By: Gabe Kohler
FACNM Learning Exchanges Fall 2019
Participants arriving to the Western Jemez exchange at Girl Scouts Camp Rancho del Chaparral.
I helped organize two FACNM learning exchanges in northern New Mexico this fall through a partnership between The Forest Stewards Guild, the BLM, New Mexico State Forestry, and New Mexico Counties. One exchange took place in the Western Jemez area at Girl Scouts Camp Rancho del Chaparral and another in the Gallup/ Grants area at Cottonwood Gulch Basecamp in Thoreau, NM. This post is a summary of the takeaways from the Western Jemez learning exchange. Stay tuned for a summary of the Gallup-Grants learning exchange!
The Western Jemez Learning Exchange
Despite the snow, participants were excited to learn about the resources available through the New Mexico Prescribed Fire Council.
The Western Jemez learning exchange took place at Girl Scouts Camp Rancho del Chaparral. Rancho del Chaparral is located at around 7,800 feet of elevation in a mixed conifer forest about an hour in on dirt and gravel Forest Service roads. When I woke up to about 2-3 inches of snow on the ground, I was doubting whether people would make the trip up. As a testament to the tenacity of the people that live and work in these mountains, by 10 am the lodge had filled up with 25 people and we had a warm fire in the hearth.
The impromptu networking exercise was effective at getting participants to share their challenges and laid a foundation for the exchange.
Ali Lerch, from Coalitions and Collaboratives, joined us for the learning exchange and led the morning session with some creative exercises to break the ice. Ali channels her background in rural studies to create an open and respectful platform for engaging with communities. At the Jemez exchange, Ali focused on the importance of regional business resilience and partnerships in rural areas to support communities.
We used an exercise from Liberating Structures called impromptu networking that asks participants to pair up and share their 1) personal challenges in wildfire preparedness, and 2) what they hoped to take away from the learning exchange.
Key challenges included:
1. Fear and paranoia of prescribed fire and wildfire
2. Protecting Girl Scouts from wildfire risk in forested camp setting
Mitigation Projects
Evacuation and response
3. Understanding and managing landowner expectations of forest treatments
4. Ways of providing access for community members to see prescribed fire or thinning projects in person
5. Limited capacity of rural communities and need for regional coordination
6. Pueblo of Jemez has thinning workforce and needs to find money and project to take their work to the regional level
7. Better tools for communicating difference between good fire and bad fire
8. Steps toward building prescribed fire workforce
After the first exercise we asked participants to think creatively about who should be added to future conversation about making the Western Jemez region better adapted to wildfire. We broke up in to small groups and brainstormed two questions 1) Who are the stakeholders in my community or region, and 2) Are there any gaps that need to be filled and how can we begin to address these?
Participants recommended increased engagement with:
Health service providers
Ranchers and rangeland permitees
Local governments
Economic development organizations or officials
Press/media
Social scientists willing to study fear and perception of forest treatments
Absentee owners
Humane Society
Faith-based organizations
We had planned for Todd Haines from New Mexico State Forestry to show us various mitigation treatments throughout the Girl Scouts Camp, but due to the snow and cold weather, we opted to discuss these options in doors. Some key takeaways from the afternoon discussion that Todd facilitated were:
Ponderosa Christian Camp connected with Todd Haines about creating a fire response plan similar to the Girl Scouts Camp Rancho del Chaparral’s.
The group discussed various methods for slash disposal following a mitigation treatment and categorized these based on the projects location and objectives.
Natural Resource Conservation Service representative, Jill Mumford, connected with various landowners and organizations about cost-share programs and future project ideas.
Cecilia Chavez, the Director of Program and Innovation with the Girl Scouts of New Mexico thought creatively about how older Girl Scouts campers could provide a workforce in the region for mitigation work.
Noah Trujillo with Jemez Electric Cooperative talked with Tim Kirkpatrick from the New Mexico Prescribed Fire Council about how FEMA grant programs for mitigation may be used to increase the right of ways around powerlines on private land.
Carey Beam, economic development coordinator in Cuba, NM, discussed the creation of a newsletter the Cuba community about business resilience following wildfire.
Our afternoon session was inside due to the weather. Todd Haines from New Mexico State Forestry led the group in a conversation about fire mitigation projects, including: fuel breaks, thinning, and slash disposal.
I think the list of connections above demonstrates how an open and interactive event can let the network do some of the work for you. These connections were surprising and emerged out of discussion amongst participants and not from specific agenda items that I had planned. I strongly encourage the use of exercises like impromptu networking to start building connections among community members.
Stay tuned for a summary of the Gallup-Grants learning exchange!
Acknowledgments
These recent learning exchanges were made possible by the generous support of the BLM New Mexico, New Mexico Counties, the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, and the Taos Ski Valley Foundation.