HERMIT’S PEAK/CALF CANYON FIRE RECOVERY

Forestry and landscape recovery can serve as a foundation for renewal.

The writer and satirist H.L. Mencken once observed, “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” So too, with finding solutions to our wildfire crisis in New Mexico and across the West, where simple solutions are too often an illusion. In this article, focused on the efforts of my organization, the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Initiative, I continue a discussion of fire prevention and recovery, which are a microcosm of the complexities, as well as potential opportunities, resulting from wildfire in the West.

Working With Wicked Problems

Winston Churchill summed up the situation in Europe on the eve of World War Two as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.” Which pretty well sums up the fire-related situation here in New Mexico too.

Landscape recovery is also a social justice issue.

So too, is the situation with wildfire prevention and recovery. Yes, the Forest Service struck the match—but the bigger issue is over a century of neglect of our forests and communities—leading to stand densities often 100 times historical levels. Shifting demographics led to fewer people on the land; a warming and drying climate led to the forests being more susceptible to burning; spotted owl lawsuits of the 1990s caused a decline in the forestry industry’s capacity, and sheep grazing in the 1800s led to changes in landscape conditions and forest composition in the first place. This morass can’t be untangled by blame or finger-pointing.

As in the iconic Pogo cartoon, “We have met the enemy and he is us,” we got ourselves into this mess—we need to get ourselves out of it. Not by giving away power by demanding someone else fix our problems—but by empowering ourselves and collectively crafting viable solutions.

Creating an Iterative Question-Driven Process

I returned to the Mora Valley in 2019 following decades of conservation science work in this region and beyond. In Montana, I directed or helped found multi-million-acre collaborative conservation programs. The experience made it clear that most conservation is a zero-sum game with more people chasing fewer dollars. This results in fewer organizations, or more poorly funded ones—when we need more social action and public engagement, not less.

The inescapable reality is that available resources are a fraction of what is needed. An analysis by the consulting group McKinsey & Company documented that annual global conservation needs are about $300 to $400 billion. By contrast, global conservation spending is about $52 billion, mainly in relatively rich developed countries. In sum, much of conservation must pay its way to be viable, or it won’t last when stacked against competing interests and the fickleness of our political and philanthropic systems.

The value of the wood is what pays for ecosystem and watershed renewal.

An oft-cited example of catastrophic failures from well-meaning social programs is the redevelopment of inner cities of the U.S. during the post-war era, where the eradication of poor ethnic neighborhoods in favor of tower blocks such as Chicago’s infamous Cabrini- Green decimated the social fabric of communities. Even with the best intentions, social policies can result in outcomes that are the opposite of what’s intended.

So, what does urban poverty have to do with rural wildfire? Well...the link is in the notion design theorists Rittle and Webber came up with in the late 1960s called “Wicked Problems.” This is compared to “Tame Problems,” which are the excessively optimistic assumptions organizations and policymakers often make about the issues they’re addressing. Tame problems have apparent alternatives and well-defined solutions, while Wicked Problems are uncertain as to even the nature of the challenge. In a similar insight, organizational theorist Russell Ackhoff stated: “No problem ever exists in complete isolation. Every problem interacts with other problems and is therefore part of

A chance meeting with Mike Berry, a 5th-generation New Mexico rancher, and his vision of using biomass energy to fund sustained forest thinning provided a plausible solution. We dived into this possibility and made considerable progress until COVID hit, public meetings were terminated, and most environmental funding was redirected to health issues. In response, we pulled-back, focused on logistical and finance questions, and determined that small to mid-scale biomass energy plants could be sustainable in our region, while thinning our forests and providing well-paying local jobs. We were on the verge of a re-launch when the fires hit, and the recovery represented logistical challenges biomass utilization alone could not solve. It was time to reconceive the problem again.

Rethinking Our Thinking

Conservation pioneer Aldo Leopold described land policy as “the sad spectacle of one obsolete idea chasing another around a closed circle, while opportunity goes begging.” Einstein purportedly said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” And yet, by focusing on short-term solutions, and not getting to the root of the problem by thinning our forests and restoring our watersheds, we’re setting the stage for the next big fire—not preventing it. This is crucial because fires no longer have generational return intervals marked in decades. According to scientific literature, we’ll have as much chance of a conflagration in 5-7 years as we did before the fires happened last spring. Reburns in California are now happening within two years! Landscape recovery is also a social justice issue. Without clearing the dead-and-down material, the health and vigor of the Hispano-Indigenous communities, which for centuries have relied on their forests, will continue to decline.

So how does one get out of the rut of myopic thinking or distinguish between needing to stay the course—versus choosing a new path? The answers lie between our ears—not in existing institutions. In other

words, we need to reconceptualize our approach. One way to do this is by moving between “convergent” and “divergent” thinking. Divergent expands options and insights, whereas convergent eliminates possibilities and creates choices. Convergent thinking is the norm in Western thought, where we are taught to take a series of “facts” and analyze them, and then converge upon a single answer. Divergent thinking operates more freely and spontaneously, and as a result, unexpected connections are drawn.

Design guru Tim Brown of the consulting firm IDEO describes a “rhythmic exchange between divergent and convergent phases, with each iteration less broad and more detailed than the previous ones.” Thus, designing into the process a continuous exchange or movement between approaches, which requires a combination of bottom-up experimentation and initiative, and leadership to provide big-picture guidance. In essence, a culture of prudent risk-taking and critical thinking to find alternative ways of framing challenges and solutions.

By not thinning our forests and restoring our watersheds, we’re setting the stage for the next big fire.

In recent months we went through this “rhythmic exchange” when seeking to recover the Sangre de Cristo Mountains from wildfire (and reducing risk of the next one). In a convergent-thinking approach, the challenge was framed as how to harvest 250,000 board feet of timber worth $100 million from the landscape before it rots in 18-24 months. The value of wood is crucial, for it’s what pays for ecosystem and watershed renewal. The solution? Ramp up existing harvesting capacity and use transportation networks to move the trees that can’t be sold locally through well-capitalized efforts to remove biomass from the system.

Once this goal was established, through workshops and interaction with hundreds of stakeholders, we looked at the factors needed to rapidly remove massive amounts of timber. Crucial facets for success include strong leadership and engagement by the governor, state and federal agencies, and donors in a strategic process, while developing a workforce for running the logging operations.

The only viable solution is local empowerment to enact wholesale change, with the citizens guiding the economic and ecological recovery process.

However, through our community engagement process, we discovered an immense

gap between perception and reality. In conversations with the governor, she’d say—the federal government created the wildfire; they need to fix it! And yet, FEMA is in the rapid recovery—not the long-term strategy biz. The Forest Service can’t operate on private land that comprises much of the burn area. At the same time, the NRCS (Natural Resource Conservation Service) can apply post-fire treatments but doesn’t have the resources to determine if they’re adequately applied (or even working). Meanwhile, local governments are often awash in fire recovery resources with few effective ways to deploy them.

Opportunity may go begging as plausible solutions to landscape renewal fall between the cracks. The only viable solution is local empowerment to enact wholesale change, with the citizens, in partnership with agencies, guiding the economic and ecological recovery process to create outcomes that improve the landscape and opportunities for local people—not just return to the status quo. In San Miguel County, we’re developing a pilot project to demonstrate that process, which can, in turn, be expanded across the region.

The window of opportunity is passing to harvest $100 million of timber for commercial use.

Reframing the Reframing

From recent months’ experience, three core points emerge:

• The window of opportunity is passing to meet our goal of harvesting $100 million of timber in the Calf Canyon-Hermit’s Peak burn zone before it is no longer usable for commercial use.

• Infrastructure alone (e.g., mills, forestry operations, etc.) will

not get us where we need to be—we also need to revitalize our communities and landscapes to avoid the situation that created the fires.

• New governance institutions are needed to span the public/private divide and create the synergies to enable long-term community and landscape recovery. In short, the problem framing has shifted from

a linear quest to move $100 million of biomass in a few months—to how to reconceive the whole system and devise a self-supporting, regenerative, circular economy. This has led us to pivot toward using economic development coupled with landscape conservation, shared stewardship principles and community empowerment. In partnership with Mark Lautman and his team from the Community Economics Lab and his Economic Engineering initiative, we’re working to create systems in which forestry and landscape recovery serve as a foundation for renewal.

New governance institutions are needed to span the public/ private divide and enable long-term community and landscape recovery.

Such a renewal requires a process that responds to local communities’ long-term goals. Detailed community-based economic assessment can yield realistic targets—and a strategy to get there. Meanwhile, we’re working with New Mexico’s Economic Development Department and its partners to explore new governance arrangements that allow integrated county- and region-wide recovery. All the while, we’re testing assumptions, evolving and learning through a balance of convergent and divergent inquiry. Creating outcomes that improve rather than maintain what existed before the fires will require humility and being guided by the long view, rather than quick fixes.

There are 18 to 48 months to recover over 100 million in dead timber.

A reconceiving of the challenge is needed.

Fire is a social justice as well as a ecological and economic issue.

Integrating different perspectives to natural resource recovery.

Moving beyond management that leads to inevitable fire.