United States Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small toured the John T. Harrington Reforestation Center in Mora for the first time Tuesday, April 16, before discussing the center’s future role in helping the area heal from the effects of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham was also slated to tour the John T. Harrington Reforestation Center and meet with local leaders; however, she was not able to attend and a reason for her absence was not given.
While the event on April 16 was meant to commemorate the two-year anniversary of the devastating wildfire caused by agents of the federal government, it was also an opportunity for officials to discuss $11 million in funding aimed at creating a New Mexico Reforestation Center. This facility will be an expansion to the current John T. Harrington Reforestation Center.
Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department Deputy Cabinet Secretary Dylan Fuge spoke at length before Torres Small approached the podium. He noted that the $11 million includes $10 million from the USDA and about $1 million in Congressionally Directed Spending, which was secured through the efforts of Sen. Martin Heinrich.
“We’re here to commemorate the profound loss and hardship (the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire) represented and the slow recovery that is still very much ongoing,” Fuge told the crowd of about 70 people who gathered at the John T. Harrington Reforestation Center. “But we’re also here to celebrate renewal and regrowth, thanks in part to the USDA and commitments from our state legislature to build a reforestation center here in Mora that will help both rehabilitate the land and the local economy.”
Fuge acknowledged the 341,000 acres that were burned during the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. He said 2022 was the worst fire season in New Mexico history, one that destroyed one million forest acres across the state.
“For those of you who lost homes I recognize the trauma is still fresh and recovery is slower than we hoped,” Fuge said. However, he said, those who did not lose a home but who live downhill from the burn scar also face challenges. These include flooding and debris flows for years to come, a situation that now exists due to the lack of forestation.
Fuge said it is estimated there are between 1 million and 2.6 million acres in New Mexico that need reforestation. To plant that, he said, between 150 million-300 million seedlings are needed.
“This center, in its current configuration, can only produce 300,000 (seedlings) per year,” Fuge said. “We can’t rely on natural processes, we need to take affirmative steps to address it.”
The goal of the reforestation center in Mora is to produce 5 million seedlings annually. This would help not only the immediate area, but the entire Southwest, Torres Small said.
“The center’s ambitious goal to produce 5 million seedlings annually will not just benefit New Mexico, it will benefit all lands of the greater Southwest area,” Torres Small said. “It’s a testament to our shared commitment to forest health and resilience.”
Years before the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the John T. Harrington Reforestation Center was already in existence, said Joshua Sloan, associate vice president of academic affairs for the Forestry and Reforestation Center at New Mexico Highlands University.
Sloan said the center’s initial goal was to serve as a research facility for New Mexico State University.
“This was never designed or intended to be an operational reforestation facility,” Sloan noted. Over time, however, the center started meeting reforestation needs.
“That’s really why we need that new facility,” Sloan said. “We’re basically using a research facility as a stopgap to try to meet that operational reforestation need, but it wasn’t designed for it, and didn’t have the capacity for it.”
Sloan said funding will go towards the infrastructure of the New Mexico Reforestation Center, an all-new construction set to be located at the current center.
Sloan noted that the whole property of the John T. Harrington Reforestation Center is 120 acres, and half of that is buildable.
“We have plenty of room, the new facility is going to be a little under 10 acres,” Sloan said.
NMSU, NMHU and the University of New Mexico have all combined efforts at the reforestation center in Mora. Fuge noted these combined efforts, stating that a group from NMHU collected 250 bushels of cones and is building a seed processing and storage facility. A group from NMSU is developing research-based nursery practices to grow seedlings with enhanced survival rates in burn scars.
UNM has developed a climate model that allows land managers and landowners to pick places to plant seedlings for their best chance of survival, Fuge said.
Thanks to these efforts, the John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center is already a hub for activity and research, one that houses the largest seed bank in the Southwest.
Owen Burney, director of the John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center, welcomed visitors to take a peek at the seed bank on April 16. Located inside a walk-in refrigerator, the seed bank contains about 7 million seeds.
That number equals about 20,000 acres of reforestation, or, 20-30 percent of the fire footprint of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, Burney said.
However, Burney cautioned, the number of trees to be planted per acre will be highly variable.
“We don’t plant 300 trees per acre everywhere,” Burney explained. “In some cases, we’ll plant a lot less; in other cases, we’ll plant a lot more.”
“We want to create that variability on purpose because we want to emulate natural regeneration,” Burney continued. “We’re not here to necessarily put it on the same trajectory as where it was before. … We don’t want it thick, we don’t want it everywhere. We could easily put ourselves back into the same fire risk we were before.”
Both Burney and Sloan noted that whereas natural reforestation could take centuries, through the work being done at the center, reforestation could be done within a human’s lifespan.
Burney acknowledged that amount of time may still mean that most people alive today would not see the effects of the reforestation efforts. However, he said, many would still be able to witness the beginning of the process that will eventually lead to recovery.
