Wildfire Wednesday #179: Red Flag Warnings, Fire Restrictions, and Burn Bans Explained

When weather conditions turn hot, dry, and windy, the risk of a single spark igniting a wildfire increases dramatically. During these periods of elevated fire danger, fire professionals and land management agencies rely on several tools to inform the public about the risk and outline actions that can help prevent human-caused fires. Terms like Red Flag Warning, stage restrictions, and burn bans are being used more frequently as prolonged drought, dry fuels, and extreme weather become more common. Just last week, parts of the Cibola National Forest and National Grasslands implemented Stage II fire restrictions, highlighting how quickly conditions can shift across the region. While these terms are often used together, they serve different purposes.

Below, we break down what each designation means, how they are determined, and the types of restrictions or precautions that may accompany each notice. By knowing why these measures are implemented, communities can make safer decisions, follow local regulations, and help reduce the risk of human-caused wildfires during periods of elevated fire danger.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

All the best,
Megan

Red Flag Warnings

What is a Red Flag Warning?

The origin of the name, Red Flag Warning, is a literal one, according to Tamara Wall of the Desert Research Institute: “If there was… high fire danger, local fire stations would go and run a red flag up the flagpole. It was a very visual, kind of pre-mass communications way to signal to people in the area that it was a high-danger day” (NPR, 4/14/23).

According to the National Weather Service (NWS), which issues these alerts in conjunction with local and state agencies, a Red Flag Warning is part of a weather forecast which indicates a local increase in fire danger risk in the next 12 to 24 hours. This increased risk is due to a combination of critical fuel conditions and critical weather conditions (warm temperatures, very low humidities, and strong winds). This means that if a wildfire starts, the conditions are right for it to spread rapidly and be difficult to contain.

This combination of 1. low relative humidity (RH), 2. strong surface wind, 3. unstable air (an incoming or outgoing storm system that creates a significant temperature differential between the land surface and lower atmosphere), and 4. drought creates critical fire weather (NWCG, Critical Fire Weather). When it comes to issuing a Red Flag Warning, primary criteria include relative humidity of 15% or less combined with sustained surface winds, or frequent gusts, of 25 mph or greater. Both conditions must occur simultaneously for at least 3 hours out of a 12-hour period, according to the National Weather Service. Meteorologists also consider how all forecasted weather elements combine to create hazardous conditions (e.g. moderate humidity combined with high temperatures and high winds), even if they don’t fit the humidity and wind criteria individually.

When you see a Red Flag Warning, it means that critical fire weather is currently or will soon be occurring. Red Flag Warnings differ in timing from a fire weather watch, which is a longer-term forecast that warns of the possible development of Red Flag conditions in the next 72 hours. Fire Weather Watches may be issued with meteorologists forecasting up to 8 days in advance, whereas Red Flag Warnings are only issued when the critical fire weather conditions meeting the criteria for these Warnings are expected to begin in the next 12-24 hours.

The alert announcing a Red Flag Warning, whether online, on the news, or on your weather app, will usually indicate for how long the Red Flag Warning is forecasted to last. Fire management personnel take Red Flag Warnings into account and may respond by changing staffing numbers or preemptively moving resources into a certain region to be prepared for a potential ignition. During extended periods of high risk, local authorities may consider policy decisions like banning campfires or closing specific areas.

How to Respond

Adjust your behaviors accordingly to avoid creating a spark that could ignite a larger fire.

  • DO NOT burn debris piles.

  • If you are allowed to burn in burn barrels in your area, cover them with a weighted metal cover.

  • DO NOT throw cigarettes or matches on the ground or out of a moving vehicle.

  • If outdoor fires are allowed, make sure to extinguish them properly. Drown fires and charcoal with plenty of water and stir with a shovel to make sure everything is cold to the touch with bare skin.

    • Never leave a fire or barbeque unattended. Sparks or embers can blow into leaves or grass, ignite a fire, and quickly spread.

  • Avoid parking a recently driven vehicle on dry grass or other areas with vegetative cover.

  • Ensure that no chains or hanging metal are dragging from your vehicle or tow-behind trailer which could cause a spark.

Fire Restrictions

What are fire restrictions?

In the U.S., fire stage restrictions are a set of regulations that come in three tiers to limit activities and possibly even access to segments of public land (e.g., a national forest or ranger district) during periods of high fire risk. Fire restrictions are put in place by land managers to reduce the risk of human-caused wildfire ignitions during periods of high fire danger and severe weather conditions. The decision to implement fire restrictions is based on various factors, including the availability of firefighting resources, current drought conditions, weather forecast, and fuel moisture levels. On national forests, managers may consider implementing restrictions if at least three of the following conditions are present: (1) 1,000 hour fuel content is in the 90th percentile or above; (2) three-day mean energy release component (a measure within the NFDRS that determines potential heat that could be released if fuel was burned, indicating a fire might be hotter and harder to suppress) is at the 90th percentile or above on the forest or district’s dominant fuel type , (3) live fuel moisture content is 75% or less, (4) wildland fires are impacting available suppression resource capacity; (5) the area is receiving a high occurrence of wildland fire, and (6) adverse fire weather is predicted to continue (NIFC, 2021).

Managers often coordinate with state, county, and federal partners to implement fire restrictions, but because different agencies manage different lands, restrictions may not always align across boundaries. For example, a national forest may be under restrictions while nearby county or municipal lands are not. It is worthy of noting, different agencies and entities may also use different criteria or require different approval processes to implement stage restrictions, so visitors should always check the rules for the specific area they plan to visit.

Below are the three stages of fire restrictions and the common prohibited activities initiated by these restrictions on federal lands. Local variations on prohibited activities may exist.

Stage 1

Stage 1 fire restrictions reduce wildfire risk while allowing limited recreation.

Typically prohibited (unless otherwise specified):

  • Building, maintaining, attending, or using campfires, charcoal grills, or other open fires except in designated, developed recreation sites

  • Smoking, except inside an enclosed vehicle or building, within a developed recreation site, or in an area at least three feet in diameter that is cleared of all flammable materials

  • Operating chainsaws or similar equipment without a USDA- or SAE-approved spark arrester

  • Welding or using acetylene torches or other open-flame devices outside of cleared areas (usually at least 10 feet in radius)

  • Discharging fireworks

Generally allowed:
Portable stoves, lanterns, and heaters fueled by propane or other liquefied petroleum fuels, provided they are used in cleared areas and meet manufacturer safety specifications with an on/off switch.

Stage 2

Lincoln National Forest Stage 2 Fire Restrictions - May 2025

Stage 2 fire restrictions further limit ignition sources during very high fire danger.

Typically prohibited (unless otherwise specified):

  • All campfires, charcoal grills, and open fires on federal lands

  • Smoking, except in an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site, or in a cleared, nonflammable area

  • Discharging fireworks or using explosives

  • Operating motor vehicles off designated roads (except in developed parking areas or trailheads)

  • Operating equipment powered by internal combustion engines (such as chainsaws) without a spark arrester, or using equipment that produces open flames (e.g., welding); some activities may be restricted to specific hours

Generally allowed:
Portable stoves and lanterns using gas, jellied petroleum, or pressurized liquid fuel, as well as fully enclosed wood-burning stoves with proper spark arrester screens.

Stage 3

While the stage restriction system is used for both public and private lands depending on the authorizing entity, stage 3 restrictions are only used on public lands. Stage 3 restrictions involve full closure of a forest or designated area. During a closure:

  • All roads, trails, and access points may be closed

  • Public entry and recreation are prohibited

  • All activities, regardless of type, are suspended until conditions improve

These closures are implemented only when fire danger is extreme and continued public access would pose significant safety risks or hinder firefighting operations.

Southwest Area Fire Restrictions Interactive Map

New Mexico Forestry Division put together a dashboard to provide the public with a real-time map showing current fire restrictions on public lands in the Southwest. Map data is compiled from various sources and mostly displays federal and state lands, with county restrictions reflected when provided. You should contact your local fire department or government agency for the latest fire restriction information.

Fines and Penalties

Once fire restrictions are in effect, violation of prohibited activities may result in citations, fines, or criminal charges. It is important to not however, that penalties may vary depending on the agency and jurisdiction enforcing the restrictions.

On lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, violating stage restrictions is generally considered a misdemeanor. Penalties include a fine of up to $5,000, imprisonment for up to six months, or both.

Local jurisdictions in New Mexico may impose different penalties. For example, on county-managed lands in Los Alamos County, a person found in violation of fire restrictions may receive a written citation and face criminal penalties, but no explicit fine amount is listed in their order. In contrast, within the City of Albuquerque, violations of fire restrictions may be punishable by a fine of up to $500, imprisonment for up to 90 days, or both.

Burn Bans

Burn bans are another tool agencies and fire administrators use to prevent wildfires and protect public safety during dry weather and high-fire risk conditions. Burn bans, also known as open burning restrictions, are temporary regulations that limit or prohibit outdoor burning activities such as campfires, bonfires, burning yard waste, agricultural burns, and the use of fireworks. Depending on the severity of conditions, some bans may still allow certain low-risk activities, like cooking with propane grills or using enclosed stoves, while stricter bans prohibit nearly all open flames. Essentially, a burn ban means that outdoor burning is restricted or prohibited within a designated area to reduce the risk of accidental fires spreading.

Burn bans are typically enacted due to factors like drought, low humidity, dry vegetation, high winds, and elevated temperatures, all of which significantly increase wildfire potential. These restrictions are usually issued by local or county governments, as seen in Colfax County, which recently issued a burn ban placing several fire districts under restriction. They are temporary and remain in effect until weather conditions improve and fire danger decreases. Public notices, official county websites, and local fire agencies typically provide updates on current burn ban status, exemptions, and enforcement details.

Additional Resources and Upcoming Opportunities

New Mexico Fire Adapted Funding Library

Did you know there’s a dedicated funding library created specifically for New Mexico community leaders, landowners, and wildfire practitioners? The New Mexico Fire Adapted Funding Library helps users quickly identify potential funding sources for wildfire adaptation, risk reduction, and post-fire recovery efforts.

The library features funding opportunities, direct links for additional details, and a sortable feature that allows you to filter by eligibility type. There are currently 12 open funding opportunities accepting applications, and the database is updated regularly as new programs become available.

View the Library
 

Webinar: Community Response to Wildfire
March 11 | 11-12PM MDT

As part of the Fire Science You Can Use webinar series, Rocky Mountain Research Station is hosting a webinar on March 11 at 11AM MDT that will feature two presentations about community response to wildfire. The presentations will discuss wildfire governance and community adaptation in fire-prone landscapes in the West, as well social media case studies from two wildfire events.

Register Here
 

As Southwest Wildfire Awareness Week (March 23–27) and National Wildfire Preparedness Day (May 2) approach, community leaders and fire practitioners are gearing up to host events and create meaningful opportunities to engage their communities. The Oregon State University Extension Fire Program has developed a helpful primer focused on engaging adult community members at the local level in wildfire preparedness efforts. The guide offers practical strategies for planning inclusive engagement activities, tailoring outreach to different adult learning styles, and incorporating trauma-informed approaches to better support the whole community.

For those organizing preparedness events this spring, this resource provides thoughtful, research-based guidance to strengthen outreach and impact!

View the primer

Wildfire Wednesdays #178: Preparing for Wind-Driven Grassland and Prairie Fires

Happy Wildfire Wednesday, FACNM readers!

New Mexico’s spring wildfire season kicked off last week with the 2,670-acre 352 Fire in the eastern plains near Tucumcari, quickly followed by the Brockman and Smith Fires in eastern NM. There are other large fires burning in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles; what they have in common is that they are burning through grasslands and prairies and are largely driven by these spring winds, causing very fast-moving fires through hot flashy fuels. As Nico Porcelli (National Weather Service) told KRQE News, “we’re kind of in the thick of it right now. We’ve already been seeing strong wind gusts between 50 and 70 miles per hour, mainly along and east of the central mountain chain.”

Still shot taken on the day of newsletter publication of several news articles on grassland fires in the southwest.

This newsletter often dives into wildfires and fire readiness for communities living in forested areas; however, rangelands (which include grasslands, shrublands, and prairies) cover nearly 60% of all western lands. Fire often plays a critical role in maintaining the health of these grasslands, but also can threaten homes, livestock, and infrastructure. Today’s newsletter touches on how communities can prepare for grassland and prairie fires, especially under windy conditions.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Stay safe and be well,
Rachel

Fire in Rangeland WUI

A Growing Risk

“Houses built near wildland vegetation are at greater risk of burning than those farther from the wildland-urban interface, a growing problem as housing developments expand and the climate becomes warmer… The number of homes destroyed by wildfires has doubled over the past 30 years, and most of them were in grasslands and shrublands, not near forests.”
— H. Jesse Smith

Rapid changes in wildfire patterns have been documented globally. Temperate grassland and savanna biomes have historically been some of the most frequently burned regions on Earth, and we know that fire behaves differently when burning in different vegetation types. “Crown fires in forests have the highest fire intensity and can produce many embers that can ignite houses that are far from a fire front. However, grassland and shrubland fires can spread rapidly when wind is strong, such as in the 2021 Marshall Fire near Boulder, Colorado, which destroyed more than a thousand houses. Furthermore, fuels recover quickly in grasslands and shrublands, such that areas can reburn within a few years, and these areas require different risk management strategies than forests.” (Radeloff et al., 2023). In landscapes where grasses are the predominant vegetative fuel type, these regions are characterized by an abundance of fine fuels and can be particularly vulnerable to wildfire due to their rapid fuel accumulation and high fire frequency.

Photo credit: Federal Fish and Wildlife Service (Grasslands of the American Southwest)

Fires have historically burned frequently in dry grasslands, returning every 2-10 years. However, increasingly arid conditions, modifications to grass-dominated landscapes, and invasive species have contributed to elevated wildfire behavior and risk. Expanding development and jurisdictional boundaries have fragmented grasslands, increasing the complexity of fire behavior and management and making suppression more challenging. Wildfires occurring in areas predominantly populated by fine rapidly igniting fuels, like those found in grass-dominated landscapes, can quickly impact communities within the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) with little forewarning. In such instances, standard predictions of fire spread may not be capable of issuing timely emergency warnings in advance of a fast-moving fire.

“Wet periods (such as monsoonal rains) often lead to heightened production of grass fuels, contributing to an increased risk of extreme fire behavior in subsequent dry years… The accumulation of highly combustible vegetation combined with arid, windy and open landscapes creates favorable conditions for large-scale fires. Although fires can occur at any time of the year the frequency and intensity of these fires depend on factors like precipitation and aboveground productivity (amount of vegetation biomass)… Grass fires can be intense and capable of generating significant heat aboveground. Because grassfires are often rapid spreading surface fires, temperatures peak quickly as fire passes, often killing the tops of living plants including trees leaving belowground vegetation unimpacted” (CSU, Grassland Fuels Management, 2019). Grassland fires are defined as being ‘exceptionally responsive’ to dry, hot, and windy conditions, meaning that grass fires ignited on high fire danger days build heat and speed very quickly.

Watch this video to learn more about how fire behaves in one type of grassland: desert grasslands of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts.

 

…………………………….

How to Prepare

Some properties have a higher risk for accidental fires, such as those located next to major highways, interstates or railroads. It is unreasonable to think there will be time to prepare property, livestock, equipment and family in the event of wildfire. Landowners should be aware that in the event a wildfire occurs under extreme weather conditions, there may not be enough time or resources available to protect homes and structures. Prepare for grass and rangeland fires by creating defensible space around buildings, knowing how to protect livestock and property, prioritizing your safety, and staying fire aware.

Defensible Space and Property Maintenance

  • Mow grass: during high fire danger, maintain grass at 4 inches or less, especially within a 30-foot radius of buildings, to minimize fire intensity. Mow grass low around flammable infrastructure, such as wooden fences. Watch this video to see how grass fires behave in mowed vs natural form grass.

  • Maintain vegetation: prune back trees and shrubs close to buildings ahead of fire season to reduce their flaming potential.

  • Create a fireproof “zone 0”: protect the area immediately surrounding (0-5 ft away) your home and outbuildings by:

    • Removing vegetation (grass, trees, shrubs, flowers, etc.) from the area immediately around the house and replacing it with noncombustible (e.g. gravel, crushed stone, or brick) ground cover,

    • Cleaning roof and gutters by removing leaves and debris and trimming back overhanging tree branches,

    • Not storing flammable items under deck or patio and moving flammable items (such as cloth cushions or plastic furniture) from porches ahead of a fire,

    • Moving all flammable materials away from exterior walls, including firewood, mulch, leaves, lumber piles, and other combustible items,

  • Remove fuel sources: move hay bales, stacked wood, and fuel containers at least 50 feet away from buildings.

  • Create firebreaks: in strategic areas, firebreaks (a noncombustible protective strip which has been cleared down to bare mineral soil) can be created to impede the path of a fire. However, many wind-driven grassland fires can have horizontal flame lengths exceeding 10 ft and may be able to cross over these barriers.

Preparation for Livestock, Rural Properties, and Insurability

Livestock preparation: **Protecting livestock from wildfire can be dangerous. Entering into an unburned pasture with significant fuel loads and limited escape routes to open gates or cut fences is inherently risky. Be aware of the fire location, direction and rate of spread before making a decision to enter a pasture; if you are unsure, do not enter.**

Photo credit: Dave Perozzi, Wrong Direction Farm

  • Maintain gates so they open easily and without tools,

  • Prepare safe areas for livestock within pastures - maximizing trampling along fence lines and in pasture corners, or creating grazed, paved, or irrigated areas,

  • Have a livestock evacuation plan that considers how and where livestock will be taken in the event of a wildfire,

  • Carry fence pliers to cut a rapid escape route if you find yourself trapped by fire.

Prevent fire ignitions

  • Time your mowing: during hot or dry times of the year, mow in the morning when it is cool and moist to avoid sparks from the equipment starting an ignition.

  • Avoid working on dry days: do not operate equipment which can spark in nearby vegetation during dry, windy, “fire watch,” or "red flag" conditions.

  • Use proper tools: use weed whackers/string trimmers instead of mowers in rocky areas to avoid sparks. If using this equipment, grass should be mowed to 6 inches or less, rather than 4 inches,

Emergency Planning and Awareness

  • Stay informed: monitor local weather and sign up for emergency text or email alerts.

  • Evacuation plan: prepare a "Go Kit" and ensure all family members know the escape routes.

  • Never approach: if a fire starts, do not try to take photos; leave immediately and call 911.

Beneficial fire


Oklahoma State Extension’s comprehensive fire preparation recommendations and NM Forestry Division provide a lot of additional information on how to prepare for grassland fire; many of these suggestions are applicable to all residents, regardless of where they live, especially recommendations for what to do if a wildfire is approaching and how to prepare to evacuate (see the end of the fact sheet). However, preparation is expensive and demands a lot of time. Start with the simple suggestions (e.g. keeping the grass close to structures mowed during fire season) and build out from there (creating a noncombustible 5’ zone, installing mesh over vents and under porches, etc.).

Upcoming Opportunities

FACNM Spring Microgrant

Looking to fund your community fire preparedness event? Apply for a FACNM Microgrant! FACNM Leaders and Members are eligible to apply for grants awards of up to $2,000 to provide financial assistance for:

  • convening wildfire preparedness events,

  • enabling on-the-ground community fire risk mitigation work, or

  • developing grant proposals for the sustainable longevity of their Fire Adapted Community endeavor.

The Spring application period is now open and applications will be accepted through March 20, 2026. Successful applicants will be notified of their award by March 30, 2026.

Learn more and apply for funding
 

Join FACNM on Tuesday, March 3, 2026 from 12-1 PM for a webinar featuring the New Mexico Office of Superintendent of Insurance (OSI) as they introduce the Wildfire Prepared Home Program. OSI will provide an overview of the program’s key elements and opportunities now available to residents in NM. OSI will share specific actions homeowners can take to harden their homes and improve surrounding property, how these mitigation efforts are evaluated, and how they may contribute to improved insurability in wildfire-prone areas of New Mexico.

 

The Fire Circle: A Community Fair on Wildfire Mitigation, Response, and Restoration

The New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, Forest Stewards Guild, The Nature Conservancy, New Mexico Forestry Division and Wildfire Resiliency Training Center (WRTC) are hosting a fair-style event, The Fire Circle, at Luna Community College this spring. Attendees will find educational tables and booths, engaging and informational presentations, and family-friendly activities!

This event will provide an approachable space where residents can engage with and access resources related to the full spectrum of wildfire, including mitigation (home hardening, thinning, prescribed fire, etc.), response (suppression, mutual aid, evacuation, etc.), and recovery (forest restoration, community recovery, cascading events, funding, etc.). Please save the date, spread the word, and join us on Saturday, March 21!

The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round (February)

February 2026 Edition

Please feel encouraged to adapt and share these materials through your own channels.

About The Spark

The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round is a unified, statewide messaging campaign that promotes year-round wildfire preparedness through consistent and coordinated outreach each month. It is produced by a core group of partners, including FACNM, BLM–New Mexico, NM State Forestry Division, USDA Forest Service Southwestern Region, Forest Stewards Guild, and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI).

The bulletin below is designed to communicate wildfire topics to broad audiences, with this month focusing on community wildfire protections plans (CWPPs) and how they benefit community wildfire preparedness.

Download the Bulletin
Download an accessible, readable version of the bulletin
Download a print friendly version of the bulletin

To view The Spark’s main page and view archived Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round messaging, click here: The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round — Fire Adapted NM

Wildfire Wednesdays #177: Using Technology to Improve Fire Detection, Suppression, and Mitigation

Happy Wednesday FACNM community,

As wildfires grow more frequent, communities around the world are looking for better ways to detect ignitions early and stop the spread of wildfire into the built environment. Traditional fire response methods, while still essential, are no longer the only tool available to land managers and community leaders. New technologies are playing a critical role in helping firefighters, emergency managers, and communities respond faster, smarter, and more safely.

From AI-powered cameras to satellite monitoring and drones, technology is reshaping how fires are detected, tracked, mitigated, and suppressed.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
Megan

Technology to Improve Fire Detection, Suppression, and Mitigation

Smarter, Faster Fire Detection

Early detection is one important factor in preventing small fires from becoming large disasters. Historically, wildfires were most commonly reported by residents calling into local dispatch centers or spotted by staff and volunteers stationed in fire lookout towers. While these methods have proven effective over time, they can be slow, particularly as land mangers try to locate the cause of the smoke, or may be hindered by limited visibility.

With today’s technology, advanced detection systems are helping spot fires within minutes of smoke appearing in the air or heat being produced on the ground. These systems provide fire managers with earlier alerts, more precise locations, and better situational awareness at the very beginning of an incident.

Networks of high-definition cameras installed on towers, ridgelines, and mountaintops are now being used to continuously scan large landscapes. These cameras rely on artificial intelligence platforms, such as Pano AI and ALERTWest, to detect smoke patterns and automatically alert fire agencies and other authorized partners. Unlike traditional cameras, AI-enabled systems are trained to distinguish between smoke and non-fire visual disturbances such as fog, dust, or cloud cover, significantly reducing false alarms and improving response confidence.

New Mexico Examples

Screen capture of the camera's view on 2/2/26

The public view of the camera, Tesuque Peak 1, on the ALERTWest website. Visit ALERTWest - Tesuque Peak 1 to view the current camera picture.

One local example is the Tesuque Peak 1 camera, which is publicly viewable on the ALERTWest website. In July 2025, the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition installed a fire camera atop Tesuque Peak to improve early detection across large portions of the Santa Fe Fireshed. This includes the critically important upper Santa Fe Municipal Watershed, the Pecos Wilderness, and the Rio en Medio and Tesuque drainages—areas where a fast-moving wildfire could have serious impacts on water supply, recreation, and nearby communities. The camera, which can see about 25 miles during the day and 50 miles at night, as well as zoom in up to 40x magnification, continually scans the landscape for smoke. ALERTWest uses artificial intelligence to flag potential fires on the camera feed, which then alerts human technicians to confirm risk and notify local response agencies.

A map of wildfire-detecting camera stations planned for New Mexico through 2026, provided by contractor Pano AI.

A map of wildfire-detecting camera stations planned for New Mexico through 2026, provided by contractor Pano AI. Photo credit: Santa Fe New Mexican.

New Mexico is also expanding its camera-based detection efforts statewide. State officials invested in a pilot program consisting of 11 wildfire detection cameras, to be placed in areas around Santa Fe and Albuquerque. The New Mexico Forestry Division, in partnership with electric utilities Public Service Company of New Mexico (PNM) and Southwestern Public Service Company, has contracted with Pano AI to build out the state’s first comprehensive AI-enabled wildfire detection camera network.

Each tower the company is building includes two rotating, high-resolution cameras that are stitched together to create a 360-degree panoramic image updated every minute. Pano AI uses artificial intelligence trained to detect the earliest signs of smoke. Potential fire starts flagged by the software are then reviewed by analysts on staff before an alert is sent to local emergency response agencies and dispatchers. The camera network can provide precise location data for wildfires, enabling agencies to send the appropriate amount of staff and resources to the right location.

Satellites are also playing a critical role in early wildfire detection. Modern satellite systems are used by researchers, fire officials, and land managers to identify heat signatures and smoke plumes across large regions, including remote or inaccessible terrain. In some cases, satellites can detect a fire before it is visible from the ground, providing agencies with a valuable head start—especially in areas without ground-based detection infrastructure.

Real-time Data for Better Decisions

Detecting a fire earlier is only the first step. Once a fire ignites, technology helps responders access accurate, real-time information to guide decisions about suppression, evacuations, and firefighter safety.

Drones—often referred to as unmanned aerial systems (UAS)—are increasingly used to support firefighting operations. Drones can quickly provide eyes on the ground in places where it may be unsafe, inefficient, or impossible to send crews. They allow fire managers to gather information about an unfolding incident much faster than a traditional on-the-ground size-up. Drones also allow opportunities for surveillance in areas with dangerous terrain or during low visibility, some of the most dangerous conditions for wildland fire pilots.

Equipped with thermal imaging cameras, drones can fly over active fires to locate lingering hotspots hidden by smoke, vegetation, or darkness. Without this technology, firefighters often must physically walk burn scars to search for remaining heat, an effort that can take significant time and manpower depending on a fire’s size. Drone data allows crews to be dispatched more safely and efficiently, focusing only on areas that are still producing heat and pose a risk of reignition.

Drones are also particularly valuable during overnight operations, when manned aircraft are often grounded due to safety concerns. UAS can continue collecting data on fire behavior, helping incident commanders maintain situational awareness around the clock. In post-fire situations, drones also help assess damage quickly, allowing communities to plan recovery efforts sooner and more effectively.

Innovations in Fire Suppression

Seneca drone dispensing water to put out a spot fire.

Seneca drone dispensing aerated Class A foam at a precise target. Photo credit: Seneca.

Technology is also changing how fires are suppressed once they are detected. Companies like Seneca, a resilience technology firm, are developing aerial systems designed to support fire suppression using artificial intelligence to locate and attack fires before they spread. Seneca’s drones can carry more than 100 pounds of water or foam, deploy suppression agents at over 100 PSI, and be launched remotely by an operator from any location. These systems have the potential to reduce response times to under ten minutes, allowing fires to be attacked during the critical early window when a single ignition could otherwise grow into a large incident.

Drones are also now being used to deliver supplies to firefighters working in difficult or dangerous terrain. While they have not replaced traditional logistics operations, drones are proving useful for delivering small but essential items such as water, tools, and medical supplies, when speed, access, and safety are priorities.

In wildfire-prone regions, utilities are also adopting technology to reduce ignition risk. Sensors and automated shutoff systems are being used to de-energize power lines during extreme wind events, helping prevent electrical equipment from sparking fires under dangerous conditions.

Supporting Mitigation and Communities

USFS UAS operator explains the system to members of the New Mexico’s All Hands All Lands Burn Team. Drone sits on a helipad landing.

USFS UAS operator explains the system to members of New Mexico’s All Hands All Lands burn team.

Beyond detection and suppression, technology is playing a growing role in mitigation and prescribed fire operations. Drones are now commonly used to support prescribed burns by conducting aerial ignitions. These UAS can carry ping-pong-ball-sized ignition spheres filled with a potassium-based compound that ignites on impact, allowing managers to ignite large interior areas of units without needing to send in crews with torches.

This past fall, the Carson National Forest used a UAS to support ignitions during the Ojo Sarco prescribed burn. Ariel ignitions allowed firefighters to avoid steep, dangerous terrain and focus their efforts on holding the line downwind to ensure that fire did not cross onto private property or impact the water delivery infrastructure for the community of Ojo Sarco.

Prescribed burns and vegetation thinning are also increasingly guided by data and modeling tools. Using smart sensors and high-resolution imagery from drones and ground-based systems, researchers are training models to process real-time environmental data alongside weather forecasts and historical fire behavior. These tools help land managers better understand how a planned burn may behave across a specific landscape, with the ability to account for factors like fuel types, slope, and topography.

A man operating a remote controlled masticator.

Luis Sotto, a foreman with BurnBot, works on fuel mitigation Tuesday with a masticator on the Rim Trail in Los Alamos. Photo credit: Michael G. Seamans/The New Mexican.

Technology is also being used for fuel mitigation. Los Alamos County Fire has contracted BurnBot, a California-based company, to do fuel removal using a remote controlled masticator and a “BurnBot,” which is a vehicle that conducts prescribed burns in a chamber and then suppresses them. The benefit of this technology, particularly the masticators, is they run on slopes that conventional masticators would not be able to operate on and the speed at which the technology works. According to reporting by The Santa Fe New Mexican, two BurnBot mastication machines can treat approximately three acres per day, a task that would typically take a 20-person crew nearly twice as long since they have to cut the fuel and then return for chipping.

Looking Ahead

Technology alone will not solve the growing wildfire challenge. However, many fire professionals increasingly view technology as a force multiplier, augmenting existing capacity rather than replacing firefighters. Tools like drones, cameras, and satellites can significantly expand a department’s ability to detect, respond to, and suppress fires threatening communities and critical infrastructure.

As noted in a Grist article, drones are “far from a silver bullet.” Battery life is limited, they can only complete flights of about 15 minutes on average, and human verification, often referred to as “ground truthing,” is still essential. Therefore, technology works best when paired with experienced personnel and strong operational planning.

One of the biggest challenges moving forward is ensuring that under-resourced fire departments and non-federal land management organizations can access and sustain these tools. While technology has proven effective across the West, long-term investment and funding are needed so innovation can keep pace with increasing wildfire risk and so tools like fire cameras and UAS can be adopted more widely across New Mexico.

Learn More and Stay Engaged

Webinars

  • Lead by the IAFC Technology Council, "Tech Talk Tuesdays" occur twice a month as live discussions where professionals dive into the latest advancements in public safety technology. Each session features interviews and demos with first responder leaders, exploring innovative solutions and real-world applications that are shaping the future of emergency response.

Conferences

  • Attend the Red Sky Summit, hosted by by Convective Capital, with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and other philanthropic sponsors. The Summit’s objective is to develop and scale innovative, technology-based solutions to the wildfire crisis.

    • Date: November 4, 2026 | San Francisco, CA

  • Attend the Technology Summit International (TSI), hosted by the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Sessions dig in with hands-on, face-to-face, and problem-focused experiences. This is a chance to test tools, question experts, and explore opportunities and challenges with the professionals across the fire service.

    • Date: December 8-10, 2026 | Denver, CO

Upcoming Opportunities and Additonal Resources

The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) Wildfire Programs is accepting proposals from fire departments for Fuels Reduction Projects.

The goal is to facilitate on-the-ground fuel reduction projects in communities across the country. The funding opportunity is for fire and emergency response agencies to implement or expand community fuels-reduction projects in their jurisdictions. Funding can support staffing costs, contractual services, purchase of mitigation PPE, and purchase of small equipment (valued at less than $5,000). Fire departments that work closely with the Forest Service and other partners on cross-boundary fuels-reduction projects and that demonstrate financial need will receive the highest priority for funding.

A maximum of $15,000 per department is available, with a minimum cash match of 5% of the award total. Applications are due February 27, 2026 at 11:59 PM EDT.

Apply Now
 

NM Forestry Division: Hiring a Wildfire Prepared Program Coordinator

The New Mexico Forestry Division is hiring a full‑time Wildfire Prepared Program Coordinator, based in either Albuquerque or Santa Fe. This position will lead a new statewide initiative designed to help homes and properties in New Mexico better withstand wildfire.

The position duties include coordinating the New Mexico Fire Planning Task Force and analyzing data and preparing the annual Communities At Risk report. The position will work closely with other state agencies to develop standards for defensible space and wildfire prepared structures; create grant guidelines, eligibility requirements and scoring criteria for expenditures from the Wildfire Prepared Fund; create policies and procedures for the Wildfire Prepared Program including allocating budget and setting budget priorities; and more.

Application closes February 11, 2026.

Learn more and Apply Now
 

This webinar from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and Southern Rockies Fire Science Network will highlight findings from the Wildland Firefighter Health Scoping Review, which analyzed more than 250 studies published between 1985–2025. The review shows that while some groups—like Interagency Hotshot Crews—are frequently studied, others, including support personnel, receive far less attention. Research on cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic disease risks is growing, but long-term health studies remain scarce. Although many strategies have been proposed to reduce health risks, few have been formally evaluated.

This webinar will also introduce the Wildland Firefighters’ Science Needs Assessment, a new effort to identify priority research areas and strengthen collaboration between practitioners and researchers to better support firefighter health and wellbeing.

Register Now
 

Understanding Forestry Terms: A Glossary for Private Landowners

In discussing forest land management and forest operations, you will often hear and read words and phrases that are unique to the natural resources professions. You will also encounter some common terms that have special meanings when applied to forestry. NC State Extension published a list of terms that defines more than 150 forest resource terms to help everyone in conversing about forestry matters and to help make informed decisions about your forestland.

View the full Glossary

Wildfire Wednesday #176: Evaluating the Effects of Fire (FEMO)

Happy Friday, Fire Adapted community!

Land managers, fire personnel, private landowners, and others all work, in varying capacities, to care for the land under their jurisdiction. However, caring for the land can mean different things, to different people, in different places. We live in a fire-adapted environment, so fire (prescribed or wildfire) is one consideration when thinking about caring for and managing the land.

It all begs the question - how do we understand the effects of our land management decisions? How do we improve our management of wildfire, intentional fire, and fire-adapted ecosystems? This is where monitoring (observing and tracking changes in ecosystems over time) and observations-based adaptive management comes in. For fire specifically, we can monitor fire effects (the way that fire changes the area it burns through) to understand the conditions and tools used to influence fire outcomes. Today’s newsletter dives deeper into the what, where, and why of Fire Effects Monitoring.

This Fire Friday features:

Be well,
Rachel

Fire Effects Monitoring: the Basics

What is Fire Effects Monitoring?

A visualization of the adaptive management cycle.
Illustration credit: National Park Service.

Fire effects monitoring is a term used to describe the observation and evaluation of landscape conditions before, during, and after fires. It helps us understand how those fires impact ecosystems, assess management effectiveness, ensure firefighter safety, and guide future land management decisions (a process called adaptive management).

Why is it done?

  • Safety: observations provide real-time information on fire behavior, spread, perimeter location, and changing conditions that can impact these things for tactical decisions during burns.

  • Effectiveness: monitoring measures ecosystem health, damage, and benefits over time, providing unbiased data that can be used to evaluate if fires meet hazardous fuel reduction/ecological goals or otherwise improve ecosystem health and function.

  • Knowledge: knowing real-world fire effects provides actionable data and lessons learned for adaptive management, providing suggestions for improvement on future burns.

Who does it?

A fire effects monitor records on-site weather data (temperature, relative humidity, wind, etc.) prior to ignitions on a prescribed burn. Having up-to-date weather and conditions information allows burn managers to make the best decisions about how, where, and if to light a burn. In this photo, a red pocket kit with scientific tools for measuring weather parameters can been seen sitting on top of the FEMO’s fire pack.

Fire Effects Monitoring Officers (FEMOs), also called Fire Effects Monitors, collect data to inform their team’s understanding of what fire is doing and changing on the ground and help managers assess safety and achieve objectives. They are individuals who have experience with fire and have received training on how to measure and evaluate the different metrics necessary to determine fire effects. Depending on their affiliation, these Monitors will follow different Fire Effects Monitoring protocols and focus on collecting different data. For example, Monitors with the National Park Service regularly and frequently collect in-depth environmental data from specific locations (called plots), allowing them to directly compare pre-fire conditions to post-fire measurements (check out the NPS monitoring handbook for more information). Monitors with the U.S. Forest Service generally focus on providing their personal observations of wildfires to their module leader, crew boss, or other fireline supervisors to inform safety, suppression, and tactical decisions. Monitors with nonprofits, universities, and other organizations will tailor monitoring protocols to their unique needs, or the needs of each individual burn (e.g. focusing on smoke observations during a prescribed burn to ensure that nearby communities are not being unnecessarily impacted).

What is collected?

FEMO data collection can include measurements of fuel (amount and condition of flammable material), fire behavior, weather, smoke, and environmental effects on vegetation and fuels. On wildfires, monitoring helps maintain tactical situational awareness for the safety of fire crews and determine whether the team is achieving incident goals. On intentional (prescribed or controlled) burns, monitoring helps to ensure that fire behavior and effects remain within the range of conditions allowed by the prescription (the fire plan which establishes objectives, desired effects, and allowable fire behavior). Some data, like weather observations and fire behavior and spread, will generally be collected daily for each day that the fire is active, while other data, like measurements of fuel and vegetation moisture or amount of fuel consumed, will be collected less frequently. The type and frequency of data collection is based on incident management needs, reporting requirements, and objectives.

How FEMO Findings Are Used

So what happens to all of this monitoring data?

During a burn, a FEMO’s observations may be used to improve the SPOT weather forecast (a location-specific hourly weather forecast from NOAA) or help the burn boss (individual overseeing a prescribed burn) understand whether they are meeting their burn objectives. This can help the whole team adjust their actions and be immediately reactive to improve outcomes in the short-term (while a fire is ongoing).

An example FEMO report from a prescribed burn in west-central New Mexico. The contents of the report will vary based on landowner needs and the individual writing the report, but they will generally contain maps and background on the burn, objectives and methods, a summary of the burn activities and weather, and detailed information on the burn behavior, smoke, and fire effects.

After a burn, FEMO observations may be summarized into a report which is shared with all incident leaders and partners. FEMO reports provide a clear and fully encompassing written record of a fire’s background, timeline, effects, and lessons learned. They can be referred to after the fact, allowing fire practitioners and managers to see the big picture, learn from their mistakes, and adapt their approach for the next burn, leading to better outcomes in the long term. (e.g. A fire manager might see that fuels reduction objectives were not met because the temperature was low and humidity was high, moderating fire intensity and behavior. From this they could learn that they’ll need to burn that area a little hotter next time to consume the slash and woody debris they want gone.)

FEMO reports can also be shared with external partners and agencies, contributing to collective and collaborative knowledge sharing. As lifelong students of fire there is always something to learn from others’ experiences.

Ecological Benefits of Fire

Periodic, low- to moderate-intensity fire can have many positive effects across ecosystems. Keep reading to learn more or click on any of these resources to dive deeper.

Deep duff, or pine needles and other forest debris, can be seen piled at the base of this fire-adapted ponderosa pine tree following decades of fire suppression and interruption of the natural fire cycle. Reintroduction of fire to these systems can “clean up” the forest, cycle nutrients back into the soil, and help restore resilience to severe fire, drought, and pests and disease.
Photo credit: Sharon Hood

“Cleans” the forest floor

  • When fire travels through the forest understory, it removes the topmost layer of leaves, needles, and dead or decaying plants. By removing this debris, it opens up space on the forest floor where growth of new plants is encouraged and reduces the amount of fuel that could burn in a future fire, therefore reducing the likelihood of negative future outcomes.

  • Returns nutrients to soil

    The relationship between fire and soil nutrients is complex because of the interactions among many factors. Some soil nutrients will be lost as a low- to moderate-intensity fire consumes organic material in the upper soil layers (greater nutrient losses occurs with higher fire intensity). However, in the long-term fire helps to kickstart the nutrient cycle (the amount of available nutrients in an ecosystem) by increasing soil nutrient turnover rates and redistributing nutrients through the soil profile. For example, soil fertility increases after low-intensity fire as the fire chemically converts nutrients in dead plants that would otherwise take much longer to decay and return to the soil.

  • Increases diversity

    When fire is removed from or suppressed in fire-adapted forests, it leads to over-crowding (trees growing thick and dense) and prevents sunlight from reaching the forest floor, creating intense competition for water and available nutrients. Low- and moderate-intensity fire creates gaps in the canopy, allowing sunlight to filter through and (after several years) increasing the availability of soil nutrients and water. The right kind of fire can also reduce invasive/noxious weed infestations, allowing an opportunity for native plants to grow and establish. Some native species require fire for seed germination!

  • Creates new habitat

    Fire removes thick brush, maintains open meadows, and thins out dense forests, all creating new habitat for animals and birds. Trees that do not survive the fire create new habitat for insects and cavity nesting birds and animals. When a fire burns in a mosaic pattern (burns at variable intensity and severity depending on the terrain and conditions), it creates a diverse patchwork of habitat for different species of wildlife.

  • Kills pests and diseases

    Fire can reduce or eradicate populations of beetles, mites and other harmful pests, reducing disease and keeping forests healthier.

The fire cycle, simplified.
Photo credit: Harvey Mudd College

Additional Resources

Upcoming Webinars

27 January, 12pm MT: Aspen Restoration Using Intentional Fire: A Case Study from Monroe Mountain, UT
This webinar from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and Southern Rockies Fire Science Network will offer information on an aspen restoration case study from south-central Utah which used high-intensity, high-severity prescribed fire coupled with conifer thinning to improve aspen ecosystem health.

Register Now

4 February, 11:30am MT: Loss of Old-Growth Forest to Fire
Fire suppression and past selective logging of large trees have fundamentally changed frequent-fire-adapted forests. In this Prescribed Fire for Forest Management series webinar, speaker Scott Stephens will discuss the multiple pathways for achieving success in management of mixed conifer forests, with a focus on the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Join Link

10 February, 11am MT: Fuel Break Effectiveness: What Have We Learned So Far?

Jen Croft, Stephen Filmore, Mark Finney, Kit O’Connor, Brad Pietruszka and Erin Belval will be the panelists for this webinar in the USDA Forest Service Research & Development Deep Dive Panel Discussions series. This series is intended for fire, fuels and land managers on critical topics associated with fuels and fire management.

Register Now

12 February, 1pm MT: Policy Update on the Fix Our Forests Act (FOFA)
This policy update presentation from the Forest Stewards Guild and Southwest Fire Science Consortium will provide insights into the Fix Our Forests Act, including the uptake of wildfire management recommendations to congress and the potential impacts on federal land management agencies and the forests they oversee.

Register Now

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Resources

Annual Round Up: Science You Can Use
2025 marked another year of impactful science from the USDA - Rocky Mountain Research Station. Now, all of their bite-sized and information-packed Science You Can Use bulletins, fact sheets, and more from the past year are available in one place, from bees to beavers and biochar to smoke! To listen instead, you can now stream their science.
Click here to view a multi-year archive of science briefs from the RMRS.

View the 2025 collection

Opinion Article from the NM State Forester: Wildfire prevention costs less than suppression
In this article, New Mexico state forester Laura McCarthy calls wildfire prevention “suppression’s undercover partner” and identifies the three fronts for fire prevention: public awareness and early detection, fuel treatments, and individual defensible space and home hardening action. You can learn about the difference between fire prevention and fire suppression in Wildfire Wednesday #107.

Read the article

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Funding

New Mexico Counties is pleased to announce the 2026-2027 Wildfire Risk Reduction Program. The grant program assists communities throughout New Mexico in reducing their risk from wildland fire on non-federal lands. Funding for this program is provided by the National Fire Plan through the Department of the Interior/Bureau of Land Management for communities in the wildland-urban interface and is intended to directly benefit communities that may be impacted by wildland fire initiating from or spreading to BLM public land. 

 Funding categories include:

  • CWPP updates up to $30,000/project

  • Education and outreach activities up to $20,000/project

  • Hazardous fuels reduction projects up to $100,000/project

The application and checklist are located on the NMC website: https://www.nmcounties.org/services/programs/

Click to view the application packet
Click to view the application form

The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round (January)

January 2026 Edition

Please feel encouraged to adapt and share these materials through your own channels.

About The Spark

The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round is a unified, statewide messaging campaign that promotes year-round wildfire preparedness through consistent and coordinated outreach each month. It is produced by a core group of partners, including FACNM, BLM–New Mexico, NM State Forestry Division, and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI).

The bulletin below is designed to communicate wildfire topics to broad audiences, with this month focusing on embers as a leading cause of home ignition and the basics of home hardening.

Download the Bulletin
Download a Print Friendly Version of the Bulletin

To view The Spark’s main page and view archived Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round messaging, click here: The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round — Fire Adapted NM

Wildfire Wednesday #175: Tips for More Effective Wildfire Risk Communication

Happy first Wednesday of 2026, FACNM community!

People living in fire-prone landscapes regularly make decisions about how they live with and plan to respond to wildland fire and smoke based on their perceived risk. As professionals, community leaders, and engaged neighbors, being able to effectively communicate that risk is essential. As defined by Steelman and McCaffrey, “risk communication seeks to inform people about a potential future harm and the associated dangers so that they might take action to mitigate the risk” (Steelman and McCaffrey, 2013). Clear risk communication helps motivate action to mitigate potential impacts, helps people stay calm during incidents due to increased understanding of the hazard, and/or increases public acceptance of fire management strategies that help lower overall risk to fire hazards.

While there is no single message or messenger that works best in every context or for every audience, research has identified best practices for creating effective wildfire risk communication. This Wildfire Wednesday highlights key recommendations related to message content for communicating about wildfire risk. Other important elements, such as the most effective platforms for sharing messages and the processes by which messages are delivered, are critical but not addressed in this publication.

This Wildfire Wednesday contains:

Best wishes for this upcoming year,
Megan

Effective Wildfire Risk Communication

COMPASS, a nonprofit organization focused on science communication, recently released the publication “Effective Risk Communication: Lessons from Wildfire Science.” The publication emerged from a media communication training for wildfire experts developed with the Federation of American Scientists, in collaboration with Matt Wright of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Below are several key principles of wildfire risk communication highlighted in the publication.

Risk Perception

Wildfire presents risk that is both familiar and abstract, influencing the dynamics of wildfire risk perception.

  • Risk that is familiar and tangible: A structure burning or an evacuation order

  • Risk that is abstract: Impacts to water quality or long-term public health

Wildfire has become a recognizable risk in many parts of the world, causing this familiarity of the risk to become both an asset and challenge for communication.

  • Familiarity as an asset: A baseline understanding of wildfire risk to health, income, and property allows communicators to focus on tangible actions communities can take to protect what they value.

  • Familiarity as a challenge: Repeated exposure to wildfire risk without direct consequences can lead people to underestimate their vulnerability, while those who have experienced loss may perceive heightened or disproportionate risk.

Takeaway: Risk communication should be tailored to the lived experiences of the audience, particularly as wildfire risk evolves, such as in previously unaffected areas or where fire intensity and frequency are increasing.

Wildfire Risk to Communities, created by the USDA Forest Service, defines a community’s wildfire risk as the combination of likelihood and intensity (together called “hazard”) and exposure and susceptibility (together called “vulnerability”).

Promoting Understanding and Agency

Ecological and fire behavior models are critical tools for understanding wildfire risk. However, translating these models into clear, actionable messages for nontechnical audiences remains a challenge. Scientists often emphasize technical details when explaining models to demonstrate credibility, an approach that is effective for peer communication but can overwhelm public audiences. Research has proven that when communicating with the public, technical deep dives can cause confusion and even skepticism.

Effective strategies for communicating about risk models include:

  • Focusing on the implications of the model rather than the technical mechanics is often a stronger communication strategy with the public

  • Explaining what model predictions mean for how people live, plan, and act now makes the situation more meaningful and clearer for communities and decisionmakers

    • If modeling shows fire in an area is becoming more frequent and more intense, risk communication with the public should address what implications this has for people in the area (i.e. need for developing more robust evacuation plans, increasing investment in home-hardening, or other strategies).

  • Providing clear, discrete response strategies helps make risk information more tangible and fosters a sense of agency in communities that might otherwise feel overwhelmed.

Home on Hwy 97 successfully protected by engines during the 2015 Okanogan Complex Fire.

Because models rely on currently available data, their predictions can change as conditions evolve. This means speaking about model outputs also requires speaking about uncertainty.

  • Openly explaining the sources of uncertainty allows communicators to help decisionmakers better understand how and why forecasts and predictions may change.

  • Acknowledging uncertainties in risk builds trust and supports more adaptive, flexible planning that can accommodate a wider range of possible outcomes.

A Multifaceted Approach

Wildfire is not a single-issue challenge. It intersects with land management, public health, urban planning, conservation, and more. Effective risk communication must reflect this complexity by balancing multiple perspectives, clearly explaining trade-offs, and situating decisions within a broader risk management framework.

“Ultimately, risk communication is about helping people understand their options...”
— Alex Griffith, 2025

Additional Guidance from the Literature

Understanding Mental Models and Local Context

Building on these principles, a 2013 review by Steelman and McCaffrey triangulated research across risk communication, crisis communication, and wildfire literature. Several common characteristics of effective risk communication content emerged:

  • Account for local and social context in which the threat is situated.

    • Considering contextual conditions from the perspectives of the participants, and relating explanations of action to why they are needed and how they will make a difference given local conditions, can facilitate understanding and action. Designing culturally sensitive messages that understand the social context of the risk can help effectively frame, present, and discuss risk in ways that resonate.

  • Relate information to familiar and relevant experiences

    • Connecting wildfire risk to issues people already care about, such as health, livelihoods, or local landscapes, supports learning and engagement. Effective communication builds on participants’ prior experience with wildfire and smoke rather than assuming a uniform baseline of knowledge.

  • Be honest and transparent about uncertainty

    • Credible risk communication acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in wildfire forecasting and risk assessment. Transparency about what is known, what is uncertain, and why strengthens trust and supports informed decision-making.

  • Plan messages intentionally

    • Developing an effective risk communication message requires:

      1. Clearly defining the purpose of the communication effort

      2. Selecting a strategy appropriate to that goal

      3. Tailoring the message to the characteristics, needs, and perspectives of the intended audience

Further reinforcing these findings, the Northwest Fire Science Consortium published a 2021 literature review on communicating with the public about wildland fire preparation, response, and recovery. The authors identified seven recommendations related to message content that communicators should include when engaging the public; the four particularly relevant to risk communication are highlighted below:

  • Use clear, specific, and actionable language that is appropriately complex for the target audience

    • Clear, specific messages reduce the need for additional information-seeking and help avoid overwhelming audiences.

  • Include familiar faces and places to make the risk or hazard more relatable and locally relevant

  • Include strategy and rationale information, with details about limitations

    • Communicate the purpose and spatial context of agency actions, acknowledge modeling limitations, and clarify why recommendations may differ across agencies.

  • Incorporate visual elements

    • Use picture or graphics to illustrate desirable actions or to clearly label recommended items

As wildfire risk continues to change across landscapes and communities, effective risk communication remains a critical tool for supporting preparedness, response, and long-term resilience. By grounding messages in local context, acknowledging uncertainty, and emphasizing clear actions people can take, communicators can help communities better understand their options and feel empowered to act.

Additional Resources and Upcoming Opportunities

Video - Nature-Based Restoration: Forest Ecosystem Restoration with Tree Planting

Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance launched a post-fire restoration video series, with their fourth video focusing on tree planting. This video takes an in-depth look at reforestation work in New Mexico, hearing from researchers and foresters on how to get seedlings, making a plan that best fits the property, and planting trees in a way that gives them the best chance to thrive!

 

New Mexico Facilitation Trainings

The New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, in partnership with Southwest Decision Resources, are hosting facilitation trainings to help organizations and community leaders bolster skills in effective methods for collaborating. The trainings will focus on designing and facilitating successful collaborative efforts in natural resource and community settings. This free training has limited space. For more information contact Crystal Medina, NMFWRI at camedina@nmhu.edu.

Preference for those working with and/or leading natural resource and collaborative efforts in NM.

 

Pinyon-juniper (PJ) is one of the most prevalent ecosystem types in the West and through its presence across a wide geographic range, different types of PJ experience different fire regimes. Last month, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium released a video and fact sheet that covers the historic fire regime, current management, and the potential future of PJ persistent woodlands in the Southwest.

Wildfire Wednesday #174: Lessons from Large Urban Conflagrations

Historically, most wildfires in the United States occurred between May and November with peak fire season happening in August when conditions are hottest and driest. However, as weather patterns change, temperatures rise, drought events increase, and pests, disease, and invasive species make forests more vulnerable, wildfires outside of the traditional fire season have become more common over the past two decades. Since 2017, some of the most destructive fires in the western U.S. have burned outside of that typical fire season (Thomas Fire, CA; Marshall Fire, CO; Smokehouse Creek Fire, TX; Palisades/Eaton Fires, CA). Many of these have been fueled by unseasonable or long-lasting (and often record-breaking) heat and strong winds, causing explosive fire growth. Recovery from these fires takes years to decades and the landscape, and the communities impacted, will be permanently changed.

As we approach the one year anniversary of the LA conflagrations (the Palisades and Eaton Fires) and consider the changing reality of large destructive fire events, the question becomes what we can learn from past fires - how they burned, how fire personnel and emergency managers responded, how communities faired, and how we have or have not been able to recover - to inform and improve how we live with and prepare for fire in the future.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Have a peaceful and restful end to your year,
Rachel

Lessons from recent large urban conflagrations

One key aspect of what made the 2025 LA urban conflagrations - the Palisades and Eaton Fires - so intense is that they burned under red flag conditions (strong winds, low relative humidity, and dry fuels) which indicate an increased potential for extreme fire behavior and rapid fire growth. During the first five hours following ignitions, these fires were burning under environmental conditions which exceeded the extreme fire behavior thresholds of 2-minute sustained wind speeds exceeding 20 mph, peak 5-second gusts exceeding 30 mph, and relative humidity below 15%. These conditions meant that vegetation was dry and ready to burn and very high winds pushed the fires further and faster than firefighters could respond.

Anne Cope, an Institute for Business and Home Safety staffer who helped write the findings report on the LA Conflagrations, notes that “each wildfire event reminds us communities must prepare for the few days a year of dry hot winds — not the calm of everyday life. When fires ignite on the worst days, these winds push embers, flames and heat into entire neighborhoods. But the science is clear – when communities work together, we can disrupt the path of conflagration.” Below are some key takeaways from that report which may inform or reinforce our preparedness priorities and actions.

Individual preparedness

  • Nearly all aspects of the potential for structure ignition fall into two primary categories: the building materials used to construct the exterior of the structure and the intensity of fire exposure from the surrounding environment. The latter is closely correlated with connective fuels and the distance to surrounding fuel (e.g., decks, shrubs, sheds, or structures). (pg. 18)

    • When connective fuels allow the fire into close proximity of the structure, vulnerable components - windows, decks, and open eaves - provide the initial ignition points that determine a structure’s outcome. (pg. 57)

Probability of a structure remaining undamaged with an increasing number of resilient building component characteristics, showing an increasing trend in survival likelihood with greater mitigation. Analysis based on DINS data from both the Palisades and Eaton Fires.

  • Mitigation only works as a system, and partially executed mitigation strategies allow fire pathways and vulnerabilities to persist. Most homes exposed in the Palisades and Eaton Fires featured at least one resilient component, with noncombustible siding and Class A roofs being the most common (enhanced resistance to radiant heat and direct flame contact) and ember-resistant mesh screens on vents being the least (left these openings vulnerable to ember exposure). Many structures also had inconsistent resilience in different parts of their Zone 0 (e.g. a noncombustible pathway around three sides with vegetation and flammable furniture on the fourth side) which increased their vulnerability to near-structure flame exposure. These partial resilience improvements left major vulnerabilities, highlighting that resilience must be evaluated as a system of building components and defensible space. A structure is only as resilient as its weakest component. (pg. 45)

    • As the number of resilient components increases (e.g. noncombustible siding, Class A roof, double-pane windows, and enclosed eaves) the probability of experiencing no damage increases from 36% to 54%, demonstrating effectiveness of using systems-based home-hardening. These findings underscore the importance of establishing minimum performance requirements through parcel-level building codes.

    • This parcel-level approach is especially important in typical suburban neighborhoods, where maintaining more than 30 ft of separation between structures is often not feasible. Where structural density cannot be reduced in suburban environments, the building materials and connective fuels—especially those closest to the structure—become even more important. (pg. 4)

  • The zone immediately surrounding the home (Zone 0) is the most impactful place to make improvements.

    • Some types of fuel commonly observed within Zone 0 can unexpectedly threaten structures under extreme fire conditions. In the communities impacted by the Eaton and Palisades Fires, trash bins, hot tubs, furniture, vegetation, and more within 5 feet of homes created ignition pathways (bins caught fire which then ignited the adjacent structure) and caused damage. In these cases, the primary combustible component was not the plastic bin itself but rather its contents inside. (pg. 32)

 

(a) Partially consumed trash bin with consumed contents. (b) Embers accumulated on top of a trash bin with holes created by embers. These holes create pathways for fire to reach the contents of the bin. (c) Consumed trash bin that ignited an adjacent garage as it burned.

 

  • No plant, regardless of its flammability rating, is fireproof, and even well-maintained, well-hydrated vegetation can be rapidly dried to the point of ignition due to the intensity and duration of fire exposure during the extreme fire behavior scenarios of a conflagration. This burning vegetation close to homes can then compromise the building’s integrity when combined with other forms of exposure. (pg. 30)

  • Many studies have shown that fences built out of combustible materials, such as wood or latillas, can enable fire to move through communities; the use of noncombustible fences (e.g. metal or chainlink) reduces the potential for fire spread, particularly for fences that touch the home. However, in LA vegetation that caught fire was observed growing up or through noncombustible fences, reducing or eliminating the resilient effect of the noncombustible fence material. (pg. 35)

  • Even if homeowners reduce fuels in the zone that is 5-30 feet away from the home (Zone 1), structures with dense fuel coverage - greater than 25% - in Zone 0 are almost guaranteed to sustain damage or destruction (probabilities exceeding 87%). Overall, reducing fuel coverage both in Zone 0 and Zone 1 to less than 25% produces a meaningful reduction in the probability of damage or destruction to structures. (pg. 55)

    • Resilient building components offer limited benefit when heavy fuel loads remain close to the structure. (pg. 57)

Community preparedness

  • Firefighter effectiveness is strongly impacted by community design. (pg. 26)

    • Neighborhoods with high structure density and limited separation distances are likely to experience multiple near-simultaneous ignitions, quickly overwhelming suppression capacity. Communities with tight structure spacing and dense connective fuels have amplified fire risk exposures between homes and reduced effectiveness of defensive actions (fire suppression and structure protection).

    • The presence of defensible space increases the effectiveness of defensive actions (e.g. during the Eaton Fire, homes threatened in Kinneloa Mesa were reported to have good defensible space, which allowed Los Angeles County Firefighters to effectively defend them).

Structure-to-structure fire spread in Altadena, California following the Eaton Fire.

  • While parcel-level mitigation is necessary, it is not always sufficient to prevent large-scale loss, particularly under extreme fire weather conditions or in densely built neighborhoods. Post-conflagration studies have shown that structure separation, connective fuels, and building materials are the three central pillars of risk, with structure separation and connective fuels controlling the intensity of heat exposure and building materials defining a structure’s capacity to resist it. (pg. 51)

    • Even structures with 4 resilient building component characteristics but which have less than 10 ft of separation have a greater than 50% chance of being damaged. When the space between structures is less than 10 ft, the likelihood that a fire will exploit the weakest link in a structure greatly increases, often overwhelming the protective benefits of one or two resilient building features. At such tight spacing, if one building ignites, it is almost certain that wind driven flames will extend the full 10 ft downwind to touch the adjacent structure. (pg. 53)

    • When structure spacing is greater than 30 ft, the probability of no damage increases to 66% with those same 4 resilient building component characteristics. Adding either enclosed eaves or double pane windows to the resilient system (on top of noncombustible siding and a Class A roof) increases the probability of no damage.

Percentage of total fire size over the first four days of development for Palisades and Eaton Fires, shown alongside wind gust data representing general wind patterns in the area.

The most dramatic fire growth corresponds with periods when 5-second wind gusts exceeded 40 mph, highlighting the direct relationship between extreme wind activity and fire spread. Once the wind subsided, fire growth slowed, not only due to the loss of wind-driven oxygen supply, ember transport, and flame extension, but also because suppression efforts became more effective both from the air and on the ground.

  • Houses oriented downwind of the fire were consistently damaged or destroyed at higher rates than structures in crosswind or upwind exposures (due to diminished intensity of heat transfer in the upwind and crosswind directions); however, structures at all wind exposure orientations remain highly vulnerable when spacing between structures is minimal. (pg. 51)

Overall takeaways

  • Parcel-level resilience must be applied as a comprehensive system and paired with reductions in connective fuels at the neighborhood scale to meaningfully limit structure loss during wind-driven built-environment conflagrations. (pg. 58) To reduce overall suburban conflagration risk, parcel-level measures must be complemented by community-level actions—particularly efforts to reduce structural density and connective fuels. (pg. 4)

  • In urban conflagrations, damage is driven by the intensity of the fire, driving conditions (e.g. strong winds), and the fire’s ability to access an ignition pathway from one structure to another. These ignition pathways are created through either localized flame exposures that exceed the tolerance of building materials or through ember intrusion into unmitigated openings.

  • A systems-based approach that combines resilient construction, strategic fuel management, and community-wide mitigation is essential for wildfire resilience.

  • Spacing between structures (homes) and connective fuels, combined with environmental factors like wind speed and direction, are the two biggest driving factors which determine whether fire moves between homes, becoming a conflagration, or where structures are defensible.

  • When creating separation between structures isn’t possible, homeowners must take key steps. When homes featured 4 hardened components – a Class A roof, noncombustible siding, double-pane windows and enclosed eaves – the likelihood of avoiding wildfire damage was 54%, regardless of how close homes were to one another.

  • Homes with fuel covering more than 25% of Zone 0 faced an 87-100% chance of damage or destruction. That includes trash cans, patio furniture, and shrubs.

Read the ful report

Upcoming Opportunities and Additional Resources

East Mountains Town Hall - January 12, 5PM
Los Vecinos Community Center

Ruidoso Town Hall -
January 15, 5PM
Ruidoso Convention Center

Join PNM at an upcoming community event focused on wildfire safety and learning more about their Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) process. These gatherings are designed to share critical information, local resources, and practical tips to help protect your home and neighborhood.

 

PNM Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) map of high fire risk areas that may experience a PSPS.

 
 

National Forest Foundation - Matching Awards Program (MAP): Connecting People to Forests

January 22, 2026: Deadline for Round 1 2026 MAP Applications

MAP funds projects that inspire participants to be personally involved in caring for their public lands. NFF requires that all MAP projects include three elements: community engagement, hands-on stewardship activities completed by the engaged community members, and a direct benefit to the National Forest System. Nonprofit organizations, Tribal governments and organizations, and universities are eligible to receive MAP grants.

View the Round 1 Request for Proposals (RFP)
 

Rocky Mountain Research Station - Science You Can Use in 5 minutes

Trees in Distress: Prefire drought increases postfire mortality

Looking at four tree species—lodgepole pine, white fir, Douglas-fir, and ponderosa pine—a study led by a professor with the University of Montana and a research ecologist with the Forest Service investigated whether surviving trees were more likely to die within 5 years of a fire if there was an extreme drought before the fire. They found given the same level of crown scorch, severe prefire drought made a tree 78 percent more likely to die after a fire. Therefore, into the future, western forests that have thick barked tree species may become less resilient to fire because of increasing drought stress.

Read the Full Fact Sheet
 

The Southwest Fire Science Consortium released a fact sheet that discusses a review of the impacts of a commonly used fire retardant on aquatic macroinvertebrates. The main takeaway from the research highlighted in the fact sheet is fire retardants can seriously affect aquatic life and may contribute to water quality problems, especially in wetlands and ponds where the water is stagnant and exposure may be prolonged. Researchers also highlight that proactive fuel reduction and prescribed fire—especially near water sources and communities—can reduce unplanned fire risk and the need for chemical fire retardants.

Read the full fact sheet

The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round (December)

December Edition

Please feel encouraged to adapt and share these materials through your own channels.

About The Spark

The Spark, formerly known as “Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round,” is a unified statewide messaging campaign that promotes year-round wildfire preparedness through consistent and coordinated outreach each month. It is produced by a core group of partners, including FACNM, BLM–New Mexico, NM State Forestry Division, and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI).

The bulletin below is designed to communicate wildfire topics to broad audiences.

Download the Bulletin
Download a Print Friendly Version of the Bulletin

To view The Spark’s main page and view archived Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round messaging, click here: The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round — Fire Adapted NM

Wildfire Wednesday #173: Beyond Acres Treated - All Hands All Lands Collaboration This Fall Burn Season

Happy Wednesday FACNM community,

As temperatures drop and snow begins to fall, many land managers across New Mexico have shifted from summer forest treatments to winter management activities, such as burning slash piles. But before winter settled in, land management agencies and partners across the state achieved several major milestones, with this fall experiencing a great amount of collaborative, landscape-scale prescribed fire work.

After prescribed fire operations conclude, agencies typically release updates on acres treated, smoke impacts, and long-term monitoring plans. What’s often missing from these summaries, however, is the larger story: why each burn mattered, how it contributes to landscape resilience, and what it means for the people putting fire on the ground. Each operation represents meaningful progress, not only in reducing the risk of a future consequential fire and restoring ecosystems adapted to fire, but also in developing the future fire workforce and strengthening cross-jurisdictional partnerships.

Highlighted below are several of the autumn prescribed burns supported or led by the All Hands All Lands (AHAL) Burn Network, a critical resource that helps land managers reintroduce fire at the right place and time and increase the pace and geographic scale at which it is happening.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Happy holidays,
Megan

All Hands All Lands Fall 2025 Prescribed Fire Successes

Black Lake Prescribed Broadcast Burn

In a nutshell: the 2025 burn, the sixth in this area, was part of a much larger landscape-scale restoration effort—one that requires long-term commitment.

During the third week of October, roughly 50 people from agencies, organizations, and local departments across New Mexico gathered in Black Lake (a small community just east of Angel Fire) to complete a 370-acre collaborative prescribed broadcast burn. Organized by the Forest Stewards Guild and bossed (overseen) by The Nature Conservancy, the burn took place on State Trust Land managed by the New Mexico State Land Office. Participants represented a wide range of partners, including the Forest Stewards Guild and its youth crews, Angel Fire Fire Department, Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico Highlands University, the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI), The Nature Conservancy, Philmont Scout Ranch, the New Mexico Forestry Division, and Moreno Valley Fire Department.

The impact of this burn comes from both the collaborative execution and the strong training and learning environment it created. As participants gathered for morning briefing early on day one of the burn, the circle was filled predominantly by FFT2s—firefighter type 2 personnel who hold basic fire qualifications—with several experiencing prescribed fire for the first time. Many individuals, especially from local fire departments and non-profit organizations, were placed in trainee roles, working to advance their fire qualifications and gain experience that can be put to use in future assignments. Many of the FFT2 roles (holding the containment lines, putting strips of fire on the ground to carry the flames in a controlled manner, mopping up after the burn was completed to ensure its containment) were filled by members of the Forest Stewards Youth Corps crews and students from New Mexico Highlands University. Through this training and hands-on experience, collaborative burns can strengthen local capacity and provide meaningful workforce development opportunities for young adults looking to explore careers in forestry, wildland fire, and natural resource management.

Collaborators participating in an after action review (AAR) after Day 2 of ignitions, led by an FFT1 trainee from New Mexico Forestry Division.

Burn organizers additionally hosted a public tour of the burn, bringing more than a dozen community members onto the landscape to observe operations firsthand, learn about safety measures that reduce the risk of escapes, and watch active fire on the ground. Public tours play a critical role in building familiarity and comfort with prescribed fire, especially in a landscape which has been impacted by large severe wildfires in the recent past. This is exemplified with NMFWRI, where staff members took the initiative to become fire-qualified active burners after attending a public tour during the 2024 Black Lake prescribed burn. As one 2025 FFT1 noted, the tours help grow the next generation of practitioners as much as they help educate the public.

Reflecting on the field tour, one of the facilitators shared:

“The field tour was time for attendees to interact with low intensity fire up-close, to watch it move in the grass based on fuels, winds, and topography, and to feel the heat of different flame lengths. The questions and dialogue that resulted showed that all attendees brought their curiosity and an open mind to the day. Questions ranged from firing techniques, how does the operation that we were observing relate to the burn plan, to more broad questions about high elevation ponderosa pine ecology.”

The 2025 burn is part of a much larger landscape-scale restoration effort—one that requires long-term commitment. A representative of the New Mexico State Land Office emphasized that this work is a sustained endeavor in forest and fire restoration. This commitment is evident in the years of effort that partners have invested in returning fire to this landscape, with treatments beginning back in 2013. The 2025 burn was the sixth in this area and the second entry burn for these units, which first burned in 2013 and 2016.

This year’s work highlights the culmination of years of relationship- and trust-building among the Forest Stewards Guild, the New Mexico State Land Office, The Nature Conservancy, fire organizations across northern New Mexico, universities, and the broader Black Lake community, who continue to support this form of land stewardship.

In the closing briefing, the Black Lake 2025 burn boss—who brings several decades of wildland and prescribed fire experience—offered words of appreciation that captured the spirit of the entire effort:

“I work with a lot of groups that want to be like this and so I think what you have here and what you have been developing for over a decade is really a premiere product... If you don’t already know this, you are a part of something really special up here.”
— Black Lake Rx Burn Boss - Jeremy Bailey, TNC

These words reflect what many felt throughout the operation. The Black Lake prescribed burn represents not only technical success, but the strength of long-term partnerships, shared learning, and a community that believes in the power of beneficial fire.

 

Borrego Mesa Prescribed Jackpot Burn

This 399-acre broadcast burn on the Santa Fe National Forest was the first burn on the Española Ranger District since post-Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon, marking one step in rebuilding public trust and safely re-initiating prescribed fire operations. On the landscape, this burn helped reduce heavy jackpots of dead and down fuels that had accumulated during the past few years of limited fire use. The project was also significant for its interagency coordination, led by Forest Service but also involving the City of Santa Fe Fire Department, the New Mexico Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department, and the Forest Stewards Youth Corps.

 

Ojo Sarco Prescribed Broadcast Burn

This 391-acre WUI (wildland–urban interface) broadcast burn on the Carson National Forest was located along Highway 76 near the community of Ojo Sarco and directly adjacent to private land. This burn not only achieved the objective of reducing hazardous fuels, but did so in an area where homes, transportation corridors, and forested lands meet, an example area where wildfire poses a high risk for destructive impact on a community. Successfully treating this area reduced fuels that pose a risk to Ojo Sarco, demonstrated careful coordination with landowners, and showcased how prescribed fire can be safely applied even in complex boundary conditions where private land boundaries are just feet away from active ignitions.

 

Holiday Mesa Prescribed Broadcast Burn

Members of the Forest Stewards Youth Corps - Jemez Pueblo Youth Crew were involved in this 878-acre burn led by the USDA Forest Service. Through it, they were able to return fire to the landscape on ancestral territory near the Pueblo. It supported Jemez’s ongoing work to restore traditional fire practices, empowered tribal youth through hands-on experience in land stewardship, and demonstrated the ability of federal partners to engage in land management beyond the limited scope of federal employees.

 

Espinosa Prescribed Broadcast Burn

Click for an enlarged map of the burn area

The 1,343-acre burn, the largest ever conducted on the Mountainair Ranger District, occurred within the Espinosa–Barranco Wildlife Improvement Project area. The scale made it an important milestone for the district’s capacity to implement large landscape-level prescribed fire. The project relied heavily on aerial ignition, allowing crews to treat over 1,000 acres in just a single day, a significant win in increasing the scale and pace to landscape treatment. In a landscape which is still feeling the impacts of severe wildfires such as the 2016 Dog head Fire, this collaborative burn represented a shift toward improving habitat conditions for wildlife, enhancing ecosystem resilience, and advancing the district’s long-term landscape restoration goals through the use of good fire.

Additional Resources

The Paseo Project - Taos, New Mexico

The Paseo Project invites artists working in all media (2D, 3D, installation, writing, sound, projection, performance, interdisciplinary forms) to apply for participation in Disturbance, a new interdisciplinary program that pairs artists with scientists to explore wildfire as both a destabilizing force and a regenerative element in ecological and social systems. This project will culminate in an exhibition and series of events in Taos, New Mexico, September–December 2026.

Through a required four-day Northern New Mexico based “fire ecology boot camp,” selected artists will be immersed in collaborative dialogue with fire practitioners and ecologists, and site visits to burn scars and post-fire landscapes. Artists will then return to their home studios to develop new work that reflects on the ecological, cultural, and emotional dimensions of wildfire. These works will then be shared in an exhibition, outdoor installations, and public programs in Taos, NM, designed to engage the broader community in dialogue about living with fire in a climate-altered future.

Applications will be accepted through February 1, 2026.

Apply Now
 

New Mexico Forestry Division offers low-cost seedlings in over 60 varieties for landowners to use in reforestation, erosion control, windbreaks, streambank restoration, and wildlife habitat improvement. Spring season orders for seedlings are now open. Ordering is first come first serve, so order early for the best selection. 

Learn more about tree types and uses and order seedlings at Conservation Seedling Program - Forestry.

To participate in the program you must own at least one acre of land in New Mexico and the seedlings purchased through the program must be used for conservation purposes.

 

Webinar: Plan, Predict, and Burn - The New Prescribed Burn Planner
Wednesday, December 17, 2025, 1pm ET

Join Karen Cummins and Dr. Holly Nowell from Tall Timbers for a free one hour webinar as they demonstrate the Prescribed Burn Planner v2’s new capabilities.

The Prescribed Burn Planner (PBP) was originally developed to help users plan and prioritize prescribed burns by providing weather forecasts for individual burn units, thus hopefully reducing the number of missed burn windows. After receiving funding support from USDA Forest Service, Southern Region (R8), PBP version 2 was created to take prescribed burn planning to the next level.

The new release includes:

  • Updated meteorological data

  • Ability to draw the boundaries of a burn unit, rather than just a point location

  • Simple smoke plume modeling with a list of potentially impacted locations

  • Burn history tracking

  • Email notification for upcoming ideal burn windows as specified by the user for each individual location.

Register for the webinar
 

The National Wildfire Mitigation Awards (WMAs) recognize outstanding work and significant program impact in wildfire preparedness and mitigation. The program was established in 2014 by the National Association of State Foresters (NASF), the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and the USDA Forest Service (USFS), including the National Wildfire Mitigation Award, the National Mitigation Hero Award, and the Wildfire Mitigation Legacy Award.

Nominations for the 2026 awards are open and must be submitted by January 7, 2026. Past awardees, both individuals and organizations, have displayed outstanding dedication to wildfire mitigation across a broad spectrum of activities.

Submit Nominations Here

Wildfire Wednesdays #172: Full Cost Accounting of Wildfires

Happy Wednesday, Fire Adapted Community!

How do we measure the cost of a wildfire? The financial burden of suppression and containment efforts is one metric which is documented fairly consistently at the national level; however, this doesn’t account for the broader range of expenses such as property damages, public health impacts, and long-term economic, social, and environmental impacts. A 2013 study out of New Mexico found that the full cost of wildfires far exceeds suppression, that costs vary significantly from fire to fire, and that direct and indirect costs are incurred first by individuals and private businesses and then by federal, state, and local governments. Today’s newsletter dives into full cost accounting of wildfires, a perspective shift which can help to highlight the financial, as well as ecological, importance of fire prevention and resilience work.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Have a wonderful end to your November,
Rachel

What is full cost accounting?

“Wildfire costs greatly vary depending on factors within the built and unbuilt environment. Socioeconomic context, housing density, the duration and size of a wildfire, and other variables influence the overall cost. In general, upward trends in urban growth and development in areas at risk to wildfires suggest a parallel rise in total wildfire costs.” On average (nationally), suppression costs comprise only about 9% of total wildfire costs, and “almost half of all wildfire costs are paid for at the local level, including homeowners, businesses, and government agencies. Many local wildfire costs are due to long-term damages to community and environmental services, such as landscape rehabilitation, lost business and tax revenues, and property and infrastructure repairs” (Headwaters Economics, 2018) and other unexpected impacts such as declining property values after a fire, harm to health, and changes to ecosystem processes. The economic impacts of wildfire can permeate and accrue for years to decades. Full cost accounting takes all of these fiscal impacts into consideration to reach a more holistic estimate of the cost of wildfire.

“Full cost accounting after wildfires is critical for adequate government budgeting, post-wildfire resource allocation such as disaster recovery assistance and understanding the full scope of wildfire to help communities learn to better live with fire” (Hjerpe et el., 2023). For a good overview of the complexity of full cost accounting, view this blog from the Council of Western State Foresters.

How is full cost accounting measured?

Full cost accounting is dependent on a number of highly nuanced factors. The Full Cost of New Mexico Wildfires mentions that:

  • Costs depend on the location of the wildfire as well as the severity and length. For example, a wildfire occurring near a heavily populated area may result in significant evacuation costs through displacement of residents and businesses, and smoke-related illnesses will likely be greater. In contrast, a wildfire occurring in a remote area may incur more costs through impacts to wildlife habitats, watershed and water supplies, or recreation areas.

  • Costs are incurred initially and over succeeding years - there is a temporal dimension to wildfire costs. Many costs are incurred during or immediately after the fire and their impacts are relatively temporary (e.g. suppression, evacuation, disruption of tourism and transportation routes) while others (e.g. impacts to respiratory health and water sources and destruction of habitat, timber resources, residential and commercial structures, and watershed areas) may occur concurrent with the wildfire but the rehabilitation, rebuilding, and repair will take much longer.

    • In the arid American West, long-term damage to forest watershed resources (such as damaged water supply infrastructure and post-wildfire flooding) may represent the largest, and least documented, costs of uncharacteristic wildfire over time (Lynch, 2004).

 

A national average of the breakdown of full wildfire costs over time from Headwaters Economics. It should be noted that the exact proportions vary widely from one fire to the next depending on local factors.

 

  • The burden of costs varies - just as the magnitude and type of cost is case-specific for each wildfire, the distribution of who absorbs these costs is different for each incident. 

The Western Forestry Leadership Coalition published a 2022 report which breaks costs down into three categories -

Those costs which occur as a result of a wildfire:

  1. Direct Costs, which are incurred directly during an incident.

  2. Indirect Costs — losses which are incurred after an incident but are attributable to it.

And those which represent expenditures that would reduce the incidence of and damage from future catastrophic fire:

3. Indirect Costs — mitigation Investments.

 
 
Read the full report for a detailed breakdown

FCA in New Mexico and the Southwest

While there are examples of full cost accounting for fires in the West (see “Case Studies”, pages 7-16), the practice is still comparatively rare because of the difficulty obtaining the relevant data. A recent remeasure of the full cost of the 2010 Schultz Fire in Arizona, while illuminating the longevity of post-fire impacts and expenses, was still conservative as it did not account for every potential direct and indirect ‘net value change’ (e.g. non-mortality related impacts to physical and mental health).

A 2013 Full Cost Accounting of the Schultz fire estimated total costs around $138.8 million; ten years later, researchers found that costs had continued to accrue to the tune of $179.1 - 187.4 million.

This remeasure found that 10 years post-fire, total accrued wildfire costs were 29–35% higher than the initial full cost accounting performed in 2013, bringing the current-day cost for this 15,000-acre fire to ~$180.4 million. The authors write “given the trends of increasing wildfire severity and duration of fire seasons, combined with… myriad costs of wildfire, it is safe to assume the full costs of wildfire are vastly underrepresented and enormous. Additionally, as the Schultz Fire example demonstrates, a single fire often has many costs that are difficult to quantify and are temporally dispersed, such as costs to ecosystem services or community well-being. This further emphasizes the importance of proactive fuel treatments and forest restoration work to reduce the risk of uncharacteristic fire and restore ecosystem health… Millions of dollars may have been saved by forest restoration treatments in key parts of the Schultz Fire perimeter before the fire.”

Types of Forest Restoration Benefits Quantified in the Literature (Gray boxes are broad benefit types; blue boxes are individual benefit types that compose broad AWC categories).
From https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108244

One key to understanding the full cost of wildfires is recognizing that these climbing costs and consequences are linked to increasingly uncharacteristic fire behavior and impacts driven by changes to our climate and ecosystem conditions. In these southwestern fire adapted landscapes, wildfires can also result in ecological benefits, especially in the areas that do not burn at high severity and are long overdue for fire. It is when fires burn hot and large enough to cause severe impacts to ecosystem functions and communities that the damages really begin to accrue. Forest restoration treatments result in overall lower-severity fires, which lessens the intensity of subsequent impacts, including post-wildfire flooding; “in the most valuable and at-risk watersheds, every dollar invested in forest restoration can provide up to seven dollars of return in the form of benefits and provide a return-on-investment of 600%” (Hjerpe, 2024).

The fire prevention triangle, adapted from Riebold (1957) and NWCG (2021). Illustrated by Kara Skye Gibson. Sourced from Preventing Human-Caused Wildfire Ignitions on Public Lands: A Review of Best Practices

Investing in prevention of human-caused ignitions and emerging wildfire detection tools and technology are also promising financially prudent measures to avoid or reduce the full cost of wildfires. These approaches can decrease the number of wildfires which burn into communities and devastate landscapes - especially during times of the year when wildfires are more prone to rapid spread and growth in intensity due to weather, wind, and availability of fuel. Remote sensing enables the early identification and tracking of wildfires over large geographic areas, providing valuable information for engagement, decision-making, and fire resources allocation. Decision-support data products may have a large impact in some situations (e.g., an extreme day with multiple ignitions, a fire threatening a high value asset, etc.), and a limited impact in others (e.g., wet fire seasons, fire activity beyond the capacity of suppression resources, etc.). Preventing or mitigating one future extreme event may economically justify these tools many times over (Hope et al., 2024). While the cost of operating fire detection tools (towers, cameras, etc.) exceeds their value in the reduction of direct suppression costs, the benefits are realized in the reduction of total wildfire costs. Further research on the cost-benefit ratio of these tools is needed as current analyses are limited.

Upcoming Opportunities and Additional Resources

Job Opportunities

Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) Manager with NM Forestry Division

New Mexico Forestry Division is currently hiring for a Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) Manager. The position application will be open through December 5, 2025.

This position will manage the state's Community Wildfire Defense Grant program. The position responsibilities are to manage, direct, and actively engages in forest and watershed management and community wildfire risk reduction within the Forestry Division's jurisdiction of 43 million acres of state and non-municipal private land. The position is responsible for ensuring the eligible local governments, Tribes and non-governmental organizations receive funding for Community Wildfire Protection Planning (CWPP) and implementation of wildfire mitigation projects described in CWPP.

For questions about the position, please reach out to Melissa McLamb, (505) 394-2277, (Melissa.McLamb@emnrd.nm.gov).

 

Fire Planning Task Force Updates

November 2025 Public Meeting Minutes

On November 17th, 2025, the NM Fire Planning Task Force convened to review recommendations from the CWPP Sub-group, hear updates from both the Mapping and Standards Sub-group, hear a report on F.A.I.R Insured Home Hardening Grants, and more.

The attached minutes provide more details on all agenda items including:

  • Outcomes from the review of CWPPs from Eddy County, Sandavol County, and Eldorado Communities

  • Adoption of the IBHS Wildfire prepared Home standards as voluntary standards for home hardening and mitigation in New Mexico

  • Pilot of the Office of the Superintendent of Insurance’s Home Hardening grant in Wimsatt, New Mexico

View the Minutes
 

Reserved Treaty Rights Lands Program: The Power of Partnership

The Nature Conservancy in Montana produced a short video, “Reserved Treaty Rights Lands Program: The Power of Partnership,” which looks at how the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are working with the Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy to conduct burns on off-reservation lands with Tribal treaty rights in a unique partnership made possible by the Reserved Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) program. The RTRL program, which is administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, provides funds to protect and enhance natural and cultural resources on Tribes’ aboriginal lands that are at high risk of wildfire.

 

Treatment and Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase (TWIG)

The Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI) have launched the 1.0 version of their free tool, the Treatment and Wildfire Interagency Geodatabase (TWIG), a collaborative, open-access data platform that makes national fuel treatment and wildfire information accessible to all.  

As a national, open-access geodatabase, TWIG centralizes federal treatment and wildfire data in one publicly available platform. By doing so, it:

• Empowers communities and land managers to demonstrate the effectiveness of fuel treatments

• Helps researchers and policymakers understand treatment-wildfire interactions at landscape and local scales

• Promotes cross-agency coordination and transparency in wildfire risk reduction efforts


The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round (November)

November Edition

About The Spark

The Spark, formerly known as “Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round,” is a unified statewide messaging campaign that promotes year-round wildfire preparedness through consistent and coordinated outreach each month. It is produced by a core group of partners, including FACNM, BLM–New Mexico, NM State Forestry Division, and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI).

The bulletin below is designed to communicate wildfire topics to broad audiences.

Please feel encouraged to adapt and share these materials through your own channels.

Download the Bulletin
Download a print friendly version of the Bulletin

To view The Spark’s main page and view archived Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round messaging, click here: The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round — Fire Adapted NM

Wildfire Wednesdays #171: Fire Preparedness Frameworks, Risk Reduction, and Insurability

Happy Fire Friday!

Fire adaptation is an alternative to the costly and ineffective model of relying solely on fire suppression for community safety; it empowers communities to prepare for wildland fires, mitigate their impacts, and recover more effectively when they inevitably occur. However, there are many tools, pathways, and angles to consider when creating fire ready communities. Firewise, a program of NFPA, has gained popularity over the last decade as a means to get neighbors and friends engaged with defensible space and home hardening, as well as a way to retain insurability. The program and title of Firewise Recognized Community is one tool, one approach, and it nestles will with other programs and frameworks. Since November 20th marks the renewal deadline for communities who are Firewise Recognized, today we will be exploring some of these tools and programs in-depth, how they differ and can work in tandem to educate and motivate, and how following the recommendations of each one may impact a community’s risk vs insurability.

This Wildfire Wednesday Features:

Be well,
Rachel

Simplifying Firewise and FAC

This information was originally shared in Wildfire Wednesday #96; view the newsletter and watch the recent FACNM webinar to learn more, including how to choose the right program for your community.

What is Firewise?

The Firewise USA recognition program is administered by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and provides a collaborative framework to help neighbors in a geographic area get organized, find direction, and take action to increase the ignition resistance of their homes and community and to reduce wildfire risks at the local level. As Firewise Program Manager puts it, Firewise “fits into [the Fire Adapted Communities framework] as a tool. It’s not the only tool and it doesn’t do all things. It is the built environment piece [of the FAC preparedness wheel] - how do we help self-defined neighborhoods come together and get started on that [fire preparedness] pathway?”

Firewise focuses primarily on homeowner and resident fire mitigation before a wildfire. Their recommended mitigation actions include home hardening, fortification of the home ignition zone, organization of a Firewise community board, neighborhood risk reduction activities, and joining the program as a Firewise USA Site.

Through risk assessments, community organization, and individual and collective action, the goal of Firewise is to effectively lower community susceptibility to fire.

New applications can be completed online at portal.firewise.org. More information on creating a firewise home and community can be found below.


What is the Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) Framework?

Fire Adapted Communities is a holistic, adaptive, and comprehensive framework to help communities live better with wildfires. A fire adapted community is one which understands its risk and takes action during all phases of the wildfire cycle - before, during, and after - to be more resilient. FAC was born out of the 2009 National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy. FAC looks beyond residents and individual actions and broadens the scope of what it means to be fire ready.

The Firewise USA® recognition program is one of many tools a community can use to address its fire risk. Focused primarily on residents and residential action, the Firewise USA® program is an important piece of the wildfire adaptation puzzle. The International Association of Fire Chiefs’ Ready, Set, Go! Program, focusing on empowering fire departments to communicate with their constituents, is another common tool used as part of a community’s overall fire adaptation framework. Additional strategies such as evacuation planning, developing and updating community wildfire protection plans, adopting WUI codes and ordinances, conducting controlled burns and performing post-fire recovery planning all contribute to a fire adapted community.

View the FAC community resilience framework, smoke ready framework, and suite of actions by clicking on the graphics below.

FAC encompasses the Fire Adapted Learning Network, a peer learning and professional relationship-building initiative. FAC Net connects people to resources and to other practitioners so they can share approaches, tailor strategies for their place, and make a difference in wildfire outcomes on-the-ground. They combine support for on-the-ground project work with professional development, peer learning and coaching, and long-range strategic planning.

While FAC offers many resources and opportunities to learn from other people doing similar work, there is no formal fire adapted communities recognition program. It does not guarantee prevention of ignitions nor does following the recommendations tailored to your community lead to a certification.

Program impact: insurability vs risk reduction

What is impactful risk reduction?

Frameworks like Fire Adapted Communities incorporate decades of lessons learned and recommendations from fire experts to provide a comprehensive suite of actions that individuals and communities can take to reduce their overall fire risk, increase their home and property’s chances of survival, lessen the devastation and interruption to daily life that wildfires cause, and work together to recover better after a fire happens. These approaches are focused on hazard mitigation, education, preparation, and teaching communities how to live with fire.

Image from Wildfire Risk to Communities.

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy is a strategic push to work collaboratively among all stakeholders and across all landscapes, using best science, to make meaningful progress toward three goals:
- Resilient Landscapes
- Fire Adapted Communities
- Safe and Effective Wildfire Response

The frameworks encourage community-level participation, because research has shown that collective action - everyone working individually, alongside their neighbors, to reduce their hazardous fuels, improve their structure’s fire resistance, advocate for improved routes of ingress and egress, etc. - creates a broad net of protection which is far more effective at reducing the impacts of a wildfire on the community than isolated individual action. Learn more about reducing risk. Following the recommended actions and approaches of these frameworks may help improve fire outcomes for the community; however, they do not guarantee insurability of homes and businesses.

What influences insurability?

“Viewed through a risk management lens, wildfire risk… throughout the western United States is becoming uninsurable. Risk is the product of hazard (the combination of the probability of wildfire and its characteristic intensity), exposure (where the item at risk is located and its value), and vulnerability (how damaging wildfire is to the item at risk)” (TNC, 2021). Insurance providers base their coverage decisions on many factors; when it comes to wildfire, underwriters will consider a property's fire protection class, location, proximity to fire services, exposure to nearby fire hazards, and the potential for loss as well as external factors such as wildfire and climate risk models. These factors culminate in an assessment and risk classification which then informs whether the insurer will offer coverage, and if so under what policy terms (e.g. coverage limits, deductibles, exclusions) and at what price. Home and business owners cannot influence many insurance assessment factors (e.g. the risk rating of a specific geographic location), nor know exactly what factors any given insurance provider will use (this is proprietary information). So what can you do reduce your property’s risk classification to retain or obtain coverage?

Start with the area around your home - is the structure itself built out of highly combustible materials? Are there gaps under the porch, along the roof, between door frames and windows where embers could land and smolder? Is the landscape immediately around your house thick with flammable vegetation? These things all contribute to your property’s risk rating and can be altered and improved.

Slide from 2025 NM WUFS presentation by Ahley Dalton Agency LLC, a New Mexico insurance provider representative, speaking about fire insurance and the IBHS Wildfire Prepared Homes program.

The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) worked with insurance providers to create the Wildfire Prepared Home (WPH) program. The program is supported by property insurers and other affiliated companies, and some insurers are now offering policies for homes that meet the standard. WPH provides recommendations for creating defensible space and improving property construction by replacing highly combustible materials with fire-resistant options. This program from IBHS is coming to New Mexico in 2026; this means that residents who follow the recommendations of the program to reduce their individual risk can then have their property inspected and receive a Wildfire Prepared Home designation certificate. The certificate, which demonstrates that the home has met specific mitigation actions, can then be shown to insurance companies. The designation is valid for three years. Learn more about the potential for loss of insurance and the space IBHS is looking to fill by viewing this presentation from the 2025 New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit.

Additional actions that a community can take to improve their chances of retaining fire insurance include:

Image from Living With Fire

  • Adopt and enforce local codes (such as defensible space ordinances) that require fire-adapted landscaping and/or ignition-resistant building materials and design.

  • Thin vegetation in common areas (not just individual properties) to reduce wildfire risk.

    • Create defensible space on neighboring public lands by working with public land agency urban lot management programs.

  • Improve infrastructure by creating clear emergency alert systems and evacuation routes and increasing access to fire hydrants.

  • Improve access by ensuring roads are wide enough for emergency response vehicles (fire engines) to pass and home addresses are clearly visible from the street.

  • Work with local fire departments and specialists to conduct professional home and community hazard assessments and develop mitigation strategies.

Additional resources

Upcoming virtual town hall from the NM Fire Planning Task Force

The next public meeting of the New Mexico Fire planning task force, hosted by the Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD) Forestry Division, will be held at 9:00 AM on Monday, November 17th, 2025. Agenda items include updates from the wildfire risk priority mapping, defensible space standards, and communications sub-groups; an update on F.A.I.R. Insured Home Hardening Grants; a report from the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) sub-group; State Forester’s update; a round robin open discussion; and time for public comment. View the full announcement and instructions for joining virtually (recommended due to limited space) or in-person.

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Resources for renters

Many fire preparedness and educational resources are targeted toward home and business owners, leaving short- and long-term renters in an information void. Scroll down to see resources collected and tailored to renters:

  • Short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO are increasing across the Southwest. While beneficial for local economies, many visitors are unaware of the state’s wildfire risks or how to stay informed. To address this, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium and the Arizona Wildfire Initiative created a wildfire information packet for short-term rentals. This customizable resource educates guests on wildfire risks and provides tools to help them stay informed and make safer choices.

  • As of 2023, 30.7% of housing units in New Mexico were renter-occupied (U.S. Census Bureau). Additionally, certain demographic groups—such as young adults and individuals with less formal education—are more likely to rent, and rental rates among these groups have increased nationwide over the past decade. To help promote wildfire preparedness for all New Mexicans, Wildfire Wednesday #156 focused on resources for renters, including topics like evacuation planning, renters’ insurance, and post-fire recovery.

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Upcoming webinars

Thursday, November 20, 2025, 2:00pm MT: Wood you believe it? Aspen interactions with fire and wildfire spread in the Southwest

From disease resilience to browse pressure, recreational value to fire resistance, aspen has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years. This webinar will offer insights on various aspects of the intersection between aspen forests and fire in the Southwestern U.S., including: the ability of aspen to slow fire growth and act as a firebreak, fire radiative power/burn severity in aspen forests of the Southern Rockies, and the relationship between stand composition and suppression strategies.

Register now

Wildfire Wednesdays #170: FACNM October Network Member Feature

Happy Wednesday FACNM community!

Today, we’re highlighting the work and insights of Gloria Skeet, Chapter Manager for the Bááháálí Chapter of the Navajo Nation. Alongside Gloria’s story, we’re sharing new resources, upcoming learning opportunities, and partner highlights to help support your own community’s wildfire adaptation journey.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Wishing everyone a safe and meaningful Día de los Muertos and a Happy Halloween,
Megan

October FACNM Leader Feature

Gloria Skeet serves as the Chapter Manager for the Bááháálí Chapter of the Navajo Nation, located south of Gallup, New Mexico, within the Eastern Navajo Agency. As an active member of the FACNM Network, Gloria has been instrumental in advancing wildfire preparedness and resilience through her leadership in the Zuni Mountains Collaborative and her efforts to implement McKinley County’s Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) goals within her community of Bááháálí.


Below, Gloria shares her experiences and key takeaways from guiding the Bááháálí community toward becoming more fire adapted and from her involvement with 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: We were a family of ranchers and farmers so the land has always been a central part of my life and deeply important to my family. In Navajo culture, our prayers often begin with referencing our Mother Earth and Father Sun. Growing up Navajo means growing up with a strong connection to the land and the resources it provides. I grew up spending most of my childhood outside and when I moved back home, I never really thought of our area as a dense jungle of juniper and piñon.

When I started working at the chapter house, we were required to develop an emergency plan in case of a disaster. At first, I thought of disasters as things like earthquakes or tornadoes, but after the big fire in Taos, I realized that for our community, wildfire was our greatest risk. That moment opened my eyes to how unprepared our community was for wildfire. 

Around that same time, I came across a flyer from McKinley County about developing a CWPP and decided to attend a meeting. At that meeting, I was the only Navajo chapter representative there and one of only three women in the room. That experience really changed my perspective.  

Since then, I’ve been involved in the Zuni Mountain Collaborative and the annual meetings the Guild leads, where we work together to build resilience to wildfire in the region. Reading the county’s CWPP, I noticed that Baahaali was listed as one of three areas at high risk for wildfire, with Cibola National Forest right in our backyard. I also started focusing on how our chapter could implement some of the CWPP goals that hadn’t yet been addressed like improving roads that serve as escape routes. In our community, five county roads are listed in the plan, and I want to see Baahaali become one of the first Navajo communities to truly be fire adapted. 

Q: When you think about your work in wildfire preparedness, what is your vision for your community? 

A: At the grassroots level, my vision is for the community to really understand the role each person can play in reducing wildfire risk. That means getting their properties assessed for preparedness, doing thinning work around their homes, and helping their neighbors do the same. 

Many Navajo families live in clusters, and everyone in those clusters is often related. Their homes and land are deeply important to them. When we can get the message across that each person can actively take steps to protect their home, and they start doing it, that’s what long-term success looks like to me.  Community outreach is absolutely critical, and that’s where our work begins. 

Q: What are one or two projects, partnerships, or efforts you’re especially proud of? 

Darryl Wilson, Prevention Specialist, with Smokey Bear and attendees of a wildfire community education event.

A: One partnership I’m especially proud of is the work I’ve been doing with Darryl Wilson from the BIA Branch of Fire Management. I’ve learned a lot through that connection, especially since much of the Navajo Nation’s work hasn’t always reached the Eastern Agency, which is the only agency fully located in New Mexico. When I met with BIA Fire Management, I had the chance to connect with Darryl, who focuses on Home Hazard Assessments, and Dominick Chicharello, who does a lot of thinning work. Through them, I learned that we can accomplish a lot within our communities, but it often requires working directly with Navajo families who live on private land or have full land clearances. 

I’ve also been working closely with our chapter for several years now, and I’ve realized that if something isn’t already built into the budget, you have to find partners to make it happen. Collaboration is key. We’ve built a strong partnership with the Zuni Mountain Collaborative, and Mateo, with the Forest Stewards Guild has been an incredible resource, providing technical assistance and helping us apply for a grant to become a wood hub. Working with Mateo and Juan at the Guild has helped us work with our community on the things we need to address most and learn about funding opportunities like the FACNM grant. 

Q: What challenges or barriers have you faced in your work, and how have you worked through them?

A: We constantly face challenges, and they almost always come down to funding. You need money to get things done, so in many ways, money is both our biggest challenge and our biggest barrier. 

Here at the chapter and in the work I’ve done, we’ve been able to work through this challenge because there’s always a partner out there willing to help. Overcoming financial barriers really comes down to knowing what resources are available, which means keeping communication open and building strong relationships. Those connections are what make it possible to keep moving forward, even when funding is tight. 

Q: How has being a part of the FACNM Network supported or shaped your work?

A: Being part of the FACNM Network has been really valuable because it connects me with other communities and individuals doing similar work, and that network has been a huge support system. When you’re new to this kind of work, there’s so much to learn, and connecting with others helps you pick up those lessons faster because someone else has already gone through the same experiences. We’re able to learn from one another.

I also like to challenge myself to be my best, to help pave the way for others, and to spread the word about what’s possible. Many Navajo chapter communities don’t always realize the importance of having a wildfire protection plan for their community. I want to make sure they understand how important that is for their community and that they know about FACNM as a resource that can help them apply for funding and support outreach in their area. 

Q: What advice would you give to someone stepping into a similar role or just beginning this work? 

July 2025 community outreach event, held in partnership between the Baahaali Chapter House and BIA Wildland Fire Management - Navajo Region.

A: If you’re stepping into this kind of role, the first thing I’d say is to become aware of the resources that are already out there and find ways to access them. 

If you want to be a change agent in your community, you have a responsibility to educate yourself. Seek out information, read, and reach out to people who are already doing this work. Ask questions and build your network. Don’t hesitate to ask if you can join a meeting or attend a workshop. There are so many resources available, you just have to take the initiative to find them and many of them are right in our own backyard.  

It can take just one person to step forward and say, “Let’s go for it,” and that can open the door to a whole network of support. 

 

Additional Resources and Upcoming Opportunities

In this webinar from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, Dr. Christopher Roos and colleagues use published and unpublished tree-ring fire history records from pine forests in Arizona and New Mexico to demonstrate that Indigenous foragers, pastoralists, and farmers influenced Southwestern fire regimes in similar ways. This research shows that population size, culture, and economic organization were not limiting variables on the influence of Indigenous populations on fire regimes and that new methodological approaches may offer new insights into long histories of Indigenous fire stewardship that can contribute to discourse on contemporary fire management, fire-co-management, and restoration of traditional fire management practices.

Presenter: Dr. Christopher Roos, Professor of Anthropology and Earth Sciences, SMU

 

Presented by the Institute for Managing Annual Grasses Invading Natural Ecosystems, this film explores the impacts and options for managing invasive annual grasses (cheatgrass, ventenata, and medusahead). This film highlights the negative impacts of these grasses on landscapes and explores the ecological, ranching, and economic impacts in western rangelands. The stories in the film highlight how collective action and proactive solutions are making a difference for communities across the West. Hear from land managers who share their experiences with managing these invasive species through partnerships and collaboration. Learn about the best management tools and strategies, like herbicide application, restoration, and monitoring, for tackling this threat across different geographies.

To watch film, click here! 

 

The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round

About The Spark

The Spark is a unified, statewide messaging campaign that promotes year-round wildfire preparedness through consistent, coordinated outreach among partners each month.

Formerly known as “Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round,” the campaign has returned with new energy and leadership. A core group of partners, including FACNM, BLM–New Mexico, NM State Forestry Division, and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI), will work together to deliver a monthly, unified wildfire preparedness message.

The bulletin below is designed to help you communicate wildfire topics to broad audiences.

October Edition

Download the Bulletin
Download a Print Friendly Version
 
 

East Mountain Green Waste Days

Free drop-off for East Mountain Green Waste Days started Saturday, October 25, and runs through November 9. This is an opportunity for East Mountain residents to haul as much slash as you can to the Tijeras transfer station, free during this time period. This event is brought to you by Bernalillo County, County Commissioner Eric Olivas, Ciudad SWCD, and NM Association of Counties.

 

Ponderosa Pine Utilization Summit - November 18-20, in Flagstaff, AZ

The Summit will engage a diverse group of forest managers, industry leaders, researchers, and policymakers in strategic discussions that examine the state of ponderosa pine forests and industry in the western United States. Through case studies, intentional dialogue, and working sessions, attendees will identify key barriers, develop practical solutions, explore innovations, and determine the resources needed to stabilize and grow the utilization of ponderosa pine. Registration closes this Friday, October 31st so register before it is too late!

Agenda: View the draft agenda.
Registration Fee: $300 (includes all sessions, meals, reception, and Thursday field tour)

Register here.

 

S-212 Chainsaw Operations in Wildland Firefighting Course - Wildfire Resiliency Training Center, Luna Community College

On November 8-9 and November 15-16, the WRTC will be offering S-212 Chainsaw Operations in Wildland Firefighting. The course lessons provide introduction to the function, maintenance and use of internal combustion engine powered chainsaws, and their tactical wildland fire application. Field exercises support entry level training for firefighters with little or no previous experience in operating a chainsaw, providing hands-on cutting experience in surroundings similar to fireline situations.

Contact 505.454.5323 OR wschuchman@luna.edu to enroll.


The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round

October Edition

About The Spark

The Spark is a unified, statewide messaging campaign that promotes year-round wildfire preparedness through consistent, coordinated outreach among partners each month.

Formerly known as “Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round,” the campaign has returned with new energy and leadership. A core group of partners, including FACNM, BLM–New Mexico, NM State Forestry Division, and the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI), will work together to deliver a monthly, unified wildfire preparedness message.

The bulletin below is designed to help you communicate wildfire topics to broad audiences.

Please feel encouraged to adapt and share these materials through your own channels.

Download the Bulletin
Download a print friendly version of the Bulletin

To view The Spark’s main page and view archived Wildfire Preparedness is Year-Round messaging, click here: The Spark: Wildfire Preparedness is Year Round — Fire Adapted NM

Wildfire Wednesdays #169: Building Stonger Communities Through Volunteer Fire Service

Happy Wednesday readers!

Across New Mexico, volunteer fire departments are the backbone of wildfire protection and emergency response. A volunteer firefighter’s work extends far beyond fighting fires; they provide emergency medical care, lead community education and prevention programs, and partner with land management agencies to protect lives and landscapes. In a state that is largely rural, these volunteers make up nearly 78% of the firefighting force. Yet, as State Fire Marshal Randy Varela shared at this year’s New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit, there are only about 4,000 volunteer firefighters serving the entire state, and their average age is 65. This reality highlights a critical challenge: volunteer fire departments urgently need more local support to sustain their ability to keep communities safe.

This week’s blog looks at how community members, no matter their background, can help strengthen their local volunteer fire departments (VFDs) and shares inspiring success stories of local VFDs increasing their capacity. Supporting your local VFD is one of the most powerful ways to promote community safety, resilience, and equitable access to emergency services for everyone.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Be well,
Megan

Supporting New Mexico’s Volunteer Fire Departments: A Call to Community Action

Why it Matters

Across the country, communities rely on volunteer firefighter and yet, that force is shrinking. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, there were about 676,900 volunteer firefighters in 2020, a sharp decline from 897,750 in 1984, when the NFPA first began tracking this data. This demonstrates the steady decline in volunteer personnel while emergency response calls steadily increase. This volunteer shortage doesn’t just affect who shows up when a fire breaks out, but it also has broader impacts on community safety, insurance rates, and local resilience.

Staffing Impacts Your Community’s Insurance and Safety

The number of volunteers in a local fire department directly influences a community’s Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating. An ISO rating evaluates fire departments and the communities they serve, assigning scores on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 represents the highest level of fire protection and 10 indicates that the department does not meet minimum standards. These ratings are important because insurance companies often use them to determine fire insurance premiums for homes and businesses.

To effectively respond to a fire, a volunteer fire department must have at least four responders. If a department cannot meet that minimum, its ISO rating could instantly drop to a 10, triggering a ripple effect that raises insurance costs for the entire community. Maintaining a strong volunteer base is therefore essential, not only for public safety, but also for insurance rates for the whole community.

 

How to Support Your Local VFD

Even if you do not want to participate in direct response, there are still many ways you can support your local VFD.

Volunteer - One of the most impactful ways to support your local firefighters is by volunteering your time and skills so firefighters can focus on protecting lives and property. Volunteer firefighters often require additional assistance in various non-emergency roles including:

  • Administrative Support: Non-response need’s of VFD’s often include record-keeping, data/report entry, or cleaning/maintaining equipment.

  • Fundraising: Help organize fundraising events or campaigns to generate funds for necessary equipment, training, and resources. Fundraising initiatives can include community events, donation drives, or partnerships with local businesses.

  • Community Outreach: Assist with community outreach programs, which can involve educating the community on fire safety, organizing public awareness events, or conducting fire prevention campaigns.

Donate Supplies and Equipment - Fire departments rely on well-maintained gear, equipment, and essential supplies. While local governments often provide funding, additional community donations can make a significant difference in ensuring firefighters have what they need to effectively respond to emergencies.

Spread Awareness - Help raise awareness about the work of volunteer firefighters and the challenges they face. Use social media, community newsletters, or local media outlets. Share stories, highlight their accomplishments, and encourage others to support their local fire department. Increased awareness can lead to a more robust support system for firefighters and attract more individuals to join the department.

The best way to join your local VFD and learn more about what assistance they need is to reach out to your local department directly.

If you’re unsure which departments serve your area, you can explore the Fire District Response Boundaries (FDRB) dataset, created by the National Association of State Foresters (NASF). This map provides a visual of fire district boundaries and was last updated in April 2025 for New Mexico.

 

Incentives in NM to Join Your Local VFD

Beyond the reward of serving your community, New Mexico offers tangible benefits for volunteer firefighters. Individuals who serve as a volunteer firefighter in New Mexico are eligible to access a retirement.

Volunteer Firefighter Retirement - Established in 1983, the Volunteer Firefighters Retirement Act allows volunteer firefighter’s at least 55 years old and with at least 10 years of service to qualify for a pension.

The monthly amount of you pension is determined by your years of service.

    • At least age 55 with 25 or more years of service you will receive $250 per month

    • At least age 55 with 10 or more years of service you will receive $125 per month

You will earn one year of service credit as a volunteer firefighter for each year that you:

    • Attend 50% of all scheduled drills;

    • Attend 50% of all scheduled business meetings, and;

    • Participate in at least 50% of all emergency response calls you held responsible to attend.

These benefits recognize the vital role that volunteer firefighters play in protecting New Mexico’s people, landscapes, and communities.

Learn more about NM's Volunteer Firefighter Retirement
 

Local VFD Successes

As mentioned above, sharing the stories and accomplishments of volunteer fire departments helps build community pride and inspires others to get involved. FACNM is proud to spotlight some local VFD successes, particularly those made possible through the Volunteer Fire Assistance (VFA) Grant Program.

Through the VFA program, local fire departments can secure funding to purchase wildland firefighting equipment and strengthen their capacity for wildfire response. These grants make a difference in ensuring communities across New Mexico remain prepared and protected.

FY25 VFA Success Story - County of Sierra Emergency Services

Sierra County Emergency Services is made up of 7 county volunteer fire departments, with 2 paid members and 100 volunteer firefighters, serving over 4236 square miles. Upon receiving a VFA grant, Sierra County Emergency Services was able to purchase much needed personal protective equipment, apparatus equipment, Bendix King radios, and fire hose/fittings.

The equipment has been placed on a reserve type 6 brush truck, available for county wide fire response. That apparatus can now be used as a backup type 6 engine for any of their fire districts in the event that a unit is down for repairs. The increasing effectiveness this equipment gives Sierra County helps their surrounding communities and partners by allowing volunteers to provide adequate mutual-aid response to all emergencies.


FY25 VFA Success Story - Cochiti Volunteer Fire Department

The Cochiti Fire Department (CFD) is a primarily volunteer municipal fire department comprised of 30 volunteer firefighters and EMTs, located in northeastern Sandoval County with a response area spanning 181 square miles. The Cochiti Fire Department was the recipient of the VFA Wildland Coordinator Grant, implemented in 2023, allowing CFD to hire Captain Dominick Ortiz. Wildland Coordinator Ortiz organized training for 25 new wildland firefighters from across the region and was integral to the success of implementing the Cochiti Wildfire Risk Reduction plan.

Cochiti VFD firefighters facilitating an After Action Review (AAR) after assisting on Cochiti Pueblo’s agricultural burn.

The intent of the plan was to educate the public on safe practices during seasonal agricultural burns, provide firefighter training, and promote multi-agency cooperation. Implementation of the plan resulted in over 200 acres of agricultural fields safely and successfully treated for the growing season, as well as 20+ firefighters and farmers received hands on training in a controlled environment. Cochiti firefighters participated in approximately 1500 hours of collective training in the 2023 season.

To learn more about other counties and municipalities that have successfully received VFA grant funding, visit: Volunteer Fire Assistance (VFA) Grant – Forestry

Upcoming Opportunities

Join the Natural Resources Journal, UNM School of Law, Utton Transboundary Resources Center, and the Intermountain West Transformation Network for the “Life After Fire: (Re)Imagining Post Fire Recovery for Headwater Dependent Communities” symposium on Friday, October 24, 2025 in the UNM Continuing Education Building in Albuquerque, NM.

This event will explore the legal, ecological, and community dimensions of post-wildfire recovery, anchored in the aftermath of the 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. This interdisciplinary event will highlight emerging research, policy responses, and adaptation strategies shaping the future of natural resource management in a warming world.

Register Now
 

Toas and Colfax County residents are invited to participate in a study discussing wildfire mitigation in the Enchanted Circle. Participants will be asked to share their thoughts and experiences related to wildfire mitigation, and take part in an interactive demonstration and discussion exploring wildfire treatments.

This study is part of a research collaboration between UNM, New Mexico Highlands University, Texas Tech University, and the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station.

The research team is currently gauging interest and collecting potential names of people who live in the area to participate in a virtual focus group. Individuals selected to participate will receive a $100 gift card upon completion of their participation. Space is limited.

Pre-register here or by emailing carmanmelendrez@unm.edu.

 

National Forest Foundation (NFF) is hiring a full-time, exempt 3-year term position that will support the restoration and improvement of recreation areas on the Lincoln National Forest. The Lincoln National Forest Project Coordinator will report to the New Mexico Program Manager and will work closely with other NFF Southwest Team field staff and regional nonprofit partners to cooperatively plan, develop, and implement priority projects on the Lincoln National Forest. The coordinator will assist in forestry related projects such as pre implementation unit prep, fuels reduction projects such as thinning, mastication and cut, skid, deck work, as well as community engagement, fundraising, and project management to assist in post-fire forest and water restoration projects. This work requires close coordination with the U.S. Forest Service, community organizations and implementation partners to accomplish identified goals and activities.  

Click here to view more specific position duties and responsibilities. The location for this position is Southern New Mexico in Ruidoso, Cloudcroft, Alamogordo, or Las Cruces, with the applicant able to travel regularly throughout the Lincoln National Forest.

 

Fall FACNM Microgrant Application Closes this Friday

The application for the fall round of the FACNM microgrant application closes this Friday, October 17 at 5pm MT.

FACNM Members and Leaders are eligible to apply for up to $2,000 to receive seed funding for:

  • convening wildfire preparedness events,

  • enabling on-the-ground community fire risk mitigation work, or

  • developing grant proposals for the sustainable longevity of their Fire Adapted Community endeavor.

Apply Now
 

Cultural Burn Pathway Workbook

Added as an update to the additional resources included in last week’s Wildfire Wednesday on cultural fire and forest practices, a Create a Cultural Burn Pathway workbook was recently released by the First Nations Emergency Services Society (FNESS) and the Indigenous Leadership Initiative (ILI).

View the Workbook
 

In this webinar from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, Dr. Christopher Roos and colleagues use published and unpublished tree-ring fire history records from pine forests in Arizona and New Mexico to demonstrate that Indigenous foragers, pastoralists, and farmers influenced Southwestern fire regimes in similar ways. This research shows that population size, culture, and economic organization were not limiting variables on the influence of Indigenous populations on fire regimes and that new methodological approaches may offer new insights into long histories of Indigenous fire stewardship that can contribute to discourse on contemporary fire management, fire-co-management, and restoration of traditional fire management practices.

Presenter: Dr. Christopher Roos, Professor of Anthropology and Earth Sciences, SMU

Register Now

Wildfire Wednesdays #168: Updates on Cultural Forest Practices and Fire Adaptation

Before we dive into today’s topic, we want to address something which is currently in the news:

As you may know, a shutdown of nonessential components of the federal government started today due to a lapse in congressionally approved funding. While it is unclear at this time how this will impact federal colleagues and partners, we hope to quickly return to being able to work with them because we know that New Mexico's wildfire crisis doesn't stop at fence lines - many of our communities and water sources are adjacent to or on federally-managed lands, and we need all hands on deck to meet the moment and continue moving toward being a fire adapted state.

Happy Wednesday, FAC community!

For today’s newsletter topic, we wanted to share an update to some information we provided back in 2021 related to cultural forest practices and the complex relationship humans have had with forest management for millennia. It is a common misconception that that the American West was “shaped entirely by natural forces” prior to arrival of Europeans; however, burning and logging have played a significant role across our landscape for nearly 15,000 years. Read on to learn more about these forest management techniques and the indigenous peoples who practice them today.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Have a great start to autumn,
Rachel

Cultural Burning

What is cultural burning?

““Cultural burning by Native Americans interconnected them not only to the land but to their animal, reptile, bird and plant spiritual relatives. Therefore, conducting a cultural burn relates to what they burned, how they burned it, and why they burned it”
— Ron W. Goode, Tribal Chair, North Fork Mono Tribe

Cultural burning falls within the broader category of intentional fire for community and resource resilience, a designation which also contains prescribed or controlled burns. “Cultural burning is separate and distinct from prescribed fire. While both forms of beneficial fire are essential to restoring good fire to the landscape, cultural fire has history, motivation, and meaning beyond the benefits it can reap for the environment” (Good Fire II, 2024).

Cultural burning is also a key component of traditional knowledge. “Reciprocity is a critical component of most Indigenous knowledge systems across the Tribes in the Columbia River Plateau, Intermountain West, and Great Basin and is one of the tenets of process-based restoration. Traditional knowledge systems convey principles of conduct for community members, pass down observations recorded through stories and songs, and describe the obligation to care for ecological systems as perpetual stewards” (An Indigenous Perspective of Fire, 2025). Within indigenous communities, cultural burning is “pertinent and substantial to the cultural livelihood”. Anthropologists have identified more than 70 different purposes for the intentional use of fire within ancestral indigenous and aboriginal cultures. There is also evidence that land areas used by Native Americans and subject to Indigenous fire management practices were more fire-resilient, even during climate periods that favored longer fire-free periods (NOAA, 2023).

History of cultural burning

Image by Stormy Staats, Karuk Women’s Indigenous Prescribed Fire Training Exchange via Good Fire II

State and federal government policies over the last 150+ years have targeted, banned, and put substantial logistical and legal strain on the use of cultural burning. “Sovereignty over lands, waters, and natural resources within their unique ancestral territories is one of the most critical retained powers for Tribes… Nevertheless, both federal and state governments can and do interfere with the exercise of such sovereignty” (Good Fire, 2021). Some barriers to cultural burning include:

  • Entities mistakenly treating cultural burning as prescribed fire (and therefore restricting it according to prescribed fire standards)

  • State and federal agencies asserting that they must “Permit” or “Allow” cultural burning on Lands of Territorial Affiliation.

  • The expertise of cultural fire practitioners in not formally recognized.

  • The enabling conditions necessary for landscape-scale, multi-jurisdictional stewardship are not yet in place (visit Good Fire II, page 13 for more detail).

In 2024, the Karuk Tribe championed, and the California Legislature passed, first-of-its-kind legislation that allows federally recognized tribes to practice cultural burning freely once they reach an agreement with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials. In February of this year, the Karuk Tribe became the first to enter into such an agreement. In this instance, that means that Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant, restoring the proper government-to-government relationship. There are still many barriers to indigenous communities exercising their sovereignty related to cultural burning, including some which are unique to the Southwest or have their roots in the complicated ‘trust responsibility’ of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. However, the successes by and lessons learned from our neighbors to the West can help us pave the way to wider use of this practice in New Mexico.

Deep dive on cultural burning

Click on the buttons below to view academic papers and other articles detailing the history of cultural burning practices in the American West and current revitalization efforts. You can also register to attend an upcoming webinar from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium on the legacy of Indigenous cultural burning, showing that tree-ring fire history records from pine forests in Arizona and New Mexico demonstrate that Indigenous foragers, pastoralists, and farmers influenced Southwestern fire regimes.

Articles

SOUTHWEST INDIGENOUS FIRE STEWARDSHIP: An annotated bibliography of sources
AN INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVE OF FIRE IN THE UPPER SNAKE RIVER BASIN
Cultural burning: Wildfires in the Arctic

Publications

Legacies of Indigenous land use shaped past wildfire regimes in the Basin-Plateau Region, USA
THE ROLE OF INDIGENOUS BURNING IN LAND MANAGEMENT
Native American fire management at an ancient wildland–urban interface in the Southwest United States

Events

Register for the 11/5/25 webinar
Takeaways from a 2024 discussion on restoring a culture of fire in NM

Cultural burning success stories

Indigenous Knowledges and Sciences as Best Available Scientific Information
Best Available Scientific Information (BASI) is defined as science that is accurate, reliable, and relevant. Indigenous Knowledges and Sciences (IKS) are place-based, culturally relevant knowledge that has been collected and carried down by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples from generation to generation. The wisdom contained within the broad scope of IKS is accurate, reliable, and relevant and is therefore qualified as BASI that can be used by land managers and researchers. Researchers and professionals need to recognize that the dimensions of specialization, personal experience, and transmission of IKS are diverse and complex, and understand that the information gathered by Indigenous Peoples is collected and communicated in different ways. Immense variation is present among Indigenous cultural roles, languages, and oral histories, as well as in methods of obtaining information. Ultimately, the findings obtained and documented through IKS belong to the people of that Indigenous Nation. These truths all need to be considered and respected when engaging with IKS as BASI.

Read More about IKS as BASI

The following story comes from an April 2025 article, Bringing ‘Good Fire’ Back to the Land

The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation has recently revived its tradition of cultural burns. Every fall, the tribe holds Leok Po days, which means “good fire,” on Yocha Dehetribal lands in the Cache Creek Nature Preserve in Northern California. Melinda Adams, San Carlos Apache Tribe member and geography and atmospheric science professor at the University of Kansas, has come to help. She ties tule stalks into forearm-length bundles, preparing them as fire-carrying torches: “It’s significant,” she says, “because it’s one of the plants tribes use historically.” She calls these practices “indigenuity — Indigenous genius.”

Image courtesy of Cache Creek Conservancy

Adams experiences the ceremony as deeply restorative — not just for the land but for herself, her community and her connection with her ancestors. “We’re not just healing the land ecologically and doing good stewardship work that’s eventually going to regenerate the plant communities,” she says. “We’re also healing ourselves as people, relearning our ways.”

For her, reviving cultural burns is also a reclamation and cultural revitalization. Every cultural fire practitioner she knows works with Native youth. “Whether we document it or not, we all make sure these cultural lessons are passed on to the next generation,” she says. “For a long time, it wasn’t safe to be Native. But cultural fire is a way of returning to the landscapes we were once punished for stewarding. When we gather for a burn, we reclaim our place.”

Read the full article from yocha dehe

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In 2021, we published a story from the Mono Tribe on how cultural burning is being practiced and what lessons it holds for the future of the forest (see video). California banned cultural burning back in 1850 as part of legislation designed to forcibly remove Indigenous people from their ancestral lands. In an update to that story, this article explores how, since the California ban was lifted in 2022, the Tule River Indian, North Fork Mono, and Tübatulabal Tribes are working to return fire to Giant Sequoia groves. While only two off-reservation cultural burns have taken place in the giant sequoia range, the tribes and their partners are hopeful that these first steps will build widespread support for cultural burning. Click here to read the article “Banned for 100 years, cultural burns could save sequoias”.

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Members of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California burn piles in an overgrown area near Dresslerville, Nev., to promote new willow growth, a key resource for traditional basket making.
Image courtesy of The Washoe Tribe via KUNR.

In the Western U.S., extreme wildfires are damaging tribal lands. Changing climatic conditions have only made the situation more dire. “That’s why the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California is working to reintroduce intentional, cultural fire. These are once-banned burning practices they use to restore the health of their forests and plants… Cultural fires are restorative, not destructive. They’re typically done on a smaller scale to take care of traditional medicine plants or other cultural resources that rely on fire… ‘For example, the Washoe Tribe, our first two burns were burning a willow patch,’ said Rhiana Jones, director of the Washoe Tribe’s environmental protection department. ‘Washoes are famous for their baskets, making beautiful baskets. So when you burn the willows, they grow back better, straighter, with less secondary nodes’... ‘A lot of what we're doing here is trying to return to that different style of fire that allows us to actually promote our ecosystems, promote our cultures’ said Brandon Cobb, who’s Cherokee and a program manager with The Nature Conservancy.” Read more about the Washoe Tribe’s use of cultural burning in “The Washoe Tribe brings back cultural fire to restore forests, plants amid climate change”

Ancestral Logging Practices

The original wildland-urban interface in New Mexico was on the Jemez Plateau nearly 12,000 years ago where inhabitants practiced a form of selective logging. “Life on the Jemez Plateau required all the fine fuels that villagers could get their hands on. In roof construction alone, villagers cut hundreds of thousands of small-diameter timbers for supportive vigas, while understory growth went for fuelwood. Outside of villages, trails and agricultural fields acted as firebreaks.” There were actually more fires burning on the Jemez Plateau during this time compared to today, however, in part due to these forestry practices the fires were small and low in severity. Visit this 2017 High Country News article or read the paper below to learn more!

Elsewhere in the Southwest, Indigenous communities have historically harvested timber for fire fuel and construction materials. From the wooden support beams used in the Ancestral Puebloan sites of Wupatki, the cliff dwellings of Walnut Canyon, and Elden Pueblo, to contemporary maintenance and care of home and communal structures in Hopi villages, lumber has sustained northern Arizona’s Indigenous communities. View this archived article from Northern Arizona University to read more.

Native American fire management at an ancient wildland–urban interface in the Southwest United States
An Ancestral Landscape

Additional Resources

Cultural Burn Pathway Workbook

The First Nations Emergency Services Society (FNESS) and the Indigenous Leadership Initiative (ILI) released the Create a Cultural Burn Pathway workbook, which contains seven worksheets that walk communities through the development of a strong cultural fire program—no matter what stage they are in. The workbook aims to help Indigenous Nations create cultural burn programs that reduce wildfire risk and revitalize a core part of our relationship with the land.

Cultural fire is culture and location specific. So instead of a prescriptive approach, each worksheet poses a set of questions and prompts that can be answered collectively. Worksheets 1,2, and 7 are for a broad cultural burn pathway whereas worksheets 3,4,5, and 6 are for specific burns.

Webinars

A Science-Management Partnership to Reduce Human-Caused Large Wildfires in the Southwest: Lessons Learned and Pathways Forward
Wednesday, Oct. 15, 12:00 PM

This webinar from the Southwest Fire Science Consortium will offer lessons learned from an assortment of Southwest-based studies on the social and ecological factors that drive human-caused wildfires and offer pathways forward for research findings to be implemented to reduce human ignitions in the future.

Learn more here: www.swfireconsortium.org/2025/09/19/a-science-management-partnership-to-reduce-human-caused-large-wildfires-in-the-southwest-lessons-learned-and-pathways-forward/

Register for the 10/15 webinar

Reminder: Smoke Ready Communities Materials Release
Thursday, Oct. 9, 12:00 PM

Join the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network and Liz Walker, PhD, for an informational webinar all around smoke ready communities! During this hour-long webinar we will discuss the "why" of including wildfire smoke in your FAC efforts and conduct an overview of the new smoke ready graphics & accompanying materials.

View the materials here: https://fireadaptednetwork.org/new-resources for-smoke-ready-communities/

Register for the 10/9 webinar

CWPP Toolkit

In early 2024, FACNM released a short-form guide to help communities get started with writing or updating Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs). Now, CalFire with funding from California Climate Investments has produced a comprehensive CWPP toolkit with a video guide, a downloadable kit with recommendations for plan development, submittal, and implementation, best practices, and additional resources. While some of these materials are California-specific, many are complementary for CWPP development across the U.S.

View the Toolkit

Recent publications

Going Slow to Go Fast: Landscape Designs to Achieve Multiple Benefits evaluates the compatibility of treatments for (short-term) fire risk reduction and (longer-term) ecosystem resilience. This paper from the Pacific Southwest and Rocky Mountain Research Stations finds that short-term fire risk reduction and long-term resilience objectives can be complementary within a landscape, but ecosystem resilience is not a guaranteed co-benefit when fire risk reduction is the primary objective. Rather, improving ecosystem resilience cannot be achieved quickly because many desired forest conditions require both deliberate strategic action to guide the location, character, and timing of management as a disturbance agent, as well as adequate time for landscape conditions to improve and resilience benefits to be realized. Sometimes, implementation of mitigation measures for fire risk reduction can be out of alignment with actions necessary to achieve holistic ecosystem health and long-term resilience. The article also offers recommendations to meet multiple objectives.

Read the full article

Wildfire Wednesdays #167: Neighbors Taking Action - The Brazos Firewise Story

Happy Wednesday FACNM community,

When wildfire risk loomed large in the Brazos Canyon, a handful of neighbors decided to act. What began with a simple community survey has grown into a collaborative, multi-year effort to reduce fuels, improve safety, and build resilience across the valley. The Brazos Firewise story is important because it shows how local leadership, strong partnerships, and shared responsibility can transform concern into meaningful change, offering lessons for any community facing wildfire threats.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

Wishing you all best,
Megan

FACNM Leader Spotlight - Brazos Firewise

Kurt Schumacher, a lead organizer for Brazos Firewise, has been an engaged and dynamic leader in the FACNM Network for just over a year. He and the Brazos Firewise group have contributed valuable lessons and insights as they work to strengthen wildfire adaptation in Brazos Canyon. Their efforts highlight not only the progress that can be made at the community level, but the experiences and takeaways shared here reflect how collective knowledge and partnership can accelerate resilience-building far beyond what any one individual could achieve alone.

Organization Foundation and Getting Started

The Brazos became one of New Mexico’s early Firewise communities about 15 years ago. Fire department leadership took the lead and began mitigation with annual chipping events, but after some time, the effort languished. However, after some Brazos neighbors attended the 2022 Rio Chama Congreso and learned of the dire drought conditions, forecast, and fire propensity, in 2022, a couple of neighbors decided they should take action. 

Using community development principals, the neighbors set out to find out about important issues in the neighborhood. The team sent out surveys to all the valley neighbors and based on the response discovered overwhelming support and interest in participation in fire mitigation. The results highlighted specific neighbor’s needs, including need for a vendors list for mitigation services and financial assistance, but respondents also demonstrated a strong willingness to help each other.

The founders developed a 5-year plan for the fire mitigation effort and began to reinvigorate the Firewise program. The neighbors recruited help from other neighbors and began establishing alliances with the local State District Forester, Jose Carillo, and the Forest Stewards Guild. Brazos Firewise leaders decided to hold annual meetings to inform neighbors about the survey, funding opportunities, and latest techniques and findings about fire mitigation techniques.

Brazos Canyon Subdivision Leaders 

Data from the original survey indicated that many residents in the Brazos described their location in the valley based on their subdivision, so Brazos Firewise identified supportive leaders in each subdivision to carry the word back to their community. Below highlights a few of these leaders and focuses on one of their key roles in the Brazos effort.

Jane W. - Co-Reinvigorator (retired), As a former city manager, Jane brought organization and sense of purpose to the team. While she has since moved from the area, the organization, energy, and cooperation she fostered among the team members and with outside agencies continues to benefit the team. Strong foundations lead to optimistic futures.

Kurt S. – Co-Reinvigorator, an economist with community development experience. Kurt’s data and planning skills helped chart a plan of action to get the team started. He loves the valley, the diversity of characters in the Brazos, and wielding a chainsaw. Direction has to come from the community.

Vallarie G. –Vallerie has been at every event and participates fully. After realizing the need to reduce fuels in the valley, Valerie started a small business to do mitigation. In 2025, she alone has transported about 40 tons - 1/3 of the total tonnage of limbs and other green waste that have shipped from the valley. While she has many paying customers, Valarie contributes a significant portion of waking hours to help mitigate for low-income seniors who comprise a significant portion of the valley’s residents.  Never doubt the ability of a single individual to make a difference. 

Meredith P. – Meredith lives in the upper reaches of the valley and loves living in the forest, but sees the potential for a catastrophic fire. As a professional digital marketer and community influencer, Meredith has been responsible for getting the word out and growing the outreach, not only for the fire mitigation effort, but for developing a sense of community in the Brazos.

Lee and Valarie W. – longtime residents of the Brazos, Lee and Valarie have been instrumental in making the program a success. From donating the use of their large-scale chipper and staff to operate it, to coordinating their neighborhoods participation, and sponsoring community events, Lee and Valarie are leaders among the large property owners. They have been instrumental in efforts that will eventually lead to moving the valley from “High Fire Severity Threat” to “Moderate.” In 2025, approximately 900 acres of the ranch’s forests will be thinned using masticator and hand thinning.  While our defensible space efforts will hopefully reduce the impacts of fire by saving lives and property, the forest health will be dependent upon largescale efforts to reduce forest density.

Q: When you think about your work in wildfire preparedness, what is your vision for your community? 

Reducing Fuels. Our key goal is to reduce the fire severity threat in the watershed from very high to moderate. To achieve this goal, we’ve had to enroll partners throughout the valley. 

The key goal has always been to reduce fuels, but with 270,000 acres of overgrown forest and the Brazos River Valley only having a single road providing access to the majority of parcels, the Brazos Firewise team had to prioritize, and this means improving residents’ ability to safely exit the valley in the event of a fire and creating defensible space for existing homes. Fortunately, the State of New Mexico Highways and State Forestry have been supportive and through a memorandum of understanding created in 2024, State Forestry will hire contractors to clear the right-of way along the State Road beginning in September 2025. This roadway project will dramatically improve the safety of people who need to exit the valley for any emergency, but particularly when the inevitable fires occur. 

State Forestry, with the Upper Chama Soil and Water Conservation District as fiscal agent, will begin to create defensible space for property owners through a CDWG grant. Property assessment began this summer, and vendors are expected to begin to complete mitigation around homes for the 60+ applicants who applied over the last couple of years.

While the roadway clearing and defensible space grants will help small property owners prepare for fire, reducing the fire severity threat requires large “landscape scale” efforts.  Fortunately, large property owners are also onboard and during the summer of 2025, from June to August, over 600 acres of mastication was completed by large ranches through grants coordinated through the Chama Peak Land Alliance.

Q: What advice would you give to someone stepping into a similar role or just beginning this work? 

Community input is the best way to start. By conducting a survey at the outset, Brazos Firewise was able to both explode myths (e.g. residents aren’t willing to cut trees), determine resident’s key concerns (forest density, lack of defensible space, and safe egress), and identify paths to overcome perceived obstacles to getting started (vendor list, chipping events and grant opportunities.)

Our effort to reinvigorate the program has been able to resurrect good work that was done in the past, rekindle relationships, and acknowledge past efforts while learning from past program’s shortcomings. Partnerships with all the players are essential and will allow programs to sustain. Individual and organizations’ efforts will ebb and flow, but with partnerships built on trust, individual shortcomings are replaced with group action and mutual support.

Q: What efforts are your team members especially proud of? 

Our team has accomplished a lot and we feel the “all hands, all lands” slogan has particular relevance for our team. Many of the efforts to reduce the fire severity threat completed in the Brazos had a champion, but the cumulative effort and energy far exceed the individual efforts. Like all good efforts, there’s rarely one sole person responsible, but plenty of credit to be shared and need to acknowledge all the great work completed.

Click here to read the full Brazos Firewise story.

Additional Opportunities and Resources

Application for Equipment Transfer of a BLM Type 6 Engine

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in New Mexico is soliciting applications to transfer one excess Type 6 fire engine, equipment, and supplies to a local fire department to enhance their wildland firefighting capabilities. Under BLM’s Rural Fire Readiness (RFR) program, local wildland firefighting cooperators that meet eligibility may receive items the BLM no longer needs at no cost. This year, BLM New Mexico will be transferring one fire engine, which will come stocked with $3,000 worth of firefighting tools, hose, and appliances.

The application deadline is October 3, 2025.

View Equipment Transfer Guidelines
View Solicitation of Applications

Volunteer Fire Assistance Grant Application

The State of New Mexico, Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department (EMNRD), Forestry Division is seeking Applications for the Volunteer Fire Assistance Program (VFA). This VFA grant is provided through emergency funds made available by the U.S. Forest Service to protect communities from catastrophic wildland fire. Grant funding focuses primarily on wildland fire objectives including: 1) equipping rural fire departments with wildland fire equipment; 2) organizing rural fire departments for wildland fire response; and 3) wildland fire prevention. EMNRD will give higher priority to projects that enhance local governmental entities’ capabilities to safely respond to and manage wildland fires in medium/high risk areas (as identified in the New Mexico Forest Action Plan) through the response of their rural/volunteer fire departments.

Application due date: October 24, 2025, at 5:00 pm

View the Application Packet

Firewood Bank Funding

The Alliance for Green Heat, in partnership with the USDA Forest Service, is making significant funding available to enhance the network of firewood banks across the United States through the Firewood Bank Assistance Program. This year, grants will be up $50,000 to enable programs to acquire more wood and larger processing equipment. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until all available funds have been awarded.

Learn more and Apply

Wildland Firefighter (Prevention) Position Open with BLM New Mexico

BLM is hiring a prevention-focused wildland firefighter for a permanent position located in Las Cruces, NM. The application closes 09/24/2025.

Some position duties include:

  • Develop, coordinate, and implement educational school programs, meetings, and events with tribal governments and local communities to reduce loss resulting from wildland fire.

  • Lead the wildfire prevention and mitigation program and facilitates local, state, and regional/national/tribal forums.

  • Develop and implement strategic wildfire mitigations and protection plans during wildfire events to assess actual and potential risks and hazards.

  • Leads, develops, and implements wildfire restriction and closure plans.

  • Directs the identification and analysis of major causes of wildland fire and ensures that these causes are addressed in wildland fire management plans.

  • Leads unit level annual wildfire prevention readiness reviews.

  • Provides oversight to ensure adherence to, and implementation of, fire investigation program requirements at the unit level.

Be aware of new resume requirements for federal jobs.

View the Position

Podcast: The Ebb and Flow of Public Trust Around Prescribed Fire with NM Deputy State Forester Lindsey Quam

The sixth and final episode of the Fire in the Southwest Podcast Series explores the complex, multicultural fire histories and management dynamics in New Mexico, with Deputy State Forester and Tribal Liaison Lindsey Quam. Lindsey speaks to how the intersecting cultures and management values across New Mexico—including Indigenous peoples, the Hispanic population and, well, white people—presents challenges but also opportunities in trying to extoll the merits of prescribed fire.

Listen Here

Association for Fire Ecology: Studying Fire Resource Page

Now that many schools are back in session, the Association for Fire Ecology put together a Studying Fire resource page. Many resources for students who are currently studying fire or who are interested in fire can be found on this page, from trainings to employment opportunities to a list of fire ecology and management degree programs. The page includes a map of colleges and universities that have been identified as having fire ecology degree/minor/certificate programs, SAFE chapters, prescribed burn clubs, or other strong fire interest. Click on the map below to access it!

Did they miss your college or university? Fill out this short form to provide more information.

Smoke Ready Communities Materials Release - Oct. 9, 12:00 PM

Join the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network and Liz Walker, PhD, for an informational webinar all around smoke ready communities! During this hour-long webinar we will discuss the "why" of including wildfire smoke in your FAC efforts and conduct an overview of the new smoke ready graphics & accompanying materials.

View the materials here: https://fireadaptednetwork.org/new-resources for-smoke-ready-communities/

Register for the webinar

National Preparedness Month

FEMA’s Ready Campaign has observed September as National Preparedness Month since 2004 to encourage Americans to prepare for emergencies. The month is a great time to take small steps to make a big difference in being prepared.

Preparedness Starts at Home, the 2025 theme, focuses on getting back to the essentials of preparedness. In addition to sharing the tips, messages and graphics you can find on Ready.gov, there are four key actions they ask you to do to be better prepared for disaster: know your risk, make a family emergency plan, build an emergency supply kit, and get involved in your community.

See the full announcement and toolkit on ready.gov.

Wildfire Wednesdays #166: Forest Health, Pests, Disease, and Fire

Happy Wednesday FACNM community,

New Mexico’s forests are facing growing challenges from insects and disease, and the impacts are becoming increasingly visible across the landscape. In recent years, hotter and drier conditions have created the perfect environment for widespread outbreaks, leaving many residents concerned about the health of the trees that surround their communities. According to New Mexico’s 2024 Forest Health Summary, “The total number of forest and woodlands mapped in 2024 with damage from insects, disease and abiotic conditions was 406,000 acres on all landownership types in New Mexico, an increase of 42,000 acres or 12% since 2023.”

This year, northern New Mexico residents have noticed large patches of trees turning brown, raising alarm about what’s happening in the forests. Much of this damage is linked to the insect activity.

The relationship between insects, drought, and wildfire is an ongoing cycle. Hotter temperatures and reduced precipitation weaken trees, making them more susceptible to insect attack. In turn, beetle-killed or disease-weakened trees create more dead and susceptible fuel for future wildfires. By looking closer at how insects and fire interact, we can better prepare for the challenges ahead and explore strategies to make our forests more resilient.

This Wildfire Wednesday includes:

Stay safe and be well,
Megan

A Primer on Tussock Fir Outbreaks

Summary of today’s primer:

History - High-elevation forests across New Mexico have experienced a tussock moth outbreak over the past three years which has left many trees, primarily Douglas fir and White fir, with damaged orange crowns and has caused some mortality.

Takeaways - The Douglas-fir tussock moth is just one of many insects and diseases impacting forest health across the state. Although the current tussock moth epidemic is waning in many places, forests across New Mexico continue to face growing pressures from bark beetles, defoliating moths, engraver beetles, and other pests and pathogens. These disturbances weaken individual trees and can trigger large-scale mortality events. As the climate becomes hotter and drier, and forests experience greater water and resource stress, pest and disease activity is intensifying. The resulting tree death reshapes landscapes in different ways depending on forest type.

Next steps - Targeted, ecologically sound thinning remains one of the most effective tools for strengthening forest resilience, both against insects and disease, and against wildfire.

 

Why do all those trees look dead?

An outbreak of a native insect called the Douglas-fir tussock moth (DFTM) has defoliated trees – meaning, damaged the leaves of trees – in and around the Santa Fe National Forest. The three-year outbreak has likely just ended, according to Victor Lucero, Forest Health Program Manager for the New Mexico Forestry Division. In late August 2025, the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition Ambassadors invited Lucero to talk about the insect, what caused its outbreak, and how the outbreak has impacted forest health. 

The following is based on a presentation from Victor Lucero. For more information, visit the Forest Health website or contact Victor.

 

What is the Douglas-fir tussock moth? 

The Douglas-fir tussock moth is endemic to western North America: It belongs here, it will always be here, and it’s always present in the forest.  

The Douglas-fir tussock moth overwinters in an egg mass that contains a few hundred eggs. In the spring, those eggs hatch into the first instar caterpillars (the first stage of development), which disperse by “ballooning” – so wherever the egg masses are, the insect will disburse through wind currents or thermals. The emergence of this first instar coincides with bud burst (the emergence of new growth on trees). Near Santa Fe, that has been around the middle of May for the last couple of years. The insect then begins to develop into larger caterpillars and finally reach a stage of caterpillar that resembles the photo below. Tussock moths generally pupate in late summer, forming cocoons from which they emerge as moths.

This insect is a strict defoliator, meaning that it feeds on the needles of trees; it does not feed on buds, it does not burrow into trees, it does not kill trees by girdling the tree stems. As the name suggests, Douglas fir is one of the hosts, but the tussock moth can also attack other trees such as spruce and true firs. 

Douglas-fir tussock moths are defoliators. Does that mean they’re killing trees? 

The affected trees, especially visible with their reddish-brown needles, are in different stages of defoliation. Many of them will die, and many of them will not. 

Seeing the discolored tree canopies leads a lot of folks to wonder why the trees are dying. This has led to a lot of commentary, a lot of concern, and rightfully so; nobody wants to see the forest going from green to this. However, these needles are just responding to either one single bite or multiple bites from caterpillars.

So what is actually happening to the trees, post-defoliation? When we look closely, the buds of many impacted trees are, even now, starting to open. Defoliation stresses trees, but won’t necessarily kill them unless they are hit multiple years in a row. Victor Lucero has observed trees that are 80% defoliated, and the following year they break bud and are fine, given no other defoliation event by Douglas-fir tussock moth or another insect. That said, there will be some mortality. Driving through the forest, you’ll see some gray, dead trees; those will not come back, and those can be potential wildfire hazards. 

What caused this outbreak in New Mexico? 

It's important to note that whenever there's an outbreak of an insect, it usually is triggered by something else.  In this case, there is a problem with too many trees per unit area (the forests are too dense) in many woodlands and forests. The reality is that this insect is responding to an abundance of food.  

The Douglas-fir tussock moth has a high rate of mortality early after hatching because of either starvation or predation, but more so when needles aren't readily available. Our dense forests provide a veritable buffet table for the moths and provide a safe place for them to mate and lay their eggs, continuing the cycle. It’s common for Victor to count 50 trees in a 20-foot by 20-foot area, and that's just not sustainable for the viability of the tree or for the health of the entire forest.  

The Douglas-fir tussock moth has been attacking white fir because it is extremely overstocked in our high-elevation and northern forests. Fire, which we have long been unnaturally suppressing, belongs in our forests because it reduces the amount of fuel (flammable material) on the forest floor and keeps certain species of trees at levels that were historically documented. For white fir, historically, there were notably fewer trees per acre and were less widespread than they are now. The high density of a tree like white fir is supporting a very large population of the tussock moth which in turn is reaching the point of an outbreak wherever we see high densities of white fir. 

How do we know how bad the outbreak is?

One way we monitor and track tussock moth activity is through pheromone traps. The traps have a lure and are coated with sticky glue impregnated with a sex pheromone to attract male moths (the females do not have wings and are not mobile). This acts as an early detection system – if we catch 25 male moths on average at a five-trap site, that triggers us to then go and subsequently count for egg masses.

Last year, in an area of Hyde Park (near Santa Fe Ski Basin), there were 300-400 egg masses in 29 trees. That’s a breaking point. Victor recently monitored six different sites in northern NM, from Black Canyon to the Aspen Ranch, and didn't find a single egg mass. 

Is the outbreak over? 

There are naturally occurring predators and parasitoids, mostly wasps and fly species, that affect tussock fir populations and keep them in check, but more importantly there is something called a nuclear polyhedrosis virus, NPV. It occurs naturally in the environment, and when caterpillars of the Douglas-fir tussock moth come in contact with that virus, they begin to wilt, like a dangling ornament on a tree.  

When a caterpillar gets infected with this virus, the virus quickly reproduces and then causes the caterpillar to rupture. When this happens, it releases millions of viral particles per caterpillar which then spreads to and infects other caterpillars. Around the third year of a tussock moth outbreak, the viral load becomes widespread enough that the population collapses. 

Typically, an outbreak lasts three, maybe four years. In northern NM, we're at the end of the third year and we’re seeing that population collapse happening.

Why are there signs instructing people “DO NOT TOUCH” the Douglas-fir tussock moth? 

There have been multiple incidents over the last couple of years of people experiencing tussockosis. This is an affliction where tufts of very small, compressed hairs on the Douglas-fir tussock moth come into contact with someone’s skin and cause irritation, especially among people who are predisposed to allergic reactions.

What should we expect to happen next? 

Victor and state Forestry Division will continue to monitor tussock moth activity. Based on rudimentary sampling, it looks like the Douglas-fir tussock moth population has collapsed and now it’s a matter of determining how much tree mortality has occurred. Land managers will then have to decide what to do about the standing dead trees. Monitoring will also continue because there is a potential for bark beetles, like fir engraver beetles, to come in and attack these weakened defoliated trees. Knowing how much insect activity is happening in these defoliation sites allows Forestry Division to give a better assessment as to the overall health of the trees.

Bark beetles attack stressed trees – and they’re outright tree killers. Male bark beetles colonize the trees, emit a sex pheromone to draw in females, and eggs hatch into grubs which feed on the phloem - the phloem is what transports water and nutrients between the roots and leaves. The beetles also introduce a staining fungus, blue-stain fungus.  

All of this is happening underneath the bark where we don’t see the damage. Often, the first sign of a beetle outbreak is the tree canopy turning an orange color, called fading. The feeding action that girdles the stem and the introduction of the staining fungus very quickly leads to mortality.

Bark beetles have been here, they’ll continue to be here, and they will typically target stressed trees because they’re easier to colonize: If trees are doing well, there's a sustained sap flow, and the system is under pressure so a bark beetle trying to attack it will literally be pitched (pushed) out because of the resiliency of the host.  

However, if there's a beetle outbreak that is triggered by a big tussock moth defoliation event, the numbers of bark beetles can increase dramatically, disperse widely, and overcome even healthy trees. That’s where things can become very problematic, where you have outbreaks of bark beetles that continue for several years. For now, Victor hasn’t seen a whole lot of bark beetles in the areas near Santa Fe that have been hit by defoliation.

What can be done to help the forest?

Wherever we see thinning treatments, those trees have less competition, but where we have high densities of trees, there’s a lot of competition going on. Where densities of trees remain unnaturally high, the data collected on the Douglas-fir tussock moth over multiple decades shows that every ~7 to 10 years, we can expect to see another outbreak of Douglas-fir tussock moth like this, which will last 3-4 years. These insects are capitalizing on the abundance of food: where the trees are canopy-to-canopy and there are lots of them, it’s easy for these animals to disperse from one tree to the next. The best thing we can do is continue to thin the forest in a targeted and ecologically-sound way to improve its resilience to pests, something which also improves its resilience to wildfire.

Pests and Fire

How defoliation and insect-driven mortality impacts wildfire susceptibility

A western USA coniferous forest landscape where BDAs are a common and natural feature. BDAs interact with abiotic factors such as fire and drought to determine forest composition and structure at stand and landscape scales.

A common belief is that forests infested by insects, pathogens, and parasitic plants, also known as biological disturbance agents, or BDAs, are “unhealthy” and are, therefore, at greater risk of fire. However, more recent research indicates that BDAs often have a more nuanced, context-dependent influence on fire. Collaborative research, funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Forest Service and Oregon State University, is described in the article, “The complexity of biological disturbance agents, fuels heterogeneity, and fire in coniferous forests of the western United States.” This manuscript provides a conceptual framework for how to relate BDAs, fuels and fire based on a review of supporting literature.

Main takeaways from the review:

  • BDAs include diverse biota, including native and non-native pathogens, insects, and parasitic plants, which both respond to and reshape forest composition and structure by causing tree decline and mortality and changing species composition.

  • BDAs impacts on fuels, and thus on fire likelihood, behavior, and severity, depend on the timing, scale, and extent of outbreaks, as well as preexisting stand conditions.

  • Most BDA groups have received little attention from fire researchers, despite many being pervasive across the western United States. The role of BDAs in shaping fuel characteristics and fire risk is very relevant under today’s warming and drying climate.

  • The way BDAs interact with fire depends primarily on how significantly BDAs influence canopy, surface, and litter/duff fuels.

  • BDAs influence fuel structure in live crowns by killing leaves, branches, and whole trees, they cause species-specific tree mortality, and affect competitive interactions among tree species, all of which modify canopy, surface, and litter and duff fuels, which also vary with time.

  • Dead canopy biomass eventually moves to the forest floor and understory, increasing surface and ground fuels, decreasing canopy fuels and affecting microclimate at the scale of the mortality or defoliation. The influence of BDAs on horizontal and vertical patterns of fuels is complicated by the magnitude of mortality, as well as the structure and composition of the stand before and subsequent to BDA events. In general, surface fuels increase, and canopy fuels decrease, while litter and duff may increase associated with the conversion of aboveground live biomass to dead biomass.

  • The role of BDAs in increasing active crown fire is when the temporal aspect of the outbreak is at its peak of intensive tree mortality and there are many trees with dead (green foliage can be dead and dry) and red foliage. Fires in systems in the red phase can have higher fire intensity, faster rate of spread, lower crowning thresholds, greater consumption of fine dead branches, and more crown fire than predicted by fire behavior models. However, the potential for active crown fire decreases after snags fall due to lower canopy connectivity and canopy bulk density, as well as conversion to surface fuels that do not play a large role in fire spread.

  • Although BDAs may increase fire severity in some stands during some time periods, heterogeneity in fuels created by BDAs can increase diversity in fire severity by reducing homogeneity in forest conditions and fuels that support larger patches of high-severity fire.

A conceptual framework of the influence of BDAs on fuels and fire behavior and the relationships among associated factors. Together, with forest management and weather, BDAs influence the spatial heterogeneity of fuels and associated fire risk and outcomes.

Although BDAs may elevate fire risk in some stands or time periods, their influence is variable. A useful way to understand their role is to distinguish between outbreaks that cause rapid tree mortality and chronic agents that slowly drive decline. This framing highlights how BDAs shift live fuels to dead fuels, alter moisture and chemistry, and redistribute fuels across canopy, surface, and ground layers over short- and long-term timescales. Ultimately, the effects of BDAs on fire cannot be generalized. They depend on the type of BDA, the structure and composition of the forest, and the spatial and temporal patterns of disturbance.

Additional Opportunities

Funding

The FACNM Fall Microgrant application period is open! Applications will be accepted through October 17, 2025.

FACNM Leaders and Members are eligible to apply for grants awards of up to $2,000 to provide financial assistance for:

  • convening wildfire preparedness events,

  • enabling on-the-ground community fire risk mitigation work, or

  • developing grant proposals for the sustainable longevity of their Fire Adapted Community endeavor.

You must be a FACNM Member or Leader to be eligible for funding. Priority will be given to first time microgrant applicants. If you are not already a part of the Network, join today.

Apply Now
 

Events

2025 New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit
September 30 - October 2 // UNM - Valencia Student Community Center

New Mexico’s leading in-person event for wildfire preparedness and planning is just four weeks away!

Join your peers, community leaders, fire service professionals, and federal, state, tribal, and local governments this year in Valencia County for the Wildland Urban Fire Summit!

Featured sessions include:

  • A panel presentation on SB33, including members of the NM Fire Planning Task Force

  • A presentation focused on insurance in the WUI

  • A panel of electrical cooperators discussing their programs and recommendations

Registration is $150 for government employees, and $50 for students, nonprofits, and the general public.

Register Now
 

Home Hazard Assessment Learning Exchange
September 30, 8 AM - 12 PM // UNM - Valencia Learning Resource Center

Join FACNM and partners from across the state for a workshop before this year’s New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit. This free Home Hazard Assessment workshop is focused on building capacity and expertise amongst County and Municipal governments, fire departments, and fire preparedness organizations to perform Home Hazard Assessments.

Registration closes this Friday, 9/5. Registrants who will be performing HHAs to assist their community will be prioritized for participation. 

Register for the Workshop

WUFS Registration is not required to participate in this workshop and no fee will be charged for this workshop.

 

Did you miss FACNM’s recent webinar featuring Emily Troisi, Director of the national Fire Adapted Communities Network, and Megan Fitzgerald-McGowan, Program Manager of Firewise USA®? They shared valuable insights on community wildfire resilience, program updates, and practical steps local leaders can take to strengthen fire adaptation efforts.

If you weren’t able to join us live, you can watch the full recording, including both presentations and the Q&A session, now available on FACNM’s YouTube page.

Wildfire Wednesdays #165: Southwest Fire Regimes

Hello FAC readers,

“Fire has shaped the diverse landscapes of the Southwest for thousands of years… By understanding the natural role of fire, we can make informed decisions about restoring and maintaining resilient landscapes.” (Southwest Fire Science Consortium, Fire Regimes of the Southwest)

In New Mexico, our human communities are located in, and live in rhythm with, many different types of ecosystems which sport an array of vegetation and climates. From the high elevation mixed conifer forests to the low elevation desert grassland, this week we will be diving into how some of these ecosystems evolved with fire and how they are impacted by fire today.

This Wildfire Wednesday features:

  • Fire Regimes of the Southwest

  • Additional Resources and Upcoming Events

    • Events

      • 2025 Wildland Urban Fire Summit (WUFS)

      • Home Hazard Assessment workshop

    • Upcoming webinars

      • Firewise & Fire Adapted Communities (happening 8/21!)

      • Fire Management Considerations in the Urban Interface

    • Educational primer on Community Engagement in Fire

    • Mini-series on fire from PBS

Take care and be well,
Megan

Fire Regimes of the Southwest

Living in the Southwest, you may have heard the term “frequent fire regime” in reference to an area or type of forest - but what does that actually mean? A fire regime describes the how fire impacts the landscape. Fire regimes are defined by the pattern, frequency, and intensity of wildfires that prevail in a specific area over long periods of time. They are highly dependent on the vegetation composition, fuel structure, climate and weather patterns, and topography of the ecosystem in which they occur. Over a very long time, the prevalent fire regime can shape the plants and animals which exist in a given area - if fires are too frequent, plants may be killed before they have matured or before they have set sufficient seed to ensure population recovery, but if fires are too infrequent, plants may mature and die without ever releasing their seed.

Image: the three fire-related triangles used to explain fire growth and expansion at different temporal and spatial scales. The fire triangle explains the factors that influence how an individual flame burns (on the seconds to minutes scale); the fire behavior triangle explains the factors that influence how a single fire will burn over time (on the days to months scale); and the fire regime triangle explains the factors that influence the pattern of multiple fires over a long time that make up a fire regime. (Source: USGS)

Fire regimes can change, even over short distances, with changes in terrain and topography, climate or weather, and fuel. Understanding a landscape’s historic fire regime is important for understanding and predicting future fire regime changes and the interactions between fire and climates. It is how we can determine whether some areas are becoming converted to historically unprecedented regimes (e.g. are fires regularly burning hotter and killing more trees than they used to?).

To help managers, practitioners, students, and community members understand the fire regime in their backyard (and elsewhere in the Region!), we are highlighting several resources for learners of all ages.

FACNM: Resources for Children and Educators

Fire Adapted New Mexico recently published a new Resources webpage with fire-related curriculums, printable booklets, toolkits, and engaging fire prevention materials that are targeted toward educators and students. The FAC Facts: Southwestern Fire Ecology booklet explores the five most common ecosystem types in New Mexico and how fire plays a role in each. In this booklet, you will find information about the plants, animals, and histories of these places where we live, work, and play.

 
 
Download a digital copy

…………………………………

SWFSC: Fire Regimes of the Southwest (Factsheets & Videos)

Over the past several years, the Southwest Fire Science Consortium worked with researchers and experts in their fields to create a series of factually accurate and informative videos and factsheets on the dominant fire regimes of five major ecotypes found in the Southwest. Each video provides information about the ecosystem it is covering, the plant associations in that ecosystem and how they react to fire, elements of the fire regime, how the regime is changing, management implications, and the science behind the video. Viewers will gain knowledge to help them understand the role of fire in each ecosystem, a crucial step to be able to develop and implement effective management to maintain landscape resilience and protect assets and values at risk from catastrophic fires. The Consortium hopes to continue expanding upon this series to include other important ecotypes such as riparian areas (e.g. the Bosque).

This video series is part of the larger World of Wildland Fire (WETC) educational video effort which aims to provide and connect fire science educators and trainers with scientifically solid and peer-reviewed teaching tools and techniques using state-of-the-art materials. This WETC’s YouTube page also contains great videos on fire behavior, fire weather, and more for additional learning.

View the video series

In addition to videos, the Consortium has also produced factsheets for Ponderosa Pine and Spruce-Fir ecosystems for fire and forestry practitioners. These short guidance documents provide information about that ecosystem’s fire regime characteristics, current management, and indications for the future of that ecosystem type in hotter and drier conditions.

Additional Resources and Upcoming Events

Events

2025 New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit
September 30 - October 2 // UNM - Valencia Student Community Center

Join your peers, community leaders, fire service professionals, and federal, state, tribal, and local governments this year in Valencia County for the Wildland Urban Fire Summit! WUFS is New Mexico’s leading in-person event for wildfire preparedness and planning. Community members will share regional history and discuss living in and adapting to the Wildland Urban Interface. Learn the latest techniques, strategies, and resources for wildfire preparedness, mitigation, and recovery. Expand your network of peers and experts to assist you in your fire/disaster resiliency goals.

Featured sessions include:

  • A panel presentation on SB33, including members of the NM Fire Planning Task Force

  • A presentation focused on insurance in the WUI

  • A panel of electrical cooperators discussing their programs and recommendations

Registration is $150 for government employees, and $50 for students, nonprofits, and the general public.

Register Here

…………………………………

Home Hazard Assessment Learning Exchange
September 30, 8 AM - 12 PM // UNM - Valencia Learning Resource Center

Join FACNM and partners from across the state for a workshop before this year’s New Mexico Wildland Urban Fire Summit. This free Home Hazard Assessment workshop is focused on building capacity and expertise amongst County and Municipal governments, fire departments, and fire preparedness organizations to perform Home Hazard Assessments.

Register for the workshop

Registration is required to attend and participation will be capped at 15 attendees. Registrants who will be performing HHAs to assist their community will be prioritized for participation. 

WUFS Registration is not required to participate in this workshop and no fee will be charged for this workshop.

Join FACNM tomorrow for our webinar featuring the Director of the national Fire Adapted Communities Network and the Program Manager of Firewise USA®. Together, they will introduce the FAC framework and provide an overview of the Firewise USA® program. Learn how these two initiatives complement each other in helping communities build wildfire resilience. The session will also include valuable resources both FAC and Firewise offer to support your community’s wildfire preparedness efforts.

Register Now

…………………………………

Fire Management Considerations in the Urban Interface
September 3, 8:30 Pacific / 9:30 Mountain / 10:30 Central (1.5 hr)

Large loss wildfires are a growing concern in much of the central and western US, where wildfires originating or moving into the wildland-urban interface continue to impact high value residential and commercial infrastructure. As such, fire managers continue to face challenges in terms of reining in suppression costs and allocation of resources on large urban-interface fires, as well as mitigating millions of acres of hazardous fuels at a meaningful pace and scale.

Learn more

Dave Calkin and Michael Tiller will be the presenters in this webinar in the Prescribed Fire for Forest Management series from the University of Wisconsin.

Educational Resource (for community wildfire practitioners)

Community Engagement in Fire Preparedness: It’s How that Matters
This primer is for any community wildfire practitioner who wants to further develop their skills and tools for engaging people in their place. It focuses on wildfire preparedness with adult community members at local levels, although it is relevant to multiple contexts. It highlights selected concepts and practices that may help you overcome challenges, deepen relationships, support shared learning and even make the work more fun and meaningful.

From the authors: “After reading this primer, we hope that you will see the differences between traditional and more engagement-focused approaches, and undertake engagement that serves whole communities, uses the science of how adults learn and incorporates trauma-informed practices.”

Key content includes:

  • Understanding and working with whole communities

  • Relational engagement: Creating long-term partnerships

  • Delivering wildfire education programs with impact

  • Trauma-informed approach

View the full primer here: https://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/em-9467-community-engagement-fire-preparedness-its-how-matters

Film

Fire Lives Here // Public Broadcasting Corporation (Free)

Through the voices of scientists, firefighters, and forest stewards, this documentary reveals how fire shapes the land, restores our forests, and holds the key to protecting the places we love.

Created by the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative, in partnership with the National Forest Foundation and Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests, “Fire Lives Here” showcases the year-round efforts of the Northern Colorado Fireshed to work together to change wildfire outcomes in Colorado.