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| (Hava Herzog/Courier) |
Headline: More Prescott residents report insurance cancellations, mitigation demands
Published July 25, 2026 in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 1,745
Link: tinyurl.com/mwns8bpd
The City of Prescott has long faced wildfire risk, but in the past year, more homeowners have reported challenges with their home insurance coverage.
Some residents have received notices from insurers requiring them to meet specific defensible-space standards to maintain coverage, while others have seen their policies canceled altogether.
In August 2026, all of Prescott will be incorporated into the wildland-urban interface (WUI), as approved by the City Council in May 2026. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, a WUI is a zone where homes and other development border undeveloped wildland vegetation. These areas face an increased wildfire risk because human-caused ignitions can spread into wildlands, while wildfires can quickly threaten homes and infrastructure.
To reduce that risk, homeowners are encouraged to create defensible space around their properties through Firewise mitigation practices. Recommended measures include removing combustible vegetation, trimming trees and shrubs, and maintaining a five-foot noncombustible zone around homes.
Conrad Jackson, wildfire risk manager for the Prescott Fire Department, conducts free Wildfire Risk Assessments to help homeowners identify ways to make their properties more resilient to wildfire. The assessment reports can also be shared with insurance companies to document mitigation efforts, which may help homeowners retain coverage, obtain new policies or potentially reduce premiums.
Three Prescott homeowners recently shared their experiences navigating wildfire-related insurance requirements and the steps they took to maintain or regain coverage.
‘Do it or get canceled’
Marnie Butts lives at The Ranch in Prescott in the same home she and her husband had built 30 years ago.
Butts said she received a letter from her insurance company detailing things that needed to be fixed on her property. If she failed to get the work done, her insurance would be canceled.
“They really had specific measurable criteria,” she said. “So, it was either do it or get canceled.”
Butts said she had been a part of her homeowners association’s Firewise program. She said she has always kept her property well-manicured, including trimmed grass, bushes and trees. The main issue identified with her property was the vegetation’s proximity to the house.
After talking with her homeowners association, they directed her to get an inspection from PFD. Jackson read the letter from Butts’ insurance company and instructed her on how to be Firewise compliant and how to meet her insurance company’s criteria.
She said she had seven trees removed, open space cut into scrub oak, bushes removed near the home, and branches above the home removed. She said she has a juniper tree that has been trimmed away from her roof. She said it now looks like a bonsai tree.
The landscaping project cost $15,000, Butts said.
“Maybe another insurance company that doesn’t know what it’s like here would give me less expensive insurance,” she said. “But I keep hearing about people getting their insurance canceled. So insurance companies, I think, are slowly becoming aware of the fire risk around here, and maybe more people will start taking a more proactive approach to their property.”
Though Butts’ property is now Firewise compliant, she said the majority of the properties inside The Ranch are not. She said she does not know if she would survive a fire if there was one.
“My husband and I built this house, and I don’t want to lose it,” she said. “I hope that people become more aware. I mean, how can you not be aware?”
Complicated, confusing and vague
Connie Barnett lives on Double D Drive adjacent to Manzanita Village.
Barnett recalled a series of fires on nearby mountains when she was staying in Del Mar in 2003. She was told to prepare an evacuation kit and has since updated it every year.
Moving from San Diego to Prescott, she saw burning trees while driving along Iron Springs Road. It was then, she said, that she had to “learn pretty quickly” about Firewise.
Barnett moved from California 21 years ago and said she never had issues with home insurance until this past year.
“They wrote me that they were gonna come out and do an inspection for the property for Firewise,” she said. “If I denied that, they would cancel my insurance. So they came out, they did it, and I didn’t pass the inspection.”
To keep her insurance, Barnett said the company gave her instructions on what to do with her property that were complicated, confusing and vague. One of the instructions was to leave three feet of space between shrubs. Barnett said if she had complied, it may have caused the whole hillside to slide down.
“I live on a steep slope, and a lot of the plants are there to keep it from eroding,” she said.
After receiving the notice from her insurance company last year, Barnett had Jackson conduct a Firewise property inspection.
“I have the report and he did a wonderful job and I thought, ‘You know, I’m not gonna do what this other company asked me to do,’” she said. “I figured, this is the Prescott Fire Department. They, in my opinion, have the final word.”
Barnett had a gardener come in to create defensible space around her home, ensuring no vegetation or tree lines were within five feet of the home.
“I was fed up with this insurance, so I canceled it,” she said. “They were gonna cancel me anyway.”
Barnett said she is now insured through a local State Farm office and that the company has been “wonderful.” She is now paying half the amount she was before. She said she also appreciates the fire department immensely.
“With the drought and climate change and the heat, we’re just really in a bad situation right now,” she said. “I don’t want my house to burn down, so I’m trying to be very compliant.”
Family and next-door neighbors, two different experiences
Terry Kepler lives in a 25-year-old home in Manzanita Village, a co-housing community in Prescott. She and her husband were both born and raised in Maryland and have lived in their Prescott home for roughly a decade.
Their next-door neighbor is their daughter, Jeanne, who moved to Arizona about 25 years ago to work at the Grand Canyon.
Kepler said she was unaware of the WUI prior to moving to Prescott. She became involved after moving into Manzanita Village and learning about her community’s relationship with Yavapai Firewise.
“We had a community representative, we were a certified Firewise community, so I just kind of stepped into that role because they needed someone to do it,” she said. “That’s when I started to learn about the wildland-urban interface and the water situation.”
Kepler said she has not experienced issues with her home insurance, but several of their neighbors have, including her daughter.
“We have 35 home lots in our community, and the ones that have recently changed hands are the ones that have had questions with insurance or companies turning them down,” Kepler said. “I’d say it was a recent occurrence in the community.”
Kepler said her daughter lives and rents at the Grand Canyon and bought the home next door to Kepler’s as a second home. She said they bought the house and applied for a mortgage for the first time.
Kepler said an insurance company wrote her daughter and her husband an insurance policy almost immediately after they signed their mortgage. They canceled their car insurance to “bundle” their home and car insurance with the new company, Kepler said.
Within a couple of weeks after signing their mortgage, the insurance company sent them a cancellation notice, Kepler said.
“They said there had been an inspection and there was a list of things to change to sort of apply for extension or reinstatement,” she said.
The list was “problematic” and inaccurate on several points, she said. The list stated the siding of the house was wood, but Kepler said the home actually had cement board siding. Kepler said there were other small things, such as trimming the grass.
“Our lots are tiny, our houses are really close together,” she said.
Part of the remediation the insurance company was requesting extended into community-owned common land, Kepler said. Even after some handyman work and landscaping to create defensible space around their property, Jeanne and her husband received a cancellation notice, Kepler said. It was then that they contacted Jackson for an inspection and spoke with Sandy Griffis from the Yavapai County Contractors Association.
Kepler said they quickly found a new company that would insure the home, though their car insurance did go up since it was initially bundled.
“They feel like they finally ended up with a sustainable situation for now, but it left everyone feeling like, ‘We take what we get,’” Kepler said.
Jeanne and her husband’s home has continued to be insured with the same insurance company for over a year. Terry Kepler and her husband’s home next door has been insured with State Farm since they bought it in 2016.
Courtesy Wildfire Risk Assessments
The Prescott Fire Department (PFD) offers courtesy Wildfire Risk Assessments to Prescott residents. Assessments are accessible to homeowners online through a platform called Fire Aside. Homeowners can choose to share reports with landscapers or insurance providers.
For questions regarding how to create defensible space around a home or to request a courtesy Wildfire Risk Assessment, contact Wildfire Risk Manager Conrad Jackson at pfd.wildfirerisk@prescott-az.gov or call 928-777-1700, extension 7065.
Headline: Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps strengthens wildfire resilience on PNF
Published April 20, 2026 in The Daily Courier
Word Count: 1,734
The Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps (ALCC) engages Native youth and young adults in conservation programs to reconnect them with the land and cultural heritage while also building skills to apply to future careers in conservation and wildland firefighting.
Over the past two months, a crew from Albuquerque has been doing work in national forests in New Mexico and Arizona, including the Prescott National Forest (PNF).
Chas Robles, ALCC’s executive director, is based out of the Albuquerque office. He has been with ALCC since 2013.
“I think some of the most powerful and impactful benefits that come from this is that sense of belonging, people telling us, ‘This is the first time I felt accepted, this is the first time I felt safe, this is the first time I felt that I could be myself,’” Robles said. “Having folks come to us and say, ‘You know, this program saved my life,’ is something that’s just really, powerful and really incredible on top of all of those other benefits that come through the program.”
The ALCC has five offices across the Southwest, including Acoma Pueblo, Albuquerque, Hopi in Kykotsmovi, Navajo Nation and Zuni Pueblo. Robles said there are typically one to three, sometimes up to five, crews working at each office at any time. Each crew has a crew leader, an assistant crew leader and four crew members who go out to complete various types of conservation projects. Projects can include hazardous fuel reduction, trail building, trail maintenance, wildlife-friendly fence construction, and reforestation and restoration.
“Young folks coming through [the program] and being able to reconnect with their culture, or strengthen their ties to their culture, is a really powerful thing in this day and age when, especially because of technology, or moving away from the community, there’s all these things that pull us away and weaken those connections,” Robles said. “To have that opportunity to strengthen those connections is a really powerful thing.”
The group doing work on PNF is part of the Wildland Firefighting Training Program out of the Albuquerque office. They began in September 2025 and have worked in Coconino National Forest, Cibola National Forest, Gila National Forest and, within the past couple of months, PNF.
“They got a good experience,” Robles said. “They got to work with four different national forests and a bunch of different project sites doing a wide variety of projects to give them a really robust experience.”
Robles said the goal is to prepare participants to move into careers in wildland firefighting. Participants get chainsaw training, basic firefighter training, wilderness first aid, CPR and a pack test. A pack test means individuals are tasked with carrying a 45-pound pack for three miles in 45 minutes or less.
Robles said the crew spent their last six months working on hazardous fuel reduction and healthy forest restoration projects in wildland-urban interface locations. He said they have been doing a lot of fuel thinning to decrease the risk of wildfire to surrounding communities.
“It’s opened up the door for some of these really cool, low-tech process-based restoration projects like they’re doing in the Prescott [National Forest],” Robles said.
Amber Chapo, program manager for ALCC’s Albuquerque office, has worked for the program since 2018. She started off on a crew just like the ones she manages now. She said she enjoyed the work they do and the people she interacts with.
Chapo said the benefits of the program are seen in participants’ connection to the land, especially in places where they did not know even existed.
“For example, like in Albuquerque, we have Petroglyph National Monument, a lot of our participants are like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even know this was here and this ties back to my ancestors,’” Chapo said.
She said participants learn interpersonal skills, how to be on a team and how to resolve conflict.
Chapo said the crew working on PNF did a lot of erosion control and stream restoration around the Milk Creek riverbed and one other location. The crew would come out to PNF for eight days at a time and are finishing their project this week.
Robles said another way to think of the work they are doing is to see it as an analog beaver dam.
“It’s using natural materials to slow water down, which has a few different benefits,” Robles said. “Especially after big rain events, or post-fire areas, when we get big rains it takes a lot of sediment with it, which reduces the water quality.”
Robles said low-tech process-based restoration slows the water down, allowing the sediment to drop. By slowing the water down, it also allows for more percolation and infiltration into the surrounding soils, recharges the aquifer, and infiltrates into surrounding vegetation.
“As opposed to a lot of rain coming down, and that water moves really quickly, and it’s gone within hours or days,” Robles said. “It forces that water to stay on the landscape for a longer period of time, which allows the vegetation to pull more of that up and make it more resilient.”
He said while crews are not removing those hazardous fuels or cutting down trees, they are doing work to keep more water in those areas, which makes the whole ecosystem and habitat more resilient and resistant to wildfire.
The ALCC started after its founder, Cornell Torivio, had been a crew leader for the Southwest Conservation Corps, the ALCC’s original parent organization. After seeing the transformational experiences for young people across the region, Robles said Torivio saw a need for it in Acoma. Robles said Torivio used the Southwest Conservation Corps model to serve Native youth and young adults, partner with tribal nations and center the work in their traditional lifeways.
Robles said Native youth had participated in programs such as Southwest Conservation Corps before ALCC but faced barriers such as travel because there were not programs operating within their communities.
Now, the ALCC serves over 200 youth annually across its crew program, individual placement program and youth hiking program. All of the positions are paid, except for the youth hiking program, and participant ages range from 18 to 30.
In addition to those programs, Robles said ALCC also has a cultural preservation program.
“We have a really large cultural preservation program, so going to places like Wupatki National Monument, Walnut Canyon, Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, to preserve ancestral Puebloan sites, protect those, restore those, stabilize those for current, future generations to enjoy,” Robles said.
There is also the Acoma Farm Corps program to reconnect youth to agricultural traditions while producing healthy, traditional food and crops for the community, Robles said. The farm program is expanding to other communities as well.
With finding projects for the crew program, Robles said typically, ALCC partners have already identified the projects and their needs, the scope, and completed the compliance work. He said the partners either have funding or partner with ALCC to write grants to secure funding.
The project on PNF was part of a larger partnership with the Forest Service’s National Partnership Office. The National Partnership Office funded projects on national forests in Arizona and New Mexico.
“It’s a really great way to get work done for the Prescott National Forest and the surrounding communities without the funding having to come from that local forest,” Robles said.
Robles said the national forest partnership is expected to expand in the fall, potentially even including national forests in Colorado. Instead of just one crew, Robles said they are expecting three.
To learn more about the Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps, visit ancestrallands.org.
Headline: Community science works to save at-risk bird population
Published January 27, 2023 in The Lumberjack
Word Count: 1,153
Arizona is abundant in avian wildlife and home to 534 bird species, with one species ruffling the feathers of concerned bird experts and enthusiasts alike. The pinyon jay is listed as vulnerable on The Red List, with its population in rapid decline for about 40 years and at risk of becoming endangered.
However, with the help of community science and the expertise of self-proclaimed “local bird nerds,” this little blue bird has a shot at flocking back.
The Northern Arizona Audubon Society (NAAS) is a volunteer-led organization that engages in community science to educate and advocate for the conservation of birds and their habitats. NAAS gathered together Jan. 24 at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church for a presentation on the pinyon jay and how to help save it.
The society has 246 members throughout Flagstaff, Sedona and Verde Valley.
Anne Pellegrini, a passionate birder, has been a NAAS volunteer for roughly 25 years. Pellegrini became interested in learning about the natural world in grade school and said that when confronted with the reality of habitat and species loss, she became involved in protection and conservation.
“NAAS provides a community of like-minded individuals who love spending time outside, looking at birds, learning about our complex environment and doing what they can to contribute toward conservation efforts,” Pellegrini said.
While it is currently unknown why the pinyon jay population is declining, the current hypothesis is climate change, drought and habitat loss. A major contributing factor is that pinyon pines are being destroyed to make room for grassland.
Pinyon jays live on the Colorado Plateau — or the four corners of Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico — which is also home to pinyon-juniper forests. The pinyon pines provide shelter and are a primary food source for the aptly-named pinyon jays.
NAU alumni Audrey Kruse is the community engagement director at Grand Canyon Trust.
“These pinyon-juniper forests in some places are under threat,” Kruse said. “The most common ecosystem type [is] pinyon-juniper forests, and the symbiotic relationship with these incredible charismatic flocks of birds is so tightly wound.”
The pinyon jay places pine seeds in the ground and then comes back to eat them in the future. However, sometimes the bird forgets where it caches its seeds, which leads to the propagation of pinyon pines.
The removal of juniper trees and pinyon pines damages the jay’s habitat, leaving the landscape looking barren and thwarted with the biological soil crust and underlying vegetation. The Forest Service will sometimes replant non-native forage grasses for cattle in place of the bird’s habitat.
Kruse said that it is necessary to preserve grassland for grassland birds, such as the greater sage-grouse, but the debate surrounds how much to do so.
Cathy Wise, Audubon Southwest’s community science manager, headed the presentation, “Saving the Blue Crow: How Community Science helps the Pinyon Jay.”
“What we really need to do is be smart about this and be able to have a systematic approach so that we're preserving some areas for grassland birds and we're also preserving Pinyon-Juniper habitat,” Wise said.
Wise said she encourages community members to take part in projects that make a difference for local birds through community science. She defined community science as “a coalition of conservation-minded volunteers,” such as the members of NAAS and its larger chapter, Audubon Southwest.
NAAS encourages the work of local volunteers to track and report bird sightings so data from the surveys can be used by experts to see trends in behavior and movement.
Among the group are Kay Hawklee, who has been the NAAS president for two years and a member for seven.
“I think more than anything, my role is as a conduit to help conservationists find each other and worthwhile projects,” Hawklee said.
She hosts a meet-up page that helps connect bird lovers to local events.
NAAS hosts community events like field trips and educational meetings. Their next event is birdwatching for winter species on Jan. 31 in Oak Creek Valley.
For volunteers tracking the pinyon jay, it can prove to be a challenge.
“Their home ranges are huge, so even when this bird was doing well, they're very nomadic,” Wise said.
Hawklee said they could end up traveling many miles in a day.
To see a trend in the species’ decline, community scientists are developing a systemic method of tracking and recording their presence.
They can be recognized by their sharp bill and bright blue color. The birds tend to travel in large flocks and can be recognized by their distinct call. While pinyon jays may be easy to identify, they are hard to track because, unlike other birds, they do not migrate.
NAAS is working alongside Audubon Southwest — consisting of their Arizona and New Mexico chapters — and Great Basin Bird Observatory to develop standard survey practice specifically for pinyon jays to explain its population decline, Hawklee said.
Utilizing eBird, a live online database run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, birdwatchers can report their sightings with location tagging. In addition to eBird, Survey123 is a survey site used for data collection.
Cathy Wise encourages birders to log their pinyon jay sightings throughout northern Arizona on eBird and Survey123. In turn, scientists are provided with data about the birds in specific areas and their behaviors.
“It's very similar to eBird, except we chose this method because we're able to get more information about the sighting,” Wise said.
Survey123 allows users to report the size of the flock and their behaviors.
Pellegrini said all the data she collects at the citizen-science level contributes to larger datasets, which helps researchers calculate species trends and prioritize conservation efforts. Scientists use the data uploaded to these websites to help them conclude the status of specific bird species.
That same data is being used to petition for the pinyon jay to be added to the endangered species list under the Endangered Species Act.
Roy May is the director and committee chair for NAAS. While there are many methods to monitor bird populations in the field, May said point counts are the standard practice. May explained how to conduct a point count — by staying in one area and counting all the birds you see. May said he once went to eight spots for 10 minutes each, with some of the spots one mile apart.
While the pinyon jay is a vibrant blue, it is better found by listening to its distinct call, he said.
“Don’t look for the jays, listen for them, because you will hear them long before you see them,” May said.
NAAS will continue to monitor pinyon jays in hopes of explaining their low numbers. In the meantime, they are working toward establishing a partnership with NAU’s student chapter of The Wildlife Society to get more young people involved in interactive surveying. The partnership would also provide hands-on experience for students pursuing degrees related to environmental science, biology and conservation.
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