Reconceiving community, economic, and ecological renewal in the Hispanio-Indigenous uplands of northern New Mexico.

Our mission is to create a consensus around regenerative approaches to economic development and landscape conservation that empowers local people while restoring and sustaining landscapes in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico. This is done through fostering circular economies that keep as much social and ecological capital as possible within the region through self-reinforcing socio-ecological design and implementation of place-based recovery strategies.

We need to “think different” about potential solutions.

Community and landscape conservation efforts have typically focused on a single piece of the system, without assessment of net value and with an implicit assumption that improvements to one part of the system will benefit the rest of it. This has not happened because, without strategic coordination, market forces alone are insufficient to bring the necessary resources to bear

The Sangre de Cristo Mountain Initiative follows a principle-driven process where we are collaborative and driven to think long term and large scale to create lasting solutions.

Meet our world-class team devoted to developing common-sense solutions to New Mexico’s forest crisis as a model for re-envisioning landscape conservation and rural development across the American West.