Tribal Hazard Mitigation Plan
2026 to 2031

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A plan to protect people, homes, water, and culture

Duck Valley faces real hazards. Wildfire burns on or next to the Reservation almost every year and can close the only paved highway. Legacy contamination still raises questions about the water and community health. Winters are hard, drought has drained Wildhorse Reservoir, and a drug crisis reaches the community along the highway corridor.

This plan looks at each hazard honestly, using the community's own history and knowledge, and sets out practical projects to reduce the harm before it happens. It was prepared under the direction of the Tribal Business Council, with leadership from the Tribal Emergency Response Commission, planning support from the Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation, and funding from the EPA Indian Environmental General Assistance Program.

A FEMA-approved plan also unlocks money. Once adopted by the Tribal Business Council and approved by FEMA, the Tribes remain eligible for federal hazard mitigation grants, including the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, and Flood Mitigation Assistance, that can pay for the projects inside it.

The five hazards that carry the greatest priority

Every hazard was scored using the same twelve factors, from probability and health impacts to cultural wellbeing and recovery cost. These five rank highest.

Five goals guide every action in the plan

Mitigation measures the Tribes have identified

The plan carries 109 mitigation actions. Each one names a lead department, a timeframe, a planning-level cost band, the funding sources that could pay for it, and the benefit the Tribes expect. Each is also scored against seven feasibility criteria so the basis for its priority is visible on the page.

Where to go from here

Our people, our land

The Newe and Neme peoples

For countless generations the Western Shoshone, the Newe, and the Northern Paiute, the Neme, moved with the seasons across the Great Basin and beyond it, following ancestral trails that connected desert lakes, river canyons, and mountain plateaus in what is now Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana.

Shoshone-Paiute families at Duck Valley hold relations and continuing connections that reach north into the Yellowstone country and the Virginia City area of Montana, east to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes at Fort Hall and to relatives at Fort Washakie, and south into Utah. These connections are not historical only. Families travel the same routes today for ceremony, for gathering, and for kinship.

They fished the Owyhee and Bruneau rivers for salmon, trout, and whitefish, hunted deer, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep in the uplands, took sage hen, rock chuck, and ground squirrel from the benches, netted jackrabbits and cottontails on the sagebrush flats, and gathered pine nuts, chokecherries, elderberries, currants, roots, and healing plants including cedar and sage. Food and medicine were not separate systems. They were one relationship with the land, carried in ceremony, song, and language.

That way of life was upended in the mid-1800s, when wagon roads, mining camps, soldiers, and introduced diseases swept westward. Competition for water and forage sparked violent conflict and forced many Shoshone and Paiute families from their homelands.

How the Reservation came to be

Seeking refuge, Captain Sam and other Western Shoshone leaders petitioned the United States for a protected valley. The Duck Valley Indian Reservation was established by Executive Order of President Rutherford B. Hayes on April 16, 1877. President Grover Cleveland expanded it on May 4, 1886, adding lands in Idaho still known locally as the Paddy Cap Extension. President William Howard Taft extended it again in 1910 to safeguard future reservoir sites. Other Shoshone and Paiute bands, including members of Chief Leggins' Paradise Valley band, joined relatives at Duck Valley in the decades around 1900.

Under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the community reorganized as the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. A tribal referendum on April 22, 1936, ratified a constitution and bylaws that remain the foundation of Tribal self-government.

Sovereignty and government

The Shoshone-Paiute Tribes are a federally recognized sovereign nation that exercises inherent governmental authority over their lands, members, and resources. The Tribes are governed by a seven-member Tribal Business Council consisting of a chairman and six Council members, elected by Tribal members in accordance with the Tribal Constitution and election ordinance. The Council exercises both legislative and executive authority.

The Tribal Emergency Response Commission, established by Tribal Ordinance 2003-SPO-02, coordinates among Tribal programs on hazard mitigation, planning, and response.

Natural and cultural resources

Natural resources on and around the Reservation are more than commodities. They are living cultural resources that sustain the physical, emotional, spiritual, and economic wellbeing of the Shoshone-Paiute people. Tribal members continue to hunt mule deer and pronghorn on the sagebrush benches, take sage hen, rock chuck, ground squirrel, cottontail, and jackrabbit, fish for redband trout and mountain whitefish in the East Fork Owyhee River, and gather traditional foods and medicines including yampah, bitterroot, pine nuts, chokecherry, elderberry, currant, willow, sage, and cedar. Salmon once returned to these waters and were lost to downstream dams, a loss the community still carries.

Spiritual practice is the foundation of Shoshone-Paiute culture rather than one part of it. Ceremony, prayer, and the teachings carried within families are what have allowed the Newe and Neme peoples to remain on this land through drought, fire, disease, and displacement. Gathering chokecherries, cutting wood, hunting deer, and traveling to places on and off the Reservation to pray are not separate activities. They are expressions of one relationship.

The Tribes therefore treat harm to ceremonial places, to the materials ceremony requires, and to the ability of members to reach and use them as a direct loss to community wellbeing and resilience, standing alongside damage to a home or a road rather than beneath it. Every hazard profile carries a Cultural Wellbeing score for this reason, and Goal 3 of the mitigation strategy commits the Tribes to protecting these practices.

Culture is deeply interlinked with the community, its function, its social structure, its art, music, and dance, and how people interact, support each other, and achieve sustenance and survival. A loss of knowledge around hunting, gathering, cooking, medicine, processing of animals including hide scraping and brain tanning, cradleboard making, beading, berry picking, and oral histories would represent a total loss of the community and a threat to life and sustainability. Many of the vulnerabilities identified in this plan are themselves the result of cultural loss. The drug crisis, for instance, is understood by Tribal leadership as a downstream consequence of cultural disruption.

Petroglyph panels, vision-quest sites, obsidian quarries, and ceremonial places embedded in the basalt cliffs surrounding the valley tie these landscapes to the Tribes' oral history and ongoing cultural practices. The location of these sites is protected information, held by the Tribal Cultural Preservation Office under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and Tribal law.

Lands beyond the boundary that the Tribes continue to use

The Reservation boundary set by the Executive Orders of 1877, 1886, and 1910 did not end the Tribes' relationship with the country around it. Shoshone-Paiute members continue to travel north into the Owyhee canyonlands and the uplands beyond them, west and north toward Jordan Valley, and into the high country toward Silver City, to hunt, to gather cedar, roots, and berries, to visit the burial places of relatives, and to pray at ceremonial places that have never been abandoned. Much of this ground is administered today by the Bureau of Land Management, and a portion lies within or adjacent to the training airspace and range land associated with Mountain Home Air Force Base.

Wildfire is the clearest present threat. The large fires of recent decades north of the Reservation burned through country holding burial sites, ceremonial places, and gathering areas, and the conversion of that burned ground to cheatgrass has reduced the plants and animals people go there to find. Drought, invasive species, and expanded off-road access work in the same direction at a slower pace.

This plan records these areas as assets of the Tribes that carry exposure to hazard. Doing so gives the Tribes a documented basis for raising cultural resource concerns in consultation with federal agencies and the states, supports review under Section 106, and establishes for any future funding application that the Tribes identified these resources and their exposure in an adopted plan. The locations themselves are not mapped, listed, or described in this plan or in any grant application prepared under it.

Traditional knowledge that keeps people safe

The Shoshone-Paiute people have been reducing hazard risk on this land for far longer than the phrase hazard mitigation has existed. Knowing when to cut wood, where water can be found in a dry year, how to keep a house from catching fire, and who needs a knock on the door when the weather turns are all forms of risk reduction. That knowledge was carried in families and in daily practice long before it was written into a plan, and much of it remains in use today.

This material was gathered through the Round 2 community survey, conducted October 8 to 22, 2025, which asked residents what elders had taught them about preparing for and surviving hazards. Sixteen of the nineteen respondents in the compiled public input file answered that question.

What the teachings ask for, and what the Tribes have funded

Select an action code to open it. This is not a complete accounting of either side, and the TERC will revisit it at each annual review.

The knowledge itself is at risk

Community members do not assume this knowledge will continue to be passed down. Several said plainly that it is already thinning. This is consistent with concerns among Council members that the loss of language is a significant community resilience threat. The Cultural Preservation Officer reported that a Language Loss Emergency Declaration has been adopted and that survey work indicated roughly ten percent of Tribal members retain fluency, divided across two distinct languages.

The COVID-19 period demonstrated what accelerated loss looks like. For more than a year there were no powwows and no festivals. People could not gather to grieve and could not hold the ceremonies that mark milestones and carry knowledge between generations. Suicide rates rose. Knowledge holders were lost, and what they carried went with them.

The Tribes therefore treat the transmission of traditional knowledge as a mitigation concern in its own right. Cultural workshops, the youth cultural engagement work in DC-03, and the firearms-safety curriculum with a cultural respect component in VA-03 are all mitigation investments, because the practices they carry are the practices that keep households safe in a hard winter and a dry summer.

How the Tribes will use and protect this knowledge

Traditional knowledge is Tribal property. Its inclusion in a federally reviewed document does not place it in the public domain, and the Tribes retain authority to decide what is recorded, what is shared, and what is withheld.

• Permission governs attribution. No quotation is published under a person's name without that person's confirmation.
• Sensitive locations are withheld. Sacred sites, burial grounds, gathering areas, and springs of cultural significance are held by the Cultural Preservation Office and are not mapped, described, or listed in any public version of this plan.
• The Cultural Preservation Office holds review authority over any traditional knowledge proposed for inclusion, and may direct removal at any point.
• Knowledge holders are consulted on project design, not only on plan text. Where an action touches water sources, gathering areas, rangeland treatment, or fire use, the Tribes will seek the knowledge of elders and practitioners during scoping rather than after design.
• Contributions are credited to the community. This knowledge belongs to the families who carried it, and where it informs a funded project the Tribes will say so.

Land use and development

Land use is dominated by rangeland and irrigated agriculture. Twenty-five Range Management Units permit approximately 3,400 animal-unit-months of tribally owned cattle under a rotational grazing system. Irrigated lands along the Owyhee River support hay production for subsistence livestock and local sales.

Residential and government development is concentrated in the community of Owyhee and the adjacent Newtown area. Critical facilities include the Tribal Government Complex, the Owyhee Combined School serving kindergarten through grade 12, the Owyhee Community Health Facility, the BIA Law Enforcement Office, the Sho-Pai Volunteer Fire Department currently operating from a double-wide trailer following the natural gas explosion that destroyed the previous firehouse, the Tribal Headquarters, the post office, the Our Store retail center, the Human Development Center, and the Owyhee Airport. A new school is expected to be completed in 2027.

In 2024 the Tribal Business Council passed a resolution adopting the building codes used by Elko County, Nevada. This is the first formal adoption of building codes on the Reservation. Tribal Land Department and Building Inspector responsibilities under this code are being established.

Existing plans, programs, and authorities

This plan is informed by and integrated with the 2012 Duck Valley Tribal Hazards Mitigation Plan, the 2018 Hazard Mitigation Plan Update draft, the 2019 Hazardous Materials Response Plan, the Wildland Fire Management Plan, the Long-Range Transportation Plan updated in April 2024 with Horrocks Engineers, the Tribal Comprehensive Plan in development, the 2019 Tribal Pandemic Influenza and Respiratory Illness Plan, the Owyhee Combined School Emergency Operations Plan, the Wildhorse Dam Emergency Action Plan, and Tribal Ordinance 2003-SPO-02 establishing the TERC.

External plans of relevance include the Elko County Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan of 2019, the Owyhee County Hazard Mitigation Plan with an update in progress, the Nevada Enhanced State Hazard Mitigation Plan, the Idaho State Hazard Mitigation Plan, the BLM Elko District Fire Management Plan, and the Owyhee-Elko County Community Wildfire Risk and Hazard Assessment.

What the Tribes can bring to this work

This capability assessment identifies the legal, administrative, technical, financial, and outreach resources available for hazard mitigation. It also identifies the gaps that the mitigation actions are built to address.

Legal and regulatory tools

People and programs

Indicative rather than exhaustive.

Money

The Tribes have limited internal resources to fund mitigation projects directly. Tribal revenue is constrained, and while gaming revenues are planned they are not yet being generated as of plan issuance. Financial capacity depends substantially on federal grant programs, on partnerships with state and county emergency management, and on in-kind staff time from Tribal departments.

Getting the word out

Education and outreach capabilities include the Sho-Pai News tribal newspaper, the Tribal community Facebook page, the Tribal website, the Sho-Pai community radio station, communication boards at the Tribal Headquarters and Our Store, the Owyhee Combined School parent network, the Tribal Senior Center, and the General Council meetings of the Tribes.

Mutual aid and partners

Compacts and working relationships exist with the Elko County Sheriff and Emergency Management, Owyhee County Emergency Services, Mountain City Volunteer Fire, BLM Elko District Fire, the U.S. Forest Service Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, the BIA Eastern Nevada Agency, the Idaho Office of Emergency Management, the Nevada Division of Emergency Management, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes at Fort Hall, the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada and the Inter-Tribal Emergency Response Commission, the Idaho Army National Guard at Gowen Field and Mountain Home Air Force Base, and the Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation.

Gaps the mitigation actions are built to close

How the plan was built

Twenty-four months, four phases, and a lot of conversations

Hazard mitigation planning here was led by the Tribal Emergency Response Commission, whose members represent the Tribal Council and Tribal Government departments. The TERC met as a full body on high-level planning issues and in smaller working groups on specific hazards and specific functional questions such as health and medical implications, cultural-resource protection, and infrastructure resilience. The Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation and Adaptation International provided technical and administrative support.

Phase I: community engagement, months 1 through 8

Phase I began with the USRT Foundation, an organization governed by regional Tribal leaders that supports four Tribes across the Upper Snake River region, and which holds long-standing trust relationships with the Duck Valley Business Council and the greater Shoshone-Paiute community. The effort kicked off with a virtual regional presentation bringing together representatives from all four Upper Snake River Tribes. Representatives from Tribes further along in their own planning shared what mitigation planning had actually delivered in their communities. That peer endorsement framed the work that followed.

Tribal Fire Chief Guy Dodson, Jr. and Tribal Habitat Manager Chris Cleveland engaged the planning support team regularly by email, telephone, and videoconference to start the work locally and assemble Tribal planning staff.

Arbor Day at the booth

Arbor Day is a community gathering on the Reservation. Putting the planning team's table next to the seedling giveaway and the food line, with Chris Cleveland and Guy Dodson identifying community members and inviting them over, made conversation easy. Tablet-based surveys took five minutes for most respondents. A raffle for gift cards, and the fact that the survey was administered by people from the community itself, produced a response rate an online-only push would not have achieved. The booth also produced introductions to people whose names had not surfaced in earlier outreach.

The October 2025 site visit

Phase I closed with an intensive visit on October 7 and 8, 2025. It began with a two-hour working session with Chief Dodson at the temporary firehouse to refine the hazard list. Chief Dodson, who has served the fire service more than 15 years and at Owyhee since 2021, set out the conditions the department works in and the needs the plan should address: the loss of the previous firehouse to a natural gas explosion two to three years before the visit, the need for dependable after-hours dispatch, 18 fire hydrants on the Reservation that warrant a full condition survey and a replacement schedule, and the value of returning the TERC to a regular meeting cycle after the demands of the COVID-19 response.

The team then met with the Tribal Business Council. The Council knew the 2012 plan well, at more than 340 pages, and set a clear expectation for this one: that it be usable and that it deliver results the community can see. That direction shaped the plan, and the planning team built the work around the Council's own Comprehensive Plan goals and around the Tribes' ability to reduce suffering across generations. Chairman Mason detailed the Reservation's exposure to every hazard on the list presented to the Council and reiterated the Tribes' commitment to mitigating them.

The Council named the TERC as the primary Tribal body to inform the plan, stated its intention for Chief Dodson to lead a strengthened TERC with Kendrick Owyhee of Natural Resources Administration providing administrative support, and asked the team to revisit TERC membership and identify others who should be added.

The team also met with Cultural Preservation Director Jade Roubideaux, who walked through a hazard-by-hazard cultural review. The cultural and natural resource impacts described there run throughout the hazard profiles: the loss of salmon, Agai, that gave the Tribes their name; the impact of COVID-19 on the sharing of grief and the recognition of life milestones; the role of cheatgrass in transforming burn scars; the cultural cost of every fire scar that exposes a sacred site or destroys a stand of first foods; and the way the drug crisis emerges, in part, from the loss of cultural rites of passage.

The visit included a field tour with Tribal staff, taking in Wildhorse Dam at Wildhorse Reservoir and the China Diversion Dam at Paradise Point, burn-scar areas with visible conversion to cheatgrass, the Owyhee Community Health Facility, the community recreation center and Human Development Center, the Owyhee Combined School, and the Tribal Headquarters complex.

Phase II: risk analysis, months 9 through 14

Phase II refined the hazard list and applied the twelve-factor scoring methodology. The technical team integrated Tribal local knowledge with regional and federal data: the FEMA National Risk Index for the Elko County and Owyhee County census tracts containing the Reservation, the USGS National Seismic Hazard Map, the U.S. Drought Monitor archive, the U.S. Forest Service Pyrologix burn-probability raster and Tribal-specific wildfire modeling, PRISM climate normals, CMIP6 downscaled climate projections from the Native Climate program and the Montana Climate Office, the BIA Wildhorse Dam Failure and Inundation Analysis, and the Tribes' own historic loss records.

The team ran a facilitated process with the TERC's issue-specific planning groups to identify hazard drivers for each profile. Each group addressed a specific assessment factor: health and safety, home and property damage, livelihoods, cultural wellbeing, environmental harm, infrastructure, recovery costs, impact to government services, and mitigation potential. Hazard importance, probability, and risk trend were drawn from historic data, climate projections, and community surveys. Cloud-based worksheets cross-referenced each other so every planning team member worked from a common set of assumptions.

Phase III: developing the actions, months 14 through 18

The team reviewed the existing portfolio of Tribal programs and projects, and reviewed actions from the 2012 and 2018 draft plans to identify what had been implemented, what was in progress, and what remained outstanding. The Elko County 2019 plan informed cross-jurisdictional priorities. The team compiled best practices from other communities, reviewed each candidate action with the relevant Tribal program lead, and worked with the TERC to identify lead departments, cost ranges, expected benefits, and timeframes. STAPLEE criteria were applied to every candidate action.

Phase IV: review and adoption, months 19 through 24

A complete draft was prepared for review by Tribal staff, Tribal leadership, and the community, made available at the Tribal Headquarters and on the Tribal website, with a public comment period of one month. Comments received were reviewed and incorporated before submission to FEMA.

Two rounds of community survey

Round 1 drew responses through the Arbor Day booth and online outreach. Round 2 ran from October 8 to October 22, 2025, with 25 respondents from the Reservation, distributed in paper at the Tribal Headquarters, online through the Tribal website, and through the community Facebook page. Flyers were posted at the Tribal Headquarters, the Owyhee Combined School, Our Store, the Owyhee Community Health Facility, and other public bulletin boards. A third survey, on the draft plan itself, ran during July and August 2026 and drew 19 respondents.

The reconstituted TERC

The newly constituted TERC convened on November 5, 2025, with membership refreshed to reflect Council direction and the recommendations from the October site visit. The agenda focused first on shared understanding, meaning each member's role and what each was responsible for during a disaster, and second on the plan itself. The TERC serves as a standing body rather than only an event-response body, with quarterly meetings between disasters and standing agenda items on implementation progress, grant pipeline, and hazard tracking.

Working with the neighbors

Because the Reservation spans two states and shares critical infrastructure, transportation routes, and watershed systems with surrounding jurisdictions, the planning team prioritized early coordination with neighboring county and state emergency management partners. The intent was to identify cross-jurisdictional hazards and shared vulnerabilities, align priorities where feasible, exchange datasets and planning documents, and strengthen communication channels.

Owyhee County, Idaho

Outreach went to Emergency Management Director Jim Desmond and County Clerk Angie Barkell on July 23, 2025. Mr. Desmond asked the team to coordinate with Northwest Management, the consulting firm supporting the County's ongoing plan update, and noted that the County had reached out to the Tribes in February 2025. The team met Nicholas Cancalosi-Dean of Northwest Management on August 1, 2025. The County reported its risk-analysis phase complete and a draft Community Wildfire Protection Plan in review. The County plan, started in March 2025, addresses drought, severe weather, flood, avalanche, landslide, wildland fire, and earthquake. The County identified ongoing technical challenges with flood-exposure mapping, an area where the Tribes have similar needs.

Elko County, Nevada

Outreach went to Emergency Management Director Lee Cabaniss on July 23, 2025, with a same-day response and a coordination call on July 31. Several cross-jurisdictional issues surfaced. Wildhorse Reservoir is state-managed by Nevada while the dam itself is Tribe-managed, BIA-owned, and operated for the Wildhorse Irrigation District, with Mountain City downstream in Elko County. Winter storms block the transport route to the south, which elevates risk for the Reservation by lengthening response and resupply times. Elko County provides the Tribes' school facilities but the Tribes administer school operations. Elko County also extended an invitation to the Elko County Regional Integration Preparedness Symposium held October 21 to 23, 2025.

The states and FEMA

Nevada Division of Emergency Management offered significant coordination support and committed to providing data and documentation from state hazard mitigation efforts, with a meeting on September 11, 2025 and follow-up on October 14 exploring potential grant support. On January 6, 2026, the planning team facilitated a meeting between the Duck Valley planning lead, FEMA Region 9 mitigation planning leadership, and Nevada Division of Emergency Management, aligning the Tribal effort with Region 9 guidance. The Idaho Office of Emergency Management was engaged in parallel, reflecting the Reservation's extension into Owyhee County, Idaho, and shared planning documents while encouraging closer coordination across the 2026 to 2031 period once the Tribal plan is approved.

Tribal comprehensive planning

Comprehensive Planning lead Kendrick Owyhee coordinated directly with the planning team so that hazard findings and mitigation actions are reflected in the Comprehensive Plan currently under development. Director Owyhee's role on the TERC ensures continuing alignment.

Meeting and engagement log

The planning area

Two geographies matter here, and they are not the same

The planning area for regulatory purposes, meaning the area for which the Tribes assess risk and adopt mitigation actions under 44 C.F.R. Section 201.7, is the Duck Valley Indian Reservation together with Tribal trust and fee land within it.

The area the Tribes use and hold responsibility for is larger. It includes ancestral and treaty-connected lands in Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana where Shoshone-Paiute members continue to hunt, gather, pray, and visit burial and ceremonial places. Where a hazard threatens those places, this plan says so, because the loss would be a loss to this community whether or not the ground is administered by another party.

Geography and setting

The Reservation lies approximately 90 miles south of Mountain Home, Idaho, and 100 miles north of Elko, Nevada, spanning Elko County, Nevada and Owyhee County, Idaho. Nevada State Route 225, which becomes Idaho State Highway 51 at the border, runs north to south through the Reservation and provides the only paved access. The community of Owyhee, on the Nevada side, is the administrative and commercial hub.

The Reservation sits on the East Fork of the Owyhee River within the northern Great Basin, in the Basin and Range physiographic province. Elevations range from approximately 5,200 feet on the valley floor to over 8,000 feet in the surrounding Independence and Bull Run Mountains. Land cover is dominated by sagebrush-steppe and bunchgrass rangeland, with irrigated hay ground and wet meadows along the river and its tributaries. Wildhorse Reservoir, completed in 1937 and rebuilt in 1969, sits approximately 25 miles upstream of Owyhee and delivers water to the Duck Valley Irrigation Project.

Approximately 144,274 acres lie in Nevada and approximately 145,545 acres in Idaho.

What covers the ground

Climate

The Reservation falls within the cold semiarid climate of the northern Great Basin. Winters are long and cold, summers are short, hot, and dry, and precipitation is sparse, falling mostly as snow in the high country and as occasional rain or thunderstorm activity at lower elevations.

What the projections show

• Mean annual temperature is projected to rise by approximately 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century and by approximately 4 to 8 degrees by 2100, depending on emissions pathway.
• Frost-free days are projected to increase by approximately 20 to 40 days a year by mid-century.
• Annual precipitation shows little projected change in total volume, but a shift toward more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, with earlier and faster spring snowmelt.
• Summer precipitation shows higher variability with more intense individual thunderstorm events, increasing flash-flood risk on small drainages.

Source: CMIP6 climate projections for the Duck Valley Reservation, Native Climate program and Montana Climate Office.

Who lives here

The 2020 decennial census counted approximately 1,338 residents on the Reservation, while total Tribal enrollment is approximately 2,300 members. Most Tribal members who live on the Reservation reside in and around Owyhee.

Why these numbers matter for hazard risk

Several of these factors have direct relevance for vulnerability. The combination of an older population, a substantial share of residents with disabilities, dispersed rural housing, lower median income, and limited insurance coverage all elevate exposure to disaster impacts and lengthen recovery times.

These same factors place a premium on plain-language warning systems, accessible sheltering, and mitigation investments that reduce the need for evacuation in the first place. The Tribes' strong cultural ties, extended-family networks, and traditional knowledge are corresponding strengths that this plan seeks to build on.

How risk was scored

One scoring system, twelve factors, every hazard treated the same way

A multi-factor quantitative risk-ranking system was built for the Tribes that integrates local expert knowledge with the formal scoring used by FEMA and regional planning partners. The framework supports comparable, repeatable scoring across hazards, supports priority-setting in the mitigation strategy, and allows future hazards to be added as conditions change.

Two factors describe how often a hazard occurs. Eight describe the consequences when it does. The last two capture community judgment: how important the community says the hazard is, and how much good the available mitigation can do.

The twelve factors

How they combine

The formula always produces a value between 0, meaning no concern, and 1, meaning highest concern. Health and safety is counted twice, which gives it a 26.67 percent share of the severity score. Home and property damage, livelihood impacts, environmental harm, and cultural wellbeing each carry 13.33 percent. Infrastructure damage, recovery costs, and government services are counted at half weight, 6.67 percent each.

The probability and trend factor adjusts severity for how likely the hazard is and whether its frequency is changing. If the product of probability and trend is zero, the entire risk drops to zero. If it is one or higher, the factor begins at 0.8 and rises in small increments to 1.0 as the product climbs.

The mitigation potential factor multiplies the score by 0.8, 0.9, or 1.0 depending on whether cost-effectiveness is low, moderate, or high. A hazard the Tribes can act on effectively retains its full risk value, which prioritizes it for investment.

The risk acceptability factor multiplies by 0.75, 0.9, or 1.0 depending on whether the hazard is rated low, moderate, or high priority in community engagement. This embeds Tribal community judgment directly into the technical ranking.

How the hazard list was assembled

The list began with 17 candidate hazards carried forward from the 2012 and 2018 plans and from the 2025 site visit. It was refined through TERC review, and 20 hazards were presented in the Round 2 community survey in October 2025. Fourteen hazards were scored under the framework. Eleven were determined to have moderate to high potential to affect the Reservation and are profiled in full.

While 44 C.F.R. Section 201.7 focuses principally on natural hazards, the Tribes included human-caused hazards, meaning hazardous materials, violent attack, illegal drugs, and infrastructure failure, because they pose serious and well-documented threats to the community. The natural-hazard requirements are fully addressed, and the additional hazards expand the plan's usefulness as a Tribal planning document.

All fourteen scored hazards

Select any of the top eleven to open its full profile.

Considered but not profiled in detail

Three hazards received final risk values of 0.30 or below and are not profiled individually. A fourth concern was raised during Council review and is recorded here although it was not scored under the twelve-factor framework this cycle. The Tribes will monitor each through normal program operations and will revisit profile status at the next update.

What we will do

109 actions, five goals, five years

Each action below names a lead department, a timeframe, a planning-level cost band, the funding sources that could pay for it, the benefit the Tribes expect, and whether it carries forward from an earlier plan. Each also shows its score against seven feasibility criteria, so the basis for its priority is visible rather than assumed.

Cost estimates are planning level. Actual project costs will be refined during scoping and grant-application preparation. For grant-funded actions, a detailed benefit-cost analysis accompanies each application.

Cost and level of effort

Every action carries a planning-level cost band so the Tribes can match projects to the right grants.

How the actions were prioritized

Actions are prioritized in two steps. First the Tribes apply the STAPLEE evaluation criteria used in the 2012 and 2018 plans and consistent with FEMA guidance. Second, each action is scored against the Tribes' hierarchy of protection, with priority given, highest first, to people and structures, then infrastructure, then the local and regional economy, then traditional ways of life, then ecosystems.

Each candidate action was scored against each criterion on a 1 to 5 scale, where 1 indicates a poor fit or low feasibility and 5 indicates an excellent fit or high feasibility. The seven scores sum to a total out of 35. Any action with a single criterion scored 2 or lower was negated.

What happens when

Year 1 priorities build foundational capability, update existing plans, or address urgent community-identified needs. Mid-cycle priorities need scoping, engineering, or partnership development before construction. Long-term priorities are sustained multi-year programs.

Keeping it current

A plan is only worth the follow-through

The Tribal Emergency Manager, working under the direction of the TERC, monitors implementation of the mitigation actions quarterly. Monitoring covers action status, from not started through scoping, design, construction, complete, deferred, or withdrawn; expenditures, grant submissions, awards, and matches; completion of training, exercises, and policy adoptions; changes in community exposure such as new construction, demolitions, and infrastructure additions; and any disaster events, declarations, or near-misses on the Reservation, including the lessons each generates.

An annual implementation report is prepared by the TERC Chairperson and presented to the Tribal Business Council, covering the status of every action, expenditures, grant outcomes, identified changes in risk, and recommended adjustments. The annual report is also summarized for the community through the Sho-Pai News, the community Facebook page, and the General Council meeting.

Evaluating whether the plan is working

Effectiveness is evaluated formally every two years by the TERC, and additionally following any disaster declaration affecting the Reservation. The evaluation asks whether the hazards profiled still reflect the actual threat landscape, whether the risk ratings remain accurate in light of new data or new events, whether the actions are producing the intended benefits, whether the goals still reflect the values and priorities of the Council and community, and whether new actions should be added.

Update schedule

Consistent with 44 C.F.R. Section 201.7(d)(3), the Tribes will initiate the next formal five-year update no later than four years following the effective date of this plan, designed so an approved plan remains continuously in effect.

Continued public participation

The Tribes will continue to seek public participation through the life of the plan:

• An annual community update at the General Council meeting presenting plan progress.
• Sho-Pai News articles at each annual implementation report.
• Posts on the community Facebook page and the Tribal website at each annual report and at any plan-amendment milestone.
• A standing public-comment channel on the Tribal website where any Tribal member or resident can submit a mitigation idea, concern, or correction at any time.
• Periodic community-perception surveys, at least once per five-year cycle, building on the Round 1 and Round 2 surveys of 2025.
• Direct outreach to elders and to youth through the Cultural Preservation Office and the school, conducted in a culturally appropriate manner.

Integration with other Tribal planning

The Tribal Emergency Manager and the Comprehensive Planning lead coordinate annually so that the Comprehensive Plan reflects the hazard findings of this plan in land-use, infrastructure, and community-facility decisions; each year's capital improvement plan considers mitigation actions for inclusion; the Tribal Land-Use Code, when adopted, reflects flood, wildfire, and other hazard-zone provisions; each major Tribal grant application identifies whether and how the project advances actions in this plan; and cultural-resource considerations are integrated into every action through Cultural Preservation Office review.

Changing the plan between updates

This plan belongs to the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes and can be changed at any point in the five-year cycle. Amendment does not wait for the next update.

Any Council member, Tribal department, TERC member, or community member may propose an amendment through the Tribal Emergency Manager or through the standing public comment channel. Proposed amendments may add or revise a mitigation action, add or revise a hazard profile, revise a risk score, correct a description of the community or its capabilities, or reflect a change in Tribal or federal law.

The TERC reviews the proposal at its next regular session and prepares a recommendation for the Council. Where an amendment would add or change a hazard profile or a risk score, the TERC applies the same twelve-factor framework so the plan stays internally consistent. The Council adopts amendments by resolution, and the amended plan is transmitted to FEMA Region 9 for its records.

Amendments do not restart the five-year cycle and do not substitute for the comprehensive update required under 44 C.F.R. Section 201.7(d)(3). The Emergency Manager maintains an amendment log recording the date, subject, resolution number, and pages affected for every amendment.

Who does what

Adoption and assurances

This plan is formally adopted by the Shoshone-Paiute Tribal Business Council through resolution. The adoption resolution supersedes the 2012 Tribal Hazard Mitigation Plan upon its effective date, commits Tribal departments and enterprises to integrate the plan's goals and actions into ongoing operations, authorizes submission to FEMA for review, and authorizes the TERC to carry out implementation and update activities.

The assurances the Tribes provide

Pursuant to 44 C.F.R. Section 201.7(c)(6), the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes will:

• Comply with all applicable federal statutes and regulations in effect for the periods in which the Tribes receive grant funding, including 2 C.F.R. Parts 200 and 3002 governing uniform administrative requirements, cost principles, and audit requirements for federal awards.
• Amend this plan whenever necessary to reflect changes in Tribal or federal laws and statutes that affect its content or implementation.
• Follow the basic federal grant program criteria, including benefit-cost analysis where required, in identifying, selecting, and funding mitigation projects submitted under FEMA Hazard Mitigation Assistance programs.
• Submit a revised plan to FEMA for review and approval no later than five years from the effective date, to maintain continuous eligibility for non-emergency Stafford Act assistance and FEMA mitigation grant funding.

Approval path

The plan is submitted to FEMA Region 9, the lead region given the location of Tribal headquarters in Owyhee, Nevada, for review consistent with the FEMA Tribal Mitigation Plan Review Guide. It progresses through submission and confirmation of receipt, technical review by FEMA mitigation planning staff, designation as Approvable Pending Adoption if all requirements are met except formal adoption, formal adoption by the Tribal Business Council within one year of that notice, and a final FEMA approval letter to the Council.

What the community said

The community ranked the hazards too

Twenty-five Tribal members and Reservation residents rated each of twenty hazards on a four-point scale, from not a concern to high priority. Those ratings feed directly into the Risk Acceptability factor in the technical scoring, which means community judgment is built into the ranking rather than layered on afterward.

Mean priority score, out of 3

Source: Round 2 hazard survey, October 22, 2025. 25 respondents.

Community concern next to the technical score

Water quality, hazardous materials, wildfire, the illegal drug crisis, and epidemic or pandemic rank in the top five of both the community survey and the technical framework. Because water quality and hazardous materials are profiled together, these correspond to the four highest-ranked profiled hazards. Infrastructure and supply chain failure ranks fourth in the technical framework and eighth in the Round 2 survey, though it rose to fourth in the August 2026 review survey. Together these five hazards anchor the mitigation priorities.

The two measures use different scales, so each bar is shown against its own. The technical score runs from 0.00 to 1.00 and comes from the twelve-factor framework. Community concern is the average rating from the Round 2 survey on a scale of 0.00 to 3.00. Colour follows the value in both columns, so a longer, darker bar means a higher reading on that measure.

The 2026 plan review survey

Nineteen people completed the review survey, compiled on August 12, 2026. Eighteen of the nineteen live on the Reservation. Seventeen identified as Tribal members, and eight each as Reservation residents, Tribal elders, and Tribal employees. Sixteen shared knowledge passed down by elders.

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Records and reference

Where each FEMA requirement is answered

This crosswalk maps the requirements in the FEMA Tribal Mitigation Plan Review Tool to the sections of this plan. The Tribal Emergency Manager will complete the review tool itself, with page numbers, before submission to FEMA.

Tribal Emergency Response Commission working roster

The TERC, established by Tribal Ordinance 2003-SPO-02 following the events of September 11, 2001, holds responsibility for both emergency preparedness and hazard mitigation planning. Following direction from the Council during the October 2025 kickoff meetings, membership is being revitalized as a standing planning body.

Programs and agencies represented

The roster supporting development of this plan included representatives of the Shoshone-Paiute Emergency Management Program, Fire Management Program, and Volunteer Fire Department; the Owyhee Community Health Facility and Emergency Medical Services; the Water and Sanitation, Land, Natural Resources, and Fish, Wildlife and Parks Departments; the Cultural Preservation Office; the Duck Valley Housing Authority; Tribal Roads and Facilities through the Bureau of Indian Affairs; the Owyhee Combined School; the BIA Eastern Nevada Agency; and the Indian Health Service.

Who prepared this plan

Tribal Business Council

Brian Mason, Chairman. Arnold Thomas, Vice Chairman. Lance Dick, Jr., Secretary. Daliah Abel, Treasurer. Brian Thomas, Lindsey Manning, and Sandra Egan, Council Members.

Upper Snake River Tribes Foundation

Scott Hauser, Executive Director. Lauren Noeker, Environmental Specialist and Planning Lead. Dennis Daw, Fish and Wildlife Program Director.

Adaptation International, technical advisory consultant

Sascha Petersen, Principal and Climate Adaptation Specialist. Damon Coppola, Hazard Mitigation Specialist. Trevor Evan, GIS Specialist.

Agency and jurisdictional partners

Heather Lafferty, Nevada Division of Emergency Management, State Hazard Mitigation Officer. Zach McCullough, Assistant State Hazard Mitigation Officer. Aaron Thacker, Tribal Liaison. Josie Burnett, FEMA Region 9 Tribal Coordinator. Jaime Symons, Kiana Wong, and Avery Frank, FEMA Region 9 Mitigation Division. Lee Cabaniss, Elko County Emergency Management Director. Jim Desmond, Owyhee County Emergency Management Director. Angie Barkell, Owyhee County Clerk. Nicholas Cancalosi-Dean and Adam Herrenbruck, Northwest Management.

Funding

Preparation of this plan was supported in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Indian Environmental General Assistance Program.

Acronyms

References