Forged in Fire

The couple thinks a lot of trails within the 341,471-acre burn scar have similar damage. Some of them were in bad shape already due to deferred maintenance, but the fire has made it worse.

Clearing trails is just one of the immense challenges facing forest managers to restore burned lands and access for hikers, anglers, campers, hunters, and local people with grazing allotments. Another difficulty lies in restoring the watersheds connected to the mountain forests. When the forests and their understory plants burn, they lose the ability to hold rain and snow, leaving sediment and debris to wash off the steep slopes into streams and rivers below. Post-fire floods can damage irrigation systems, roads, campgrounds, bridges, and homes, as they did after the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.

New Mexico’s forests, watersheds, and communities are all at risk from wildfires that are occurring more frequently and growing larger as climate change exacerbates normally dry conditions, year by year. Ongoing drought—combined with overgrown forests and a century of suppressing fire on landscapes that were adapted to periodic low-intensity blazes—puts the state in a precarious position.

Protecting and restoring New Mexico’s forests is crucial for the state’s economic and social vitality. Forests are important to visitors and residents who enjoy skiing, boating, fishing, and hiking in the Land of Enchantment, injecting billions of dollars into the economy. They are crucial to local people who rely on them for firewood, building materials, hunting, and livestock grazing. And forests are critical to cities from Las Vegas to Santa Fe, which rely on the watersheds within for a portion of their drinking water.

“It is not going to be the last disaster we have like this in New Mexico,” says Shannon Atencio, the Las Vegas District Forester with the New Mexico Forestry Division. The likelihood of more catastrophic wildfires has prompted state officials, over the past few years, to devise a strategy they hope will help land managers and communities cope better with fires and their aftermath.

After wildfires of this scale, people, forests, and watersheds have long roads to recovery. They all take time to heal. Mahan and Knutson, who both have deep experience in forestry and fire, know this all too well. They were among hundreds who lost their home and their ponderosa pines in the fire.

“I don’t think people who were directly affected have recovered,” Mahan says. “I don’t know anyone who has recovered, who are stable, who feel like they are secure, and that there’s an equilibrium that’s been found again. I don’t think we’re there yet.”

THE HERMIT’S PEAK/CALF CANYON FIRE wasn’t New Mexico’s only wildfire in 2022. Nearly 900,000 acres burned across the state that year, mostly on public lands. The Black Fire in the Gila National Forest also topped more than 300,000 acres. The McBride Fire in Ruidoso torched 6,159 acres and more than 200 homes; two people died. In the Jemez Mountains, the Cerro Pelado Fire ravaged 45,605 acres; in Mora and Colfax counties, the Cooks Peak Fire took 59,359 acres. Both the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon and Cerro Pelado fires grew out of Forest Service prescribed burns that escaped control in historic high winds. The Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire became the largest, most destructive fire in the state’s recorded history. In San Miguel and Mora counties, the fire was followed by heavy rains and devastating floods.

State and federal land managers are now operating on two fronts, both urgently needed to help preserve and restore the state’s forests. One is to thin out forests to reduce the risks of catastrophic fires. The other is to collect, grow, and plant tree seedlings in areas that have burned.

New Mexico is tackling both with some ambitious plans. They are working to reduce the number of trees through thinning and prescribed burns on public lands. The state’s Forestry Division is rolling out a new program to help private landowners become certified to conduct prescribed burns on their private properties. Promoting the need for such burns is a tough task after the rare occasions when they go wrong, as they did with Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon. But millions of acres of forests need to be addressed.

“We need to be doing bigger thinning projects across more contiguous properties and across multiple ownerships on a very large landscape scale,” Atencio says.

Despite the havoc wrought by the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire on her family, friends, and community, Atencio, like most foresters, remains a proponent of prescribed burns for restoring forest health. “Prescribed fire is critical,” she says. “It’s the missing link. Fire is an important component in these ecosystems and, when managed well, it is a necessary complement to thinning projects.”

Forestry research has found that in some forest types, such as ponderosa pine, the practice of thinning trees and returning to maintain them every few years with prescribed burns gives them the best chance of surviving fire. As the ecological program manager for the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute based at New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU), Mahan supervises crews that monitor hundreds of forest projects across thousands of acres of public land in the state. She says 38 project areas—some treated and some untreated—burned in the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, giving the team an opportunity to look at how those forests fared and help guide future projects.

With new precautions in place, the Santa Fe National Forest conducted several successful prescribed burns in other districts in the past year, all aimed at restoring the use of controlled fire safely to public lands and rebuilding faith in the process among communities. Shaun Sanchez, who became the Santa Fe National Forest supervisor in 2023, says crews used thermal imaging, drones, and old-fashioned cold trailing—checking for heat by hand in ash piles—to ensure the burns were completely put out.

Meanwhile, in its 2020 updated Forest Action Plan, the New Mexico Forestry Division laid out plans for restoring forests and watersheds, supporting outdoor recreation, and strengthening cooperation between the state and the U.S. Forest Service on forest restoration projects. The state is supporting firefighting and restoration efforts by funding two hotshot firefighter crews, with one posted in southern New Mexico and one in Las Vegas. When the full-time, 20-person Las Vegas crew isn’t fighting fires, Atencio plans to make them available to help the Forest Service cut hazard trees along trails in the burn scar.

LAST SEPTEMBER, TWO DOZEN CLIMBERS using ropes and harnesses scaled towering trees to bring down precious cargo: seed-laden cones. The NMHU forestry students, foresters from Santa Clara and Jemez pueblos, and state employees collected four million seeds. A second harvest is planned for this September as part of the New Mexico Reforestation Center, which is at the heart of New Mexico’s ambitious plan to create a reforestation pipeline—one that’s unique in the country.

Even before the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, foresters knew they needed a way to replant more than 5.45 million acres that had burned in New Mexico over the last two decades and prepare for the fires yet to come. At State Forester Laura McCarthy’s request, they came up with the New Mexico Reforestation Center, where staff is tasked with collecting tree seeds, expanding a seed bank, growing the seedlings, and making sure they are planted in places where they have the best chance of surviving.

“We’re trying to develop a new model for how we respond to wildfire on the recovery side,” says Joshua Sloan, an associate professor of forestry at NMHU and part of the Reforestation Center. He will manage seed collection and the seed bank for the center. “So far, across the West, not just in New Mexico, there is very little planning for the reforestation work after a fire.”

With backing from the state legislature and Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, the center is in development. The Hermit’s Peak fire added to the urgency when it threatened the 300,000 tree seedlings at New Mexico State University’s John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center, which also housed the state’s seed collection.

As the flames rose visibly over a ridge near the nursery, staff scrambled to move the seedlings and the seed bank to safety. “One thing the fire made us realize was not to keep everything in one place,” Sloan says.

The New Mexico Reforestation Center is a joint effort between the state Forestry Division, New Mexico State University, New Mexico Highlands University, and the University of New Mexico (UNM). A renovated facility at Highlands will house seed processing and the seed bank. A new greenhouse capable of growing up to five million seedlings will be built on the existing property of the John T. Harrington Center, in Mora. Researchers at UNM will help land managers and landowners figure out the best place to plant the seedlings to increase their survival chances.

Sloan’s team will collect seeds from across the state, so that after a fire, tree seedlings are available from a source as close as possible to the burn scar. “These forests are a legacy of the state,” Sloan says. “They’ve been growing and adapting to the sites where they are for millennia.”

Matt Hurteau, a forest and fire ecologist at UNM, oversees the research team modeling the best places to plant the seedlings. They’ve measured the microclimates around tree seedlings planted within several burn scars and flown drones to map the landscape. Hurteau hopes to help land managers avoid what he has seen in other fire sites, where seedlings are planted repeatedly and most of them die.

Tree seedlings depend on whatever moisture nature provides. So, areas that collect water and shade seedlings from the sun help increase their chances of surviving, Hurteau says.

“There are some places where, prior to these big wildfires, they supported trees, and they’re not necessarily going to in the future,” Hurteau says. “It is recognizing and accepting that there are some places on these landscapes we’re never going to get trees to grow.”

THE COMMUNITY’S CONNECTION TO THE LAND IS perhaps the most difficult—and most important—aspect to heal. Amina Sena was a hydrologist with the Santa Fe National Forest when the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire began. She had just buried her mom when she had to evacuate. The next day, the fire destroyed her childhood home.

In 2023, she became the Santa Fe National Forest, Pecos/Las Vegas district ranger. Now her job is to restore both the burned landscape and damaged relationships. “We have to have a moment and acknowledge the loss, and the frustration and the anger are valid too,” Sena says. The flood following the fire “was another hardship for the communities on top of the first hardship,” she adds.

Indeed, the rolling disaster for these communities began with the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Then came the fire, then the floods.

Restoring the fractured relationship between the Forest Service and residents may be the toughest part of her job. Sena and Shaun Sanchez, the Santa Fe National Forest supervisor, believe the work done over the last 18 months to restore local people’s access to the national forest is an important step.

They’ve made sure woodcutters can access different parts of the forest and can get free wood permits. The district completed two aerial seeding projects across thousands of acres of the burn scar in an attempt to stabilize charred slopes. They worked with state partners and contractors to clear hazard trees from roads so people could drive to popular places like Johnson Mesa. They’re working to rebuild fences for people with grazing allotments in the national forest. The Forest Service has planted tree seedlings on Walker Flats and has a project slated for Johnson Mesa. Thousands more acres will be planted over the next decade.

In April, all but one trail within the burn scar was open, says Kenneth Alcon, the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon coordinator for the Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger District, but people will need to use extreme caution, heeding the risks from hazard trees. The district is working with partners like the National Forest Foundation and New Mexico Wild to assess the trails on foot and horseback. They’re focused on repairing 14 damaged bridges and continuing to remove hazard trees. They’re also looking at mitigating the ongoing risks of floods since the upper watersheds are on Forest Service land.

The hardest hit recreation area in the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire was Gallinas Canyon, home of El Porvenir Campground, which served as a gateway to a major trail up to the iconic Hermit’s Peak. As of May, the campground remained closed due to flooding concerns. “In a lot of areas, the topsoil is just gone, down to granite,” Sanchez says, adding that the area will be prone to flash flooding for “a long, long time.”

The work will take decades, but some of the payoff is already visible. “We have areas that are recovering beautifully,” Sena says. “Others have limited recovery. In some areas, the creeks have downcut and banks are eroding. In others, the flush of sediment has created new riparian areas. It is such a mosaic.”

One of Sena’s goals is to hire as many local contractors as possible. “This economy is based on cutting trees, harvesting latillas, and hunting—and folks that know how to move dirt with heavy equipment. Let’s get all those amazing skill sets and start a restoration economy.”

The state is also mapping the green islands within the burn scar. Much new vegetation has sprung up—all of it ripe for fire.

At high elevations, aspen trees are now spreading. They will create beautiful pockets of gold in the autumn. Thickening scrub oak shades burned soil. Reseeding has stabilized the soil in some areas.

Like the landscape, the people will eventually adapt. But for now, many are still wrestling with financial hardship and, perhaps more importantly, a profound sense of loss. They’re feeling the term known as “solastalgia”—a homesickness that occurs even while home, for the place they once knew.

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