Taos Land Trust acquires 144 acres in high-risk wildfire zone near Taos Ski Valley

TAOS — One-hundred forty-four acres within one of the highest-risk firesheds in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains is set to become the focus of a major wildfire mitigation project this summer and a new land conservation easement in coming years.

Taos Land Trust recently purchased the 15-parcel property, located near El Salto not far from Taos Ski Valley, for $1.55 million from Tom Worrell, a local philanthropist and developer who accumulated the parcels from the late 1990s through early 2000s.

By both dollars and acres, it's the largest land purchase the 38-year-old nonprofit has completed in more than two decades, according to Executive Director Darien Fernandez, who said funding for the acquisition came from River Branch Foundation, the Worrell Foundation, the Franklin Family, Lynn Aldrich and anonymous benefactors.

Taos Land Trust plans to employ its own Youth Conservation Corps Crew alongside Rocky Mountain Youth Corps and local woodcutters to form a "regional fire break" before seeking a conservation easement for the land through Santa Fe Conservation Trust.

"This one strip of land hasn't seen any treatment work," Fernandez told the Journal, explaining that he walked the densely forested property several times in the last few years. "The Carson National Forest has done some work along (N.M. 150), the neighbors up there have used a variety of soil and water grants to do thinning on their acreage, and even El Salto del Agua Land Association has had some extensive work done. So it's just this."

Fernandez and Taos County Forest and Watershed Health Program Manager J.R. Logan began discussing the importance of thinning the property while conducting forest mitigation work nearby in 2021, when Fernandez was working as conservation program manager for Rocky Mountain Youth Corps.

"We were out there staring at this strip, wondering how we could get ahold of Tom Worrell to talk about treatments," Fernandez recalled. "Now, here we are."

Fernandez said that thinning work for the 144 acres will be crucial should a catastrophic fire start within this specific area of Carson National Forest, which was identified as one of the highest-risk areas for a major wildfire in the 2022 Taos County Community Wildfire Protection Plan.

According to its website, Taos Land Trust was founded in 1988 and has "safeguarded over 25,000 acres — from high-desert vistas to working farms."

The nonprofit has overseen several conservation projects in the Taos County area, including the purchase of 2,500 acres in Taos Valley Overlook and 14,000 acres around Ute Mountain in the mid-2000s, both of which were then transferred to the Bureau of Land Management.

In 2015, the Land Trust purchased 20 acres of wetlands it is in the process of restoring near Fred Baca Park in the town of Taos — an area that for many locals is the local heart of the organization, with trails open to the public, a local acequia and a community food forest.

John Miller is the Albuquerque Journal’s northern New Mexico correspondent. He can be reached at jmiller@abqjournal.com.