Planning and Zoning Commission backs 3-year Forest Resource Pilot to prioritize wildfire resilience

The Planning and Zoning Commission on May 28 recommended that City Council approve a three-year Forest Resource Pilot Program that would alter Flagstaff's resource protection overlay to prioritize wildfire resilience and to use lidar and other remote-sensing data to guide tree-retention decisions.

The pilot, presented by Tiffany of city planning staff and Neil Chapman, wildland fire captain with the City of Flagstaff Fire Department, would create an alternative forest-resource preservation methodology that relies on high-resolution data to model individual trees and optimal retention scenarios before site grading. Tiffany said the program would create a “3 year limited term pilot program” and that the code changes would “prioritize wildfire resilience” alongside preservation goals. Chapman said the lidar dataset would let staff and developers “model tree retention before we cut a single tree.”

The pilot would apply to both developed and undeveloped properties within the resource protection overlay and is intended…