Massive Forest Restoration Project in the Jemez

Massive Forest Restoration Project in the Jemez
Bringing Back the Natural Jemez
By R.W. JEMEZ DAILY POST

You’ve never seen anything like it.
The plan is to restore the Jemez to a condition of centuries ago.

A massive landscape restoration project is about to take place in the Jemez.

This will not, necessarily, be to everyone’s liking. The forest landscapes which are familiar to generations of the people living in the Jemez, and of visitors to the area, are not the historic, resilient and healthy landscapes that existed here millennia before European settlers arrived in the area.

The high altitude dense forests of ponderosa pine, mixed conifer and aspen, their crowns forming a canopy, with thick understories of new growth and invasive weeds, and with the forest floors covered with dead pine needles, are a condition of forest ill health. Suppression of natural fires created and maintains these time bombs, which result in impossible to contain crown fires, and leave a landscape of charred trees and ground covered in ash. Sometimes, as can be seen on parts of the slopes above Los Alamos, a completely devastated barren landscape is all that remains.

Other human activities have also led to the deterioration of the high country landscapes. Rivers, creeks and steep slopes erode fast through unmanaged cattle trampling them, leaving them bare of the plants whose roots would hold the soil. Streams unprotected by vegetation growing along its banks are no longer cool enough to provide a good habitat for aquatic species, including native trout.

The previously existing natural landscape consisted of ponderosa, conifers, aspen and other trees growing in clumps. In between them lay grasslands, meadows, riparian areas and aquatic habitats. The mature trees grew with unconnected crowns, and while wildfires would take out individual specimens, they would mostly clear the ground of debris, and of new and invasive growth.

The goal of the Southwest Jemez Collaborative Landscape Restoration Project (SJCLRP) is to restore the forest to a more fire adapted ecosystem. It will also aim to develop healthy conditions in watershed areas, which will increase the landscape’s resilience to severe wildfire, and other large scale disturbances.
Cultural resources, the area is rich in historic remains, will be given special consideration. The restoration will create local economic development opportunities, which will tie in with the arrival of the National Park Service in the area. Stewardship service programs with local businesses will be established. The clearing of the forests will provide wood collecting opportunities for the local area, and also create jobs.

SJCLRP will include approximately 210,000 acres in the Southwest Jemez Mountains comprising the entire upper Jemez River watershed, including a portion of the Santa Fe National Forest (110,000 acres), the nearly 86,000 acre Valles Caldera National Preserve, and the Jemez Pueblo, along with parcels of state, private and tribal lands (see map below).

At the moment the project is being held back, waiting for an environmental impact statement concerning the habitat of the Jemez Mountain salamander. This should be completed by early summer, when we should see the first wafts of smoke from the controlled pile burns rising into the air.

Forests near Jemez Valley communities will be given priority, to remove the danger of uncontrolled fires occurring near inhabited areas.