By Alejandro Collins, NMFWRI Collaboration Specialist
Almost a year later, the Collaboration Program looks back at the NM Collaboration Hub’s history and progress since its launch in February 2025.
The NM Collaboration Hub is the culmination and representation of collaborative conservation in New Mexico. The idea of a “Hub” of information created as a “resource of resources” for collaboratives in New Mexico was first conceived within the NM Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI) by the previous Collaboration Program Manager, Dr. Alan Barton (now director of NMFWRI). Previous iterations of online resources and websites were valuable for collaboratives to store documents and access information, but faced limitations related to geographic scope, usability, and the capacity to keep them up and running. These limitations persisted and eventually led to the obsolescence of some of the sites by the time Crystal Medina, Barton’s successor as Collaboration Program Manager, took over the reins of the program in early 2023.
Medina hit the ground running and immediately began engaging with collaboratives across the state, while also increasing the program’s capacity by hiring Alejandro Collins as Collaboration Specialist that summer. Building on Barton’s “resource of resources” idea and through their direct support to collaboratives, Medina and Collins identified a gap in the availability and accessibility of a centralized platform for collaboratives to share information, connect with each other, and access resources specific to collaboratives in New Mexico.
One common challenge they encountered while supporting collaboratives was the need for specific information that already existed online but was difficult and time-consuming to find. The solution was the NM Collaboration Hub.
In 2024, the Collaboration Program spent much of the time between their regular collaborative work conceptualizing, designing, building, and testing the functionality of the NM Collaboration Hub. Collins, who had some educational experience with GIS but no background in graphic design or web development, took the lead in creating the Hub site. As expected, this was a steep learning curve with considerable trial and error. Nonetheless, Collins gradually developed the NM Collaboration Hub to eventually produce the functionality necessary to support the growing network of collaboratives and their partner organizations across New Mexico. The dedicated “resource of resources” was finally launched in February 2025.
Since its launch, the NM Collaboration Hub has responded to the needs of collaboratives by serving as a one-stop shop of information. The Hub is a mechanism for those engaged with collaboratives in NM to access resources that support landscape-scale restoration, such as funding opportunities, community engagement strategies, adaptive management practices, fire mitigation options, post-fire recovery, ecological monitoring, GIS data sharing, and more. Importantly, most of these resources already exist elsewhere online but are spread across dozens of agency and NGO websites. The NM Collaboration Hub is not intended to replace existing resources and tools, but rather to serve as a “resource of resources” that facilitates access to a comprehensive collection of existing materials.
An essential feature of the Hub Site is the ease with which resources can be uploaded, pages can be created, and editing permissions can be granted to collaborators. Several collaboratives have dedicated pages on the Hub that serve as repositories for historical documents and as platforms for meeting announcements. Meanwhile, representatives of both the Otero Working Group and the Forest and Watershed Health Coordinating Group (FWHCG) manage their own pages and use them as primary channels for communication with group members. A unique feature that allows anyone engaged with a collaborative to post announcements on their group’s page has proven valuable in returning capacity to group coordinators who previously carried this responsibility alone.
The ability to quickly upload resources to the Hub has also supported outreach efforts by partners coordinating programs with time-sensitive deadlines. The Collaboration Program partnered with Abigail Plecki, former CWDG Coordinator with the New Mexico Forestry Division, during Cycle 3 of the Community Wildfire Defense Grant (CWDG) to create a page that centralized beneficial resources for CWDG applicants.
“The NM Collaboration Hub has advanced the Forestry Division’s landscape restoration and outreach efforts by clearly communicating the CWDG’s purpose and process,” ” Plecki said. “The dedicated page gave partners centralized access to key resources, supporting stronger and more numerous applications this last cycle.”
The Collaboration Program strives to continue these types of partnerships that further collaborative, landscape-scale restoration, and wildfire mitigation across the state.
Medina and Collins hope that the NM Collaboration Hub is meaningfully supporting the important work of the NMFWRI and its partners, though measuring this impact can be challenging. One goal for 2026 is to design and implement a method to more effectively capture that impact. In the meantime, ESRI’s ArcGIS usage statistics offer some helpful insight.
From its launch through the end of the year (March 1-December 31 for data purposes), the Hub recorded almost 17,000 item views with an average of 55 views per day. Notably, more than half of those views (over 9,500) occurred in the second half of this period, increasing the daily average to 62 views.
Medina and Collins infer this trend to indicate the Hub’s expanding reach and prominence as a valuable tool for collaboratives. They suggest it may reflect a positive feedback loop, in which the content on the site evolves to better serve collaboratives as more users engage with and contribute to it. As additional collaborators, such as Abigail Plecki and the FWHCG, use the Hub to support and share their work, the site becomes more visible and more useful, in turn attracting others engaged in collaborative efforts.
The NMFWRI Collaboration Program invites you to explore the NM Collaboration Hub and share resources, topics, or ideas for improving the site. The Hub is intended to be a useful tool for collaboration in New Mexico, and the Collaboration team are always happy to connect with new and existing partners.