Jan-Willem Jansens is the owner and principal of Ecotone Landscape Planning, LLC, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, serving communities across northern New Mexico.
As a FACNM Leader, Jan-Willem brings over 30 years of experience working in New Mexico, with a focus on landscape management planning, ecological restoration design, and land stewardship education.
Below highlights some of Jan-Willem’s experiences and takeaways since joining the FACNM Network.
Q: Describe a life experience that helped shape your dedication and/or passion for your current work in building fire adapted communities.
A: My current work in building fire adapted communities stems from my deep interest in and passion for work that seeks to maintain a dynamic equilibrium between ecosystem health and people’s needs; in other words, in how to connect people with the landscape in a respectful, durable, and productive way. This is deeply important to me because I believe that working in this field contributes to the quality of life and eventual survival of communities and my own family in this region.
Intellectually, this interest is grounded in my understanding that natural, low- and mixed-intensity wildfire events are part of the essential ecological dynamics in Southwest ecosystems. Wildfire plays a critical role in the ecological succession and rejuvenation process of soil and plant communities. In that way, it maintains land health and the many ecosystem services that healthy ecosystems provide. Yet, the ecological functions of wildfire and its values for people are still poorly understood by large parts of the population (and its elected officials) in this country which leads to land uses and people’s expectations of the landscape, including fire behavior, that perpetuate ecosystems that are out of balance, do not have optimal ecological functioning conditions, and do not adequately provide nature’s benefits to people.
Witnessing ecosystem degradation during my lifetime, and particularly since the mega-drought in the Southwest that started in 1996, has shaped my curiosity and insights in the role of wildfire and how communities would need to adapt to wildfire. I apply a landscape-scale approach toward ecosystem restoration, which is beneficial in understanding the role of wildfire in ecosystems and how human communities ideally interact with fire dynamics.
Q: When you think about your work in wildfire preparedness, what is your vision for your community?
“My community” comprises several communities: my neighborhood, the city and county where I live, northern New Mexico as my primary work area, and the professional community of people I work with. It is my vision for this mosaic of communities that they “come to unity”, in the literal meaning of “community”, on how to live with wildfire. I hold a vision that people in all these communities participate in a civic process of listening and learning about their environment and human actions, and as a result, make good decisions in anticipation of and in response to needed adjustments in our relationships with the landscape and each other. This would then lead to a process of social, economic, land use, and stewardship adjustments in our relation to the land that supports the dynamic equilibrium I mentioned above as the root understanding of my vision.
Q: What are one or two projects, partnerships, or efforts you’re especially proud of?
A: I believe that it is useful to identify projects or collaborations that are illustrative or educational to bring forward for others to explore. Such initiatives would naturally be those that are collaborative, long-term, and landscape-scale in nature. For me, those include my work between 1998 and the present in developing landscape-wide collaboration for ecosystem conservation and restoration in the Galisteo Basin, including the recent completion of a CWPP for the greater Eldorado area; my work between 2009 and the present in developing landscape-wide community awareness, collaboration, and planning initiatives that led to many ecosystem restoration projects for forests, wetlands, and Piñon-Juniper ecosystems in the Lower Embudo Valley, including a forest plan for the Las Trampas area and a CWPP for the Dixon Fire District; and ongoing planning work of the last few years toward achieving a common understanding of needed land health improvements and how to implement them in the post-fire landscape of the Southeast Jemez Plateau area, together with local pueblos and many other partners. At a smaller scale, my contribution of a research study and conceptual plan for forest management – aimed at snow and water retention – in the Cimarron Range as part of a watershed conservation plan for the Cimarron watershed between 2019 and 2021 illustrates how holistic, focused, and creative research in forest planning can generate far reaching results. This plan led – in part – to the completion of a CWPP for Colfax County, the award of a FAWRA grant for private land forest restoration in the area, a congressional appropriation for forest restoration on the Philmont Scout Ranch, and several large CWDG grants for large scale forest restoration in the Cimarron Range and the Moreno Valley.
Q: What challenges or barriers have you faced in your work, and how have you worked through them?
A: The challenges and barriers I encountered have been many. The basic recipe for working through them includes being patient, persistent, curious, creative, showing an understanding of people associated with the challenges, and keeping an eye on the larger end goal. Most challenges are either procedural (including limited resources commensurate to the task or process) or behavioral (communication and teamwork). Good communication, a positive, constructive attitude, and management skills, including team role management, are essential to persevere.
Q: How has being a part of the FACNM Network supported or shaped your work?
A: Being part of the FACNM community provides a network of peers with a broad background in experiences and a community of people with similar goals and aspirations. This has been important for me for learning purposes and for working with the knowledge that “we were all in it together” and feeling far from alone in this work despite of its enormous scale and scope.
Q: What advice would you give to someone stepping into a similar role or just beginning this work?
A: People interested in becoming involved with building fire adapted communities might benefit from approaching their involvement with patience, curiosity, humility, and a listening and learning attitude rather than bringing a specific action agenda. Much of the work of building fire adapted communities is that of collaborative learning. They may benefit from the wisdom embodied in the “4-Returns Framework” of Commonland, which highlights community-driven planning steps, such as seeking a common understanding, pursuing outcomes such as inspirational returns (hope, collaboration, cultural and artistic improvements), ecosystem returns, social returns, and financial returns, working at a landscape scale, and approaching one’s commitment with the notion that it takes a generation (25+ years) to make meaningful changes. People engaging in fire adapted communities might benefit from exploring how to build productive connections among people and between people and the land.
