● The Encino Vista Landscape Restoration Project in the Jemez Mountains northwest of Los Alamos is one of the largest projects approved for the Santa Fe National Forest, covering almost 200 square miles (roughly 122,000 acres).

● In September, 2025 the Santa Fe National Forest approved roughly 7,200 acres of commercial logging, 26,700 acres of thinning and 74,700 acres of burning to to occur over the next 15-20 years.

● The Forest Service cites reducing wildfire risks and potential threats to nearby communities to justify logging and repeated burning across such a vast landscape. Yet, less than 4% of the project falls within the Wildland Urban Interface, and all the commercial logging will take place far away in the backcountry.

● Instead of spending tax-dollars for logging far from communities, these resources should be invested in the things we know actually protect homes and people: home hardening, defensible space, evacuation and emergency response infrastructure, structure protection, and smoke relief.

● Forests in New Mexico are adapted to fires and they serve an essential ecological role, and at the same time, communities need real fire solutions. When forests burn, people and structures in nearby communities need to be protected. This means adopting policies and practices that prioritize home protection and ensure new developments do not put people at further risk.

● It is questionable whether any potential wildfire moderating effects from logging and other fuels reduction treatments can compensate for the increased fire risk from logging and subsequent burning in dry forested landscapes.The majority of wildfire acres that have burned in and from the Santa Fe National Forest in the last quarter century (2000-2024) were ignited by escaped land management agency prescribed burns.

● Logging and aggressive thinning can make forests more susceptible to wildfires by creating hotter, drier and windier conditions. Opening tree canopies can cause soils and vegetation to dry out, and to become more flammable.

● The Forest Service approved logging trees as large as 24 inches around, which can be 150 years old or more and adapted to withstand fires. Such trees are some of the largest in the project area.

● Ultimately, it is impossible and not even desirable to fully prevent wildfires – instead, we have to prioritize solutions that allow us to live with fire in a way that makes them less threatening and destructive to nearby communities, and that means focusing on creating fire-resistant communities, not logging the forest.

● The logging and burning will harm threatened Mexican spotted owls, the endangered Jemez Mountains salamander, and their designated critical habitats.

● To implement the project, the Forest Service approved constructing 8 miles of temporary roads even though the area already has 761 miles, in addition to 44 miles of known unauthorized roads that the project would leave in place.

● The Forest Service began implementing the project having completed the Divide timber sale that sold 3,980 tons of ponderosa pine for sawlogs, in addition to 5,464 tons of smaller pine and white-fir trees. The Forest Service is proceeding with another 260 acre timber sale called Martinez Tank in an area that has been heavily logged under past projects that were categorically excluded from environmental analysis. (See pictures).

● The Forest Service stated that part of the project would be carried out under the Good Neighbor Authority, which Congress recently expanded. The changes make it easier for states to conduct logging on federal lands, and reduce transparency and accountability.