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Saturday, August 21, 2010
$40M To Restore Forests in Jemez
By Phil Parker
Journal Northern Bureau
A restoration plan for more than 200,000 acres in the southwestern Jemez Mountains will receive up to $40 million in federal funds over the next 10 years, Santa Fe National Forest officials announced this week.
The Southwest Jemez Collaborative Restoration Program was among 10 projects around the country selected by Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack under a federal grant program called the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, created last year by legislation sponsored by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.
U.S. Forest Service spokesman Lawrence Lujan said the selected area, which includes the Valles Caldera National Preserve, is fire-prone, and much of the money will go toward addressing that issue through thinning on 90,000 acres and prescribed burns on 76,000 acres.
"Over the last 30 years on the eastern flanks of the mountain there have been huge, uncharacteristic fires like La Mesa, Dome and Cerro Grande," said Valles Caldera Trust's chief scientist Bob Parmenter. "The western half of the Jemez has not suffered those massive fires, but the fuel loads are... huge."
Parmenter said preferred density in a ponderosa pine forest is between 40 and 60 trees per acre. In much of the area targeted by the project, he said, there are between 1,200 and 1,800 trees on each acre, and in some spots there are more than 2,000 trees per acre.
"We did a fire behavior analysis and it showed under dry conditions ... a fire would blow out of control," said Susan Bruin, the restoration program team leader.
Bruin said she collaborated with 30 different organizations — including Santa Clara and Jemez Pueblo leaders, state and federal officials, and nongovernment environmental activist groups — to form the grant-winning pitch. Vilsack selected the 10 grant recipients from a pool of 33 proposals, Lujan said.
The money, Bruin said, will greatly speed a process which has been desperately needed in the Jemez.
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