While project updates from three separate agencies — U.S. Forest Service, New Mexico State Forestry and the Village of Ruidoso — were the topic for Tuesday’s Forest Health talk, the lessons of working together was the common theme.
Both Timber Management Officer Frank Silva from the Capitan district for State Forestry and Dan Ray, fuels specialist for the Smokey Bear Ranger district referred to the Collaborative Forest Restoration Program (CFRP), a federal program specific to New Mexico that provides up to $5 million annually towards cost-share grants for experimental forest restoration projects and that requires a collaborative effort, as the funding source and often the impetus for several recent thinning and prescribed burns on public lands in both Lincoln and Otero Counties.
A prescribed burn outside of Capitan, an Environmental Impact Study for the La Luz/Mescalero boundary area, a mechanical thinning project in White Oaks and the treatment in the Grindstone Lake/Perk Canyon areas were just some of the CFRP-propelled projects described.
The recounting of the number and extent of the projects came shortly after Walter Dunn, the person credited for developing the program and who now works for the Forest Service out of Albuquerque, had finished a tour of many of the project areas. What he saw were techniques not often seen in other parts of the state.
Dan Ray relayed how looking over the White Oaks area, Dunn seemed surprised, but impressed. “That area is primarily pinon and juniper (P/J) with stringers of Ponderosa Pine,” said Ray. “He was used to seeing similar areas thinned by chain saws and by hand, but here in Lincoln County, we use masticators and dozers to make piles that will later be burned. It sounds aggressive, but we’ve been doing it for several years. Our studies and empirical evidence show that it is good for grassland and P/J restoration.”
From the Ruidoso News: https://www.ruidosonews.com/story/news/local/community/2016/03/03/forest-health-series-talk-promotes-working-together/81260056/