A Landscape-scale Resilience Strategy to guide collective action
The Greater Santa Fe Fireshed is a 107,000-acre landscape in the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains around Santa Fe, including lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the Pueblo of Tesuque, the City of Santa Fe, other non-federal public lands, and 36,370 acres of private land.
This landscape constitutes one of the Rio Grande Water Fund’s four focal areas, is supported by the 2020 New Mexico State Forest Action Plan, and is incorporated in the Santa Fe National Forest’s Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resilience Project Environmental Analysis.
Recognizing the importance of the Fireshed landscape and the need to scale up and coordinate fire readiness efforts, the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition has spent years developing a strategy for building landscape resilience which articulates their collective aspirations for the landscape. This strategy is based in the best available science, modeling, and assessment of community needs, vulnerabilities, and values.
Who wrote it?
The strategy was authored by the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition, including staff members from the New Mexico Chapter of The Nature Conservancy and the Forest Stewards Guild. The strategy includes contributions from City of Santa Fe Fire Department, New Mexico Forest and Water Restoration Institute, US Forest Service Santa Fe National Forest, Santa Fe County Fire Department, New Mexico EMNRD - Forestry Division, and many other partners.
The Santa Fe City Council and Santa Fe County Commissioners passed resolutions in 2016 supporting this collaborative work.
Why create a resilience strategy?
The 2022 Greater Santa Fe Resilience Strategy aims to improve joint work in the Fireshed Landscape and enable progress toward the Coalition’s vision of a resilient landscape, fire-adapted communities, and effective wildfire response.
How will it help?
The Resilience Strategy provides a basis for collaborative work that all partners can agree upon. It outlines the major elements needed to realize the Coalition’s vision of strong landscapes and fire prepared communities. By recognizing current conditions (ecological and community values), analyzing risk to homes, businesses, values at risk, and other assets (including a Wildfire Risk Assessment), and defining desired conditions which exhibit fire resilience, the Coalition has created a roadmap to coexisting with fire in the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed.
Major elements of the Resilience Strategy
Understanding current landscape conditions: A description of the historic and current ecological and social landscape conditions in the Fireshed. This section also highlights the scientific basis for action through a Wildfire Risk Assessment.
Defining landscape desired conditions: Based on the Mission and Vision, this section describes a series of objectives that can help Coalition members track progress.
Using multiple methods to build landscape resilience: Describes the tools available to Coalition members to improve conditions in the landscape.
Priority actions for landscape resilience: Describes how Coalition partners will coordinate work to apply the resilience-building tools across the diverse landscape.
Methods for building landscape resilience
Tools available to help build resilience in the Fireshed landscape include:
Vegetation management, including thinning and controlled burning.
Spatial analysis to identify joint priorities.
Preparing our human communities for wildfire through a combination of defensible space thinning and reduction of structural ignitability.
Communication, both amongst Coalition members and between Coalition partners and the broader public.
Critical to the success of the Resilience Strategy is the understanding that 1) Coalition members will share resources and expertise whenever possible, and 2) the public will be engaged in reducing fuels on their own properties, reducing structural ignitability, being prepared for wildfire, and holding support for surrounding agency land management work.
Vision for our collective future
This diverse group of collaborators envisions “a landscape with healthy forests and secure water sources. Communities in and near forested landscapes are fire adapted, with residents who take responsibility to reduce risks before wildfire occurs. Prepared communities feel secure and understand the role of fire in the landscape. Residents support treatments, including prescribed burns and managed wildfires, and accept smoke associated with fire management. Fire using agencies provide well-coordinated, safe, and effective response to wildfires, and strive to mitigate smoke impacts to communities. Resilient forests and thriving communities provide economic, recreational, and spiritual benefits for residents and visitors to enjoy.”
Figure 4.1 from page 46 of the 2020 Santa Fe County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP): existing and planned fuel treatments across all jurisdictions. The priority area of interest delineates areas with dense concentrations of values at risk with high potential exposure to wildfire. See the full CWPP here.
Coalition members have already invested years and substantial funds treating the forests and urban areas surrounding Santa Fe and adjacent communities to reduce susceptibility to fire. Partners are actively seeking funding opportunities to continue putting the resilience strategy plan into action, including the recent submission of a $1.2 million grant application for wildfire mitigation work in surrounding communities which is anchored in the strategy. It takes the involvement of all members of our greater Santa Fe community to be fire adapted! We invite you to get involved by reading the 2022 Greater Santa Fe Resilience Strategy today.
Become a partner
Organizations that will add to the Coalition’s capacity and that are willing to sign onto the strategy and support the operating principles can join the Coalition as partners.