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The US Forest Service is planning to do widespread and aggressive thinning across up to 18,000 acres of our local forest right outside of Santa Fe, and to repeatedly burn up to 38,000 acres. The project is called the Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resiliency Project.
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The forest is already in the process of being transformed by similar thinning and burning treatments into a new type of ecosystem. Past treatments have left our forest barren of understory, lacking in tree cover and ecologically broken. It’s unknown what the ecological consequences of this kind of forest engineering will be. It's a large-scale land experiment.
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The smoke from the large amount of prescribed burning proposed will impact our health.
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On October 9th, The Forest Advocate held an online community event to help make the public aware of what has already occurred and what is planned on a much larger scale in our forest. Renowned conservation scientist Dr. Dominick DellaSala broke down the various potential impacts of the plan. He warned that “The Santa Fe National Forest is at a fork, and it’s going down a path that could lead to ecological crisis.”
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The draft environmental assessment for the project has been released, and it’s the final time to write comments to the Forest Service. During the online community event, we suggested important points to emphasize. It’s critical that we all stand for our forest at this juncture. Comments are due by October 29th.
Please watch the video of the event if you haven’t already, so you may understand how your forest is being managed. It’s a wake up call. The Forest Service characterizes its project as benign, but it will have serious impacts on our forest, our community and our health.
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It’s time to tell the Forest Service why they must do full analysis, and that an Environmental Impact Statement should completed for the project. It’s critical that this information circulate widely, and become well-known to the public.
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If you want to send this out on your email lists, please do! It's for everyone. Let’s leave a healthy and intact forest for ourselves and for future generations. We can make a difference.
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Santa Fe National Forest fuel treatment in La Cueva, 2015. Photo: Jason Johnson
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