire departments.

The wildfire planning task force has scheduled a series of open-house-style public meetings throughout the county to encourage public participation, gather feedback and spread the word about the importance of establishing firewise defensible space on individual properties.

The meeting schedule is as follows:

  • Sonoita/Elgin: Monday, Oct. 6, 6 p.m., Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds
  • Patagonia: Tuesday, Oct. 7, 6 p.m., Patagonia High School
  • Nogales: Wednesday, Oct. 8, 6 p.m., VFW Post 2066, 653 Grand Ave.
  • Rio Rico: Thursday, Oct. 9, 6 p.m., Rio Rico High School
  • Tubac: Monday, Oct. 13, 9 a.m., during Santa Cruz Valley Community Council Meeting, Tubac Community Center, 50 Bridge Road.

Santa Cruz County is the only county in Arizona without a CWPP. Various stakeholders from rural and municipal fire departments and state and federal agencies have held three meetings to date to identify high-risk wildfire “danger zones,” create a unified action plan for mitigation and identify resource gaps that need to be addressed for successful implementation. An initial draft of the task force’s findings will be presented at the public meetings.

Jon Green and Hilary Mulford of Great Ecology, an ecological consulting firm, are working with Dave Richins of Southwest Policy Advocates to consolidate all the inputs and prepare the final CWPP—which is scheduled to be delivered to stakeholders for approval by the end of the year and to the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors for adoption in the first quarter of 2026. The plan would then be updated every ten years to deal with changing circumstances.

Marc Meredith, Sonoita-Elgin Fire District Chief, said the public meetings are important in ensuring that the task force hasn’t overlooked any critical issues and has priorities in order.

“Come and have a look,” he said. “Check our assumptions so that we make the best use of your time and wind up with a plan that is coherent and practical and gives us a roadmap to move forward and be successful.

“This is all prep work, making sure we’re all on the same page, and then we can agree to some priorities, and then the question becomes how do we implement those. Once the plan is in place, the real work gets started.”

While gaining a better understanding of wildfire risks and mitigation tactics are worthy goals in and of themselves, Meredith said there are other pragmatic reasons to have a CWPP—such as unlocking funding resources that would be otherwise unavailable.

“Let’s say they have a grant for funding fuels mitigation,” Meredith said. “We can say our county has a CWPP, we have identified these risks, these are the priority areas for mitigation, these are the tactics that might be helpful. A funder would say these guys have a plan, they have a purpose, they have an understanding of why they’re doing this and they’re not just throwing spaghetti on the wall.”

Richins, Green and Mulford, speaking via video conference, emphasized that while agency collaboration is a critical part of a successful plan, it comes part and parcel with individual responsibility.

“The whole plan doesn’t work unless individual property owners do their part to protect their spaces,” Richins said. “That is one of our top-line messages.

“The plan will contain a matrix of property owner actions that can be taken, and ways to do that. Especially in areas like Sonoita and Elgin, defensible space around houses is key.”

One of the task force’s recommendations is that all of the county’s fire districts follow Sonoita-Elgin’s lead and offer free firewise assessments. 

Green acknowledged that not all homeowners have the physical ability or financial resources to ensure their properties are firewise, but the implementation of the CWPP might enable individuals to apply for financial assistance.

Mulford pointed out that being “firewise” doesn’t necessarily mean barren landscape—citing the Casas Arroyo Homeowners Association in Sonoita, which is a certified firewise community.

“You can balance fire prevention with beauty, aesthetics, and wildlife habitat,” she said. “Bare ground is not the only option.”

Other topics to be addressed in the planning process include education and outreach, emergency alert programs and identification of—and potential signage for—accessible emergency evacuation routes, which is a particular concern to Meredith.

“One of the challenges we face in the eastern part of the county is that we have inherently fewer ways to get in or out of a community in an emergency,” he said. “Virtually anywhere within our fire district, and in Patagonia as well, if we need to get people out, the only way to get out is to get to the highway.”

While the population areas in the county have diverse characteristics, Meredith said their needs are more similar than not.

“Chief (Zay) Hartigan (of Patagonia Fire) and I were talking about that,” Meredith said. “Apart from the more concentrated housing, we’re almost exactly the same. If you think about everything that surrounds Patagonia, the topography, the fuel model that is in place, the ways in which people get in and out of the community, it’s the same as us.”

Those commonalities, which are also shared by areas like Tubac and Rio Rico, are what the CWPP hopes to address, while at the same time being region-specific.

“At a prevention level, we want to make sure districts are talking to one another and working hand and hand with each other,” Green said.