Graduation Year
2026
Document Type
Senior Thesis
Degree
Bachelor of Arts
Primary Major
Political Science
Second Major
History
Primary Minor
Pre-Law
Second Minor
Leadership
Thesis Advisor
Alison Howard, MA
Abstract
California faces an escalating wildfire crisis, driven by climate change, drought, and development in fire-prone areas. Despite decades of scientific research on wildfire behavior and risk reduction, catastrophic fires since 2017 raise a critical question: to what extent have California state laws and policies kept up with the intensifying wildfire crisis? Existing scholarship provides extensive insight into wildfire ecology, land-use planning, fuel management, and community resilience, yet it lacks a comprehensive evaluation of whether California’s legislative, regulatory, and executive actions have adapted in a coordinated and evidence-informed manner. In particular, the literature offers limited analysis of how state laws integrate social, ecological, and governance dimensions of wildfire risk or how federal policy frameworks shape state-level decision-making. This thesis addresses that gap through a qualitative content analysis of California wildfire governance from 2003 to 2026, examining state bills, regulations, and executive actions. The findings demonstrate that while California has expanded and strengthened its wildfire governance framework, particularly in infrastructure hardening and intergovernmental coordination, policy development has often been reactive and uneven across domains.
Included in
Environmental Law Commons, Environmental Policy Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Fire Science and Firefighting Commons, Forest Management Commons, Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation Commons, Policy History, Theory, and Methods Commons, Public Affairs Commons, Public Policy Commons, State and Local Government Law Commons