Policy approaches to rangelandfiremanagement may be most effective if they seek to utilize a full suite of options, including promoting the social and economic wellbeing of working ranches. One avenue for this includesthe administration of federal permits livestock producers depend on for their annual forage needs. Permits include terms and conditions such as when and how intensively permittees may graze livestock; these terms and conditions typically do not allow for much flexibility in responding to environmental variability such as annual grass invasionor wildfire. As a result, within the typical lease period, adaptive responses to variable conditions are difficult for managers to implement.To integrate greater adaptability into rangeland administration and potentially leverage fire risk management activities, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)has been exploring outcome-based management (OBM). Little is known about implementing OBMin the context of rangelands used for livestock production. Our objectives for this study were to:(1) analyze how administrative rules and BLM practices facilitate or impede the use of outcome-based approaches, and (2) identify enabling conditions that allow BLM staff and permittees to navigate policy barriers and promote community wildfire adaptation (both objectives were met).

We examined administrative policies and the barriers to outcome-based approaches to manage firerisk through 70 semi-structured interviews with permittees, BLM staff, and other agency and nongovernmental stakeholders in three Idaho BLM Field Areas. Using comparative case studies, we analyzed how rules and norms in policy implementation contributed to perceptions of barriers within and among the different Field Areas.We find that formal rules, informalfactors, and resource condition interact and form perceptions of barriers to implementing OBM. Additionally, differences in informalfactors lead to different interpretations of flexibility found within existing policiesamong the Field Areas. Specifically, history with lawsuits, experience of field office staff, Field Area leadership, and beliefsabout the role of grazing in managing firerisks were important in whether and how barriers to implementing outcome-based rangeland management were perceivedby study participants.

Outcome-based approachesmay contribute to the adaptive capacity of rangeland communities living with risk of fire in cases in which informal factors create conditions for OBM implementation. Informal factors such as shared perspectivesbetween permittees and the BLM, retention of experienced BLM staff, and leadership inclined to experiment help create conditions for permittee and agency collaboration to address community fire risk.OBM offers a potential avenue for community adaptation to fire by capitalizing on permittees’ vested interests in healthy, resilient rangelands and providing a flexible setting in which private citizens can partner with public land managers to work across land ownership boundaries in support of landscape-scale activities.