Taos County details wildfire-risk work, highlights local crews and Good Neighbor Agreement
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Summary
Taos County officials told commissioners Dec. 2 that since 2022 the county has attracted roughly $5.3 million for forest restoration and wildfire-risk projects, used Good Neighbor Authority agreements to expand local contracting and volunteer crews, and is asking commissioners to help extend work into under-served watersheds.
Taos County's forest and watershed health team told the county commission on Dec. 2 that a mix of federal and state grants, a Good Neighbor Agreement with the Carson National Forest and local contractor crews have expanded on-the-ground wildfire-risk reduction across the county.
J.R. Logan, Taos County's forest and watershed health project manager, said the county has used the Community Wildfire Protection Plan as a blueprint and "the county, through both state and federal money, has brought in about $5,300,000 since 2022" and has spent or committed about $3,300,000, with roughly $2,000,000 expected to be spent over the next two years.
The update covered several funded efforts, including a roughly $390,000 non-federal-lands grant that treated private lands in the Valles Condido area to protect watershed connections with Carson National Forest treatments. Logan said those projects are designed so on-the-ground work on private parcels and Forest Service land will "amplify the benefits" to watersheds and communities.
Local contract crews and community programs were prominent in the presentation. A contractor representative from WoodSharks thanked the county and said the work creates seasonal local jobs and buys materials and services locally. "There's so many trees that have overpopulated in some of those areas," the contractor said, and added the projects also improve access for emergency vehicles.
Vicente Fernandez, who leads the Capulin Canyon local program, told the commissioners his group has 71 acres to treat: "We've cleared 30 complete acres. We have 20 ongoing, and we still have 21 more acres to issue out." He said the project has supplied roughly 300 to 400 cords of wood to the public after coordinating with small sawmills.
Ellen Ebersaw, describing work in the Shirley Mill neighborhood, said a contractor estimated production of "900,130 cubic yards of chipped material" and 23 cords of firewood from a thinning project that cleared up to 10 feet on both sides of 4 miles of roadway, improved vehicle access and yielded follow-on homeowner maintenance.
Officials described workforce and community benefits from the county's Good Neighbor Agreement with the Carson National Forest, signed in 2021. Aaron Johnson of the Carson National Forest said the agreement expands the workforce available for restoration and "unlocks new levels of efficiency, workforce capacity, and community support," allowing the county to hire local contractors and move projects more quickly from planning to implementation.
Logan also emphasized volunteer and workforce development components, including a student monitoring program run with Taos Soil and Water that hires local high-school students to count trees before and after thinning projects. Lexi, a former crewmember, said the experience changed her view of forest health and provided a paid pathway into natural-resources work.
Commissioners pressed for scale and geographic coverage. When Commissioner McGill asked how many acres the map showed, Logan estimated about 10,000 acres were represented on the map of completed or planned work; he also estimated "hundreds, easily 1,000" people have participated across programs. Logan asked commissioners to help recruit additional local leaders in under-served parts of the county, such as Costilla and the Red River area, to expand community-based efforts.
Logan cautioned that catastrophic events can produce long-term downstream effects, noting reports of private well contamination with heavy metals that may be linked to either suppression activity or the fire event itself. He framed the county's work as mitigation to reduce the likelihood of such high-severity impacts and urged continued multi-jurisdictional cooperation.
What's next: county staff said they will continue to pursue available state and federal funds, scale community-based projects where possible, and work with commissioners to identify local leaders and additional priority areas for the next 3— years of implementation.
