Happy Wednesday, FACNM readers!
Whether you’re a FACNM Leader, a seasoned FireWise community member, or are just learning about what it means to be fire adapted, figuring out where to start on the journey to community wildfire preparedness can feel pretty daunting. From the risk assessments to community organization to funding, there are a lot of details to work out.
In spring of 2023, FACNM began offering seed funding to FACNM Leaders and Members through a novel Microgrant Program. Individuals or Organizations could apply for up to $2,000 to buoy their community fire preparedness efforts - convening educational gatherings, enabling on-the-ground risk mitigation work, developing grant proposals to secure long-term funding, and more. In total, five applicants were chosen as award recipients and carried out a wide range of events, all of which aid in the development of Fire Adapted Communities.
Applications for a second round of funding for the FACNM Microgrant Program will be opening soon! To apply, ensure you are a registered FACNM Leader (click here to learn more) and visit the Microgrant webpage in mid-August to fill out the application form.
Today’s Wildfire Wednesday features:
Reports from the field: FACNM Microgrant success stories
Upcoming opportunities
Be well and stay cool,
Rachel
Reports from the Field: FACNM Microgrant Success Stories
Hazardous fuels removal - hauling and chipping:
The Overlook Homes Association and La Barbaria Canyon
In May, nineteen residents from The Overlook Homes Association and La Barbaria Canyon participated in their first annual National Wildfire Community Preparedness Day. The event was jointly coordinated by Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition Ambassadors Ute Haker, Chris Schaum and Pam Ryan. Leading up to the Preparedness Day, community leaders engaged in educational outreach to other community members which focused on the concept of creating defensible space through vegetation removal, thinning, and home hardening.
The HOA received financial support from FACNM in the form of a Microgrant, as well as logistical support from Chris' Tree Service and the Forest Stewards Guild. Additional funding from Coalitions and Collaborative (COCO) AIM made it possible to offer residents, at no cost to them, both green slash disposal in a dumpster which was set on-site and slash chipping and hauling. The majority of material collected consisted of bagged needles, leaves and pinecones as well as ponderosa, pinion and juniper branches.
Participation between the two communities was evenly divided with a total of 4.25 tons of green waste collected over a period of 6 hours. All of the participants joined hands across the canyon in the true spirit of community to make this National Wildfire Preparedness Day a resounding success!
Education and information exchange through in-person learning:
Wildfire Research Center (WiRē) and City of Santa Fe Fire
The City of Santa Fe Fire Department partnered with the Wildfire Research (WiRē) Center – a non-profit that works with wildfire practitioners across the western United States – to develop locally-tailored, evidence-based community wildfire education efforts so that communities can live with wildfire. Together, they conducted two data collection efforts: a rapid wildfire risk assessment of 965 residential properties, and a household survey sent to the owners of those same properties. The findings from this study are helping the City of Santa Fe Fire Department professionals better understand local wildfire risk and actions needed. These findings can also help residents know more about their property's risk and what actions they can take to reduce their risk.
WiRē Center was the recipient of a Fire Adapted Communities New Mexico (FACNM) Microgrant, which provided funding for space in which to hold in-person meetings with the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition and members of the Fireshed Ambassadors Program. In-person meetings enable more meaningful conversations among our collaborators, which leads to deeper understanding of the results of our project and how the data can be leveraged to inform programmatic improvements and more effective use of local resources. In the meetings supported by FACNM, WiRē presented on the results of our data collection efforts in Santa Fe to the Fireshed Coalition and its Fireshed Ambassadors tasked with public engagement, providing actionable information about wildfire mitigation.
These meetings were a catalyst for potential future projects. As a direct result of meeting with the Fireshed Coalition, they are considering a path toward a Fireshed-wide WiRē project. Some Fireshed Ambassadors expressed surprise at WiRē’s survey results and stated that those would inform how they interact with neighbors in the future. FACNM’s Microgrant support enabled the City to build momentum and generate ideas for how these data can be used to support wildfire adaptation in Santa Fe.
WUI fuels reduction demonstrations:
High Desert HOA - Fire Preparedness Committee
The Fire Preparedness (FP) Committee of the High Desert Residential Owners Association (HDROA) in Albuquerque, NM sponsored an education event through a unique and family-friendly hazardous fuel thinning demonstration in a communal arroyo comparing “goatscaping” with manual vegetation removal by landscapers. The goal of the project was to show how appropriate fuel reduction can be done to alter the path of a wildfire in a dense arroyo to protect homes. In 2018, the community experienced a 7-acre arroyo wildfire that engulfed everything in its path stopping only at residential property walls. Ten homes were damaged. The question was when, not if, we have another fire, how can the fire be directed to meet its combustion needs by protecting defensible spaces around homes and creating combustion sources away from homes.
High Desert received a Microgrant from FACNM with three goals in mind:
1. Secure approval from the City of Albuquerque to thin understory fuels in a 3-acre portion of the City Park.
2. Arrange an 8-hour period of goat and sheep grazing in a portion of the 3-acres, followed by 8 hours of manual fuel removal on another day for comparison.
3. Organize and publicize an educational event in the City’s Park with fire personnel and related environmental agencies for the High Desert residents that would allow direct interaction of the public with the animals and members of the FP Committee to explain the demonstration.
Approximately, two dozen community members attended the educational event. Officers of the HOA, ABQ Fire Rescue (AFR) Wildland Fire, FACNM, and ABQ Water Authority manned information tables and were on-site to answer questions. Lessons learned for both community members who attended the event and FP Committee Members included:
Goats do a great job of reducing fire risk where there are fine fuels like grasses, but do not change the fire behavior potential in arroyos dominated by shrubs and woody plants.
The paramount focus for fire preparedness of homes near arroyos needs to be fire hardening of the home within 0-6 feet of the exterior - in the Defensible Zone.
The secondary effort needs to be on reducing fuel in the Intermediate zone (6-30 feet) between a structure and the arroyo.
Into the Extended zone, 30-100 feet into the arroyos, reducing the available fuel and creating natural fuel breaks will change the fire behavior by slowing the movement of the fire and its intensity, thus also reducing embers.
Learn more about creating defensible space around your home in Wildfire Wednesdays #109 and #109B.
CWPP updates:
Cimarron Watershed Alliance, Inc.
The Cimarron Watershed Alliance, Inc. (CWA) is a collaborative watershed stakeholder nonprofit based in Colfax County, NM. CWA’s mission is “to strive for and maintain a healthy watershed for all residents through collaborative community activities involving all stakeholders with an interest in water”.
In line with their mission, CWA led the effort to develop the first Colfax County Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) in 2008 as well as the subsequent Update in 2022. In late 2022, members of CWA identified gaps in, and a subsequent need for updates to, the 2022 Colfax County CWPP, particularly in regard to pre-identifying fuels reduction projects.
In early 2023, CWA received a FACNM Microgrant to support this 2023 CWPP update effort in the form of two Colfax CWPP meetings in Cimarron and Eagle Nest. The Microgrant provided food for the meetings as well as technical advisory support from the Forest Stewards Guild for the updates themselves.
Representatives from the County, state and federal agencies, local landowners and managers, municipalities, and NGOs were in attendance at both meetings. Attendees were able to share and discuss their high priority projects and projects that are on the properties they manage or that directly affect them. They were also able to collaboratively discuss projects that were a high priority within the county, those that affected everyone. In the end, CWA was able to come away with a larger list of wildfire protection priorities and projects within the County.
Defensible Space Slash Disposal and Community Chipper Day:
Taos Pines Ranch
Cut green waste was hauled by residents to the side of the road prior to the chipper day to be processed by Wood Sharks, LLC.
Taos Pines Ranch is a 1,200-acre high elevation Firewise subdivision with 98 lots in Northern New Mexico that shares borders with Carson National Forest, Taos Pueblo, and some private land. In years prior, Colfax County provided an industrial chipper and a crew to chip resident-produced slash which is hauled to the edge of their 9 miles of road. The County discontinued this free service in 2023 due to lack of staffing. Residents, motivated to create defensible space around their homes following 2022’s devastating wildfires, had to look into other options.
Chipped green waste along the road leading through Taos Pines Ranch after a free-to-the-community slash hauling and chipper day.
Taos Pines requested and received a $2,000 microgrant from FACNM to contract an identical service from Wood Sharks, LLC. The community’s Firewise Committee alerted residents by sending chipper dates in a group email and posting on their Facebook Message Board.
All together, the community hauled out estimated 1,200 cubic ft. of slash produced by defensible space thinning. 70% of Taos Pines Ranch lots are fully or partially thinned, although the community hopes to bolster this number. In the future, over 1/5th of lot owners have expressed interest in working with the Cimmaron Watershed Alliance to create defensible space as part of that group’s USFS Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) award.
Upcoming Opportunities
Webinars
10 August at 12pm MDT: Monitoring and Removal of Invasive Grasses for Restoration of Dry Desert Systems.
In this webinar, a panel of scientists and practitioners will discuss a number of management techniques and research questions being utilized or tested in an effort to reduce the presence of introduced grasses and restore the historic fire regime in dry desert systems such as the Sonoran. This information can be used to improve current practices and help develop new approaches to slow the invasive grass-fire cycle in the southwestern US.
Conferences
15-17 April 2024: After The Flames in-person conference and workshop
A first-of-its-kind Conference and Workshop devoted to post-fire recovery. Attendees will represent individuals, organizations, and agencies impacted by wildfire and responding to the post-fire impacts, as well as experts in the arena of post-fire recovery. Sign up for Coalitions & Collaboratives’ newsletter to stay up-to-date on conference details.
Learning Exchange: Field Tours
26-28 September 2023: Stewardship in Action - A Tribe’s Nature-based Approach to Watershed Restoration
The Natural Areas Association (NAA) is hosting a Stewardship in Action Field Workshop in Espanola, New Mexico on the lands of the Santa Clara Pueblo. It will highlight an innovative and iconic case study in public and private collaboration on sovereign tribal lands following a series of catastrophic wildfires. Learn more by visiting FACNM’s Events page.
Local Job Opportunities
Luna Community College: Director of Wildfire Resiliency Training Center
Wildfires are growing worse every year - both bigger and more frequent. To combat the devastation, we need more people with the skills and expertise to mitigate the dangers and implement recovery for lands, forests, water and communities. Luna Community College is opening a Wildfire Resiliency Training Center. Apply for the Wildfire Resiliency Training Center Director position by contacting Dr. Day at 505-454-5378 to discuss the Center and the position in greater detail.