Conflicting visions of the future of New Mexico's Hispanic-Indigenous heartland - Taos News

Post-fire recovery should not be about quick fixes and band-aid solutions. Instead, it should be about embracing the notion that we can have a better future if we seize the opportunity to rethink how we manage our mountains.

Paula Garcia of the New Mexico Acequia Association said it best when she referred to herencia (inheritance) and gerencia (management) in comments before a recent gathering in Mora. Cultural traditions and landscape health are entwined, and viable long-term solutions rest with working in harmony with the culture and ecology of the region. A perspective many of our agencies and political leaders have yet to figure out. 

David Old, of Old Wood in Las Vegas, recently pointed out that this is an evolving situation. A friend from Mora — who lost his ancestral lands to the fires — said, "This is really bad, but I still have my house at least." Then, near tears, he added, "What are all the little Borachitos going to do for a living?"

Old went on to ask, “What will all the folks with nothing but a beat-up pickup truck and a Stihl chainsaw, the only livelihood they ever had, what will they do for a living? We know these folks because many of them have been bringing firewood into our yard at the San Miguel Wood Park for years. Since the fires, this has nearly stopped.”

Now, buckets of money are pouring into this fire-ravaged region. However, it's not the amount of money — but how it is spent — that matters.

Tom Tosdal, one of the attorneys who litigated the Paradise California fires, has seen the aftermath of many poorly planned and executed wildfire recovery efforts. He notes the problem with the traditional wildfire litigation focus on individual recovery is people and businesses may receive some money, but the burned areas are not restored, and people who have lived for generations on their land are forced to leave. That happened in Paradise following the 2018 Camp Fire, where little attention was given to repairing the community as a whole. 

Current wildfire recovery efforts seem to be on a similar path. Of the many landowners, loggers and others tied to the forestry industry I have spoken to, none have heard from agencies or politicos regarding their thoughts on how to restore their landscapes and communities. In other words, the people in the best position to know what is needed have been largely cut out of the process.

Einstein purportedly said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result." This seems to be the case with wildfire recovery, whose mission appears to be, at best, to spend a bunch of money recreating the social and ecological ills that led to the wildfires in the first place. After a brief flush of recovery dollars, the communities are left with fewer resources than ever to deal with the issues that plagued them before the fires. We must do better!

So, what is needed?

First, recognition that wildfire recovery is not just an economic or ecological challenge but a restorative justice issue, in which local people need to be heard and engaged in the process to help undo, not just fire damage, but decades of economic and political oppression that impacts not only the health of communities but also that of the land.

Second, donors and relief organizations should support innovative long-term problem-solving. Before the fires, not a single local NGO funded our proposals, which were supported by local people to promote local livelihoods and fire prevention. After the fires, these same donors again rejected proposals related to wildfire and climate change mitigation. It is time to apply disaster relief funds, and not just to quick fixes. It's time to begin crafting workable long-term solutions.

And finally, to our political and community leaders: Get involved in generating long-term, lasting solutions, or get out of the way. Solutions to improve community and landscape health do exist. We've seen them and even helped devise a few. But, so far, we've received little support and too often active obstruction from the very people who should be most focused on improving their community’s well-being.

We will likely never have a better shot at enacting positive change than right now. In the end, it boils down to the fundamental question to the agencies and our political leadership, as well as to the communities themselves. Do we embrace a culture of stewardship and community-building that creates lasting solutions, or do we settle for the status quo and face more fires, floods and community decline?

Charles Curtin is the author of books and monographs integrating complexity science and collaborative conservation and, for three decades, has developed large-scale conservation programs in New Mexico and across the globe. He lives in the Mora valley, where he co-directs the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Initiative focused on re-conceiving forestry and renewable energy development in Northern New Mexico. He can be reached at ccurtin2018@gmail.com