Forest management is crucial for maintaining healthy ecosystems, providing vital resources, and reducing fire risks to communities. Historical practices, such as controlled burning and grazing, have significantly shaped current forest conditions, resulting in overgrown and high-risk areas. New Mexico State Forestry assists landowners with thinning projects, emphasizing forest health and community safety in the face of increasing wildfire threats.

1. Forest
Management
What is forest management and why is
it important?

2. Forest
Management
Impacts
Communities
Healthy forests provide water -- critical for
sustaining agricultural production and community
populations across NM and the southwest
Other vital resources -- wood, recreation, wildlife,
grazing, etc
Unmanaged forests can become unhealthy, and
also dangerous to people and property
Increased fire risk threatens nearby communities

3. Past management
• Historic and pre-historic humans altered landscapes
and natural resources
• Hunting, gathering
• Wood-cutting – native and & European
communities in the southwest harvested wood
for heat, cooking, & construction
• Controlled burning, as a management tool
• Grazing animals
• All of these activities had major, lasting effects

4. Forest management history tidbit:
1910 Big Blowup
• Fires in Idaho, Washington
and Montana burned over 3
million acres on public and
private land and killed at
least 85 people (nationally
over 5 million acres burned
that year)
• Newly formed US Forest
Service developed a policy to
quickly extinguish all
wildfires
• This management decision
had serious implications for
forests across the US for the
next 100+ years

5. Fire adapted
ecosystems
• Southwestern forests are fire-adapted ecosystems
– they typically experience high-frequency, low-
intensity fires
• Grazing practices along with fire suppression
severely altered these forests
• Now they are densely stocked – fires burn
hotter and longer, which can devastate
watersheds

6. Is fire good or bad?
Fire regime and fire
ecology:
• High-frequency, low-intensity fire
(common in lower-elevation
Ponderosa pine stands)
• Stand replacement fire (climax
stage higher-elevation spruce-fir
stands, lodgepole, etc)
• What is happening now?
• Management history and
policy have led to overgrown
forests that burn at
destructively high intensities

7. New Mexico State Forestry
Assists Private Landowners
with Forest Management
• Timber inventory and Forest Stewardship
Planning
• Implementing recommended forest
practices using BMPs to achieve desired
conditions on each property
• Thinning and slash treatment
• Slash pile burning

8. How does the process
work?
• Landowners typically reach out with
questions on funding & management
• The District office connects landowners
with a forester to schedule a site visit
• Foresters help landowners determine
their forest management goals and how
to best achieve them
• Objectives may be forest health,
creating defensible space around
homes, community efforts for
creating firewise communities,
improving aesthetics, commercial
timber harvest, etc
• Funding sources may be available to
assist with forest thinning projects

9. Non-Federal Lands
Program
• Hazardous fuel reduction program
• This program targets private land adjacent to or
near national forest that is threatened by wildfire
moving from the national forest onto the private
land
• Priority areas must be near or benefit planning and
thinning work that has been done on the national
forest
• Landowners partner with local Soil and Water
Conservation District and work with the Forestry
District office to develop prescription and project
proposal/application
• 2 year timeframe to complete project

10. Forest Health Improvement
• Landowner must have a Forest Stewardship Plan to
apply for funding for thinning
• Projects emphasize forest health, and property must
have a need for treatment based on forest
insect/disease issues (ex. bark beetles, dwarf mistletoe)
• Project applications limited to 10 ac/year and projects
must be completed in 1 year

11. Management
objectives vary
• Property size, location, timber type and
landowner abilities influence how the property
will be managed
• Photo shows a large fuelbreak created on a ~3,000
ac ranch to reduce the risk of wildfire from the
utility line that runs through the property

12. Wildland Urban Interface – Defensible Space
before and after treatment

13. Some forest
management
considerations:
• Is the property a full-time residence?
• Property size
• Stand type
• Existing stand density
• Slope
• Access
• Land use (grazing, logging, hunting,
preservation, etc)
• Landowner’s physical and financial ability to
implement forest treatment