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Fire and Ice

Forest management group takes advantage of winter storm to burn hazardous fuels and train private landowners in mitigation techniques

A crew surveys burning piles they ignited on Wednesday to reduce hazardous fuels on Glorieta Adventure Camp's property. (William Melhado)

By William Melhado

While schools and government offices closed due to the snow, a fire crew saw a perfect opportunity to eliminate hazardous fuels. The Forest Stewards Guild on Wednesday led a team to burn hundreds of piles on Glorieta Adventure Camp’s property to minimize the potential for high-severity fire events.

Dangerous and unhealthy fires—the consequence of suppression efforts by the Forest Service up until the 1970s—pose a threat to communities and ecosystems given the buildup of hazardous fuels and dense landscapes, advocates of controlled burns say. Along with forest thinning, prescribed burns reduce the danger communities face in the event of a large fire, which would pollute water sources and significantly disrupt the ecosystem.

“The point of our crew is to fill in the gaps where organizations like the Forest Service or the county just don’t have the capacity specifically during this time of year,” Genevieve Conley, a member of the Forest Stewards Guild’s pile squad, tells SFR. In the winter, when seasonal wildland firefighters aren’t tackling fires across the country, there’s an urgency to take small steps toward fire mitigation, but a lack of available professionals, Conely explains. “Especially in the Southwest, we’ve suppressed fire for so long there’s so much to do and so it’s a year-round thing.” (William Melhado)

While the Forest Service can burn on private land, it’s easier for organizations like the Forest Stewards Guild to coordinate prescribed burns with landowners, explains Gabe Kohler, southwest program manager. “We use our crew to get some of those private land chunks done, but we also try and use it to demystify fire,” Kohler tells SFR. Through hands-on training and a youth program, Kohler hopes to “get folks out here and show people, ‘You can do this.’ A private landowner could, with 10 guys, come out here and do a lot of good stuff,” he says. (William Melhado)

Funding for the Forest Stewards Guild’s controlled burn comes from The Nature Conservancy’s Rio Grande Water Fund, a project aimed at protecting Northern New Mexico’s waterways. Through prescribed burns and thinning projects, coordinated with organizations like the guild and private landowners, the partnership aims to restore ecosystems that result in healthier forests less prone to intense fire events. (William Melhado)

Acting as the burn boss on Wednesday’s prescribed fire, Sam Berry, the fire and fuels program manager with the Forest Stewards Guild, explains that New Mexico is unique in that the seasonal moisture during monsoon months can lead to significant erosion in the aftermath of a fire. “There is more variety of forested landscapes,” Berry tells SFR of New Mexico’s environment, “so we get a lot of different fire regimes across elevation gradients.” Berry’s crew aims to improve the resiliency of New Mexico’s forests in the face of climate change, which has increased the severity of fires across the West. (William Melhado)

Caden Mccalip, an employee with Glorieta Adventure Camps, uses a drip torch to light a pile. In addition to facilitating the prescribed fire on the camp’s property, the Forest Stewards Guild trains people to conduct their own burns. “With that kind of knowledge that the guild gives us, it helps us understand what to do, like the gridding system and using drip torches,” Mccalip tells SFR. The Prescribed Burning Act, signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in 2021, empowered private landowners to carry out good burning practices on their property and provide liability protections to encourage more controlled fires. (William Melhado)

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled Genevieve Conley’s name.

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