Tree-hugging helps create better playbook for fire recovery in bosque

Look to the right, and see summer. Cottonwoods leaf a lively green in the bosque.

To the left, see fall. A coating of crisp, brown leaves covers the ground. Branches are bare, or have just a few colorless leaves clinging to the branches.

But those trees won’t flourish as the seasons change. Victims of a fire near the Poco Loco Trail, it’s likely hundreds of trees won’t survive and must be cut down. The autumnal appearance is a facade — look closer to see bark burnt black.

“Cottonwood trees don’t naturally do well with fire,” said city of Albuquerque forester Sean O’Neill. “Historically, they are designed to manage floods. … Pine forest is designed for fire — they need fire to actually open up their cones and germinate. But a riparian forest is not engineered for this.”

By Wednesday morning, surveyors had already identified 179 damaged trees. O’Neill said about 500 were likely burnt in the June bosque fire near the Rio Bravo Riverside picnic area.

The goal of the inventory is to develop a better playbook for responding to fires, O’Neill said. That includes building a map of trees in the bosque — the Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps and city Parks and Recreation employees are plotting the GPS location of each tree into a digital database — as well as tracking down historic data about restoration efforts. Past restoration efforts can feed into future ones, and determine which efforts might work best.

It’s a lot of work to find pre-digitized records.

“A lot of it is just historical memory, which is kind of cool, because traditionally that’s the way it’s been done, passed on,” said Joanna Strange, Parks and Recreation Open Space Division field biologist. “New Mexico is so old, we have all of these different traditional methods of storytelling. … It’s tracking down by who you know.”

Strange recently toured the area to conduct a cuckoo survey.

The mature cottonwood canopy that was damaged by the fire was prime habitat for the secretive cuckoo, which occupies a narrow niche. The threatened species lives exclusively along rivers and in tree canopies.

In the burn scar, there are still a few flashes of color. A yellow measuring tape. A teal hard hat (falling branches are still a risk). A burst of hot pink spray paint to mark already-surveyed trees.

More promising are the flashes of green, where some plants have already returned to the area.

O’Neill met surveyors near the “big trees.” A measuring tape lassoed one of those trees.

“What’s that, 40?” O’Neill asked about the inch count.

It measured 38 inches. O’Neill said he has a “spidey sense” for tree measurements.

“I hug a lot of trees,” he said.

Kyle Secakuku with Ancestral Lands had been surveying the area since Wednesday morning. Ash darkened his gloves.

“They explained … putting down the data so they can save it for the future,” Secakuku said. “If this happens again, how to restore the forest, the bosque.”

But depending on funding and other factors, the restoration may not replicate the previous ecosystem. Cottonwoods could be replanted in the area, but Strange said that savannah grasses could also replace the trees, providing habitat for some bird species.

“We’re just gonna keep collecting the data, analyzing the situation and working up a plan for restoration,” O’Neill said.