Planners add working-lands, forest-restoration and invasive-species content to natural-environment chapter

Coconino County staff and technical experts on Monday presented a revised Natural Environment chapter that places greater emphasis on working landscapes, forest restoration and ecological change, and that directs readers to externally maintained species inventories.

The revision incorporates comments that asked planners to recognize ranching, timber and other land-based production as part of the county's natural-resource economy and to treat working lands as a component of landscape-scale conservation and resilience. Staff said the plan now references working-land values in multiple places and cross-links to the county's economic-development materials.

Jason, who identified himself as forest restoration director, described county restoration work and said the draft recognizes that future ecological conditions may not match historical baselines. "We're trying to reflect that that's the reality," he said. The chapter expands action-oriented policies on forest restoration and notes a suite of restoration tools, including mastication and the use of helicopters for some operations, to address hazardous fuels and stand condition.

Jessica Simmons, identified in the meeting as the county urban wildlife planner, said the chapter will include a consolidated appendix listing federally listed species and will point readers to up-to-date external databases rather than attempt to reproduce a constantly changing inventory in the chapter text. The draft links to the Springs Stewardship Institute and other sources and staff agreed to clarify the difference between that institute and national aggregation resources.

The update also records local discussion about juniper encroachment into grasslands and the role of managed grazing in reducing invasive cheatgrass, and it cites ongoing grassland-restoration initiatives that pair mechanical or chemical approaches with seasonal grazing practices. One commenter pointed to research showing juniper removal can increase grassland resilience under warming conditions; staff said maps of vegetation types and a new assessor-derived parcel map that flags properties classified as ranches will be incorporated.

Staff offered parcel-level figures to illustrate land use: when private acres are counted, roughly 1,400,000 acres of private land exist in the county and about 1,100,000 acres of those parcels are classified by the assessor as ranch use, staff said. The chapter will show those data to inform future policy discussions.

The Natural Environment chapter will continue to be refined alongside related chapters on public safety and land use, staff said.