By Alan Barton,
NMFWRI Director
Staff at the New Mexico Forest & Watershed Restoration Institute work across New Mexico with landowners, agency personnel, NGO staff, soil and water conservation districts, Tribal natural resource departments, university researchers, and others working on forest restoration. Typically, our partners and collaborators are located and reside in rural areas, near the forests and watersheds they are working to conserve and restore. Rural landscapes are known for their tranquil beauty, and driving around New Mexico one encounters a diversity of spectacular scenery, from high desert mesas, to evergreen forests, to grasslands dotted with ranches, to rugged cliffs, tent rocks and sharp angular rock faces, remnants of ancient volcanoes. And, there are unique communities all over our state, populated with residents dedicated to maintaining a healthy life for their environment, their economies, and their neighbors.
As is the case worldwide, life in rural New Mexico encompasses a variety of definitive characteristics, some attractive and others challenging. As a result, rural residents experience life differently from urban and suburban dwellers. Where populations are spread out across the landscape, and public transportation options are rare, residents must frequently drive long, time-consuming distances to access shopping, health care, banking, and other services, or to drop kids off at school, attend PTA meetings, or perhaps join a meeting of a conservation collaborative. Conversely, in an emergency it may take sheriff deputies or volunteer firefighters a long time to get to a home, so that rural residents are by nature more self-sufficient and take steps to be prepared. In rural settings, residents typically interact with the same people every day, and consequently, rural residents are very good at creating community and interacting with others as individuals, regardless of the roles they have at any given time.
Many rural residents would not live anywhere else. Yet, across the country, rural areas are shrinking, due to general population decline combined with outmigration, especially young people seeking greater opportunities in urban centers. This brain drain exacerbates many of the other structural disadvantages of rurality. In addition, rural towns are losing their uniqueness, as their homegrown businesses are being replaced by chain stores, motels, gas stations and restaurants, often located along a strip of highway, while the downtown areas decline and local family-run businesses disappear. These national chains drain money from rural economies and produce a homogenizing effect that robs communities of their distinct local cultures.
It is in these rural settings that NMFWRI collaboration, monitoring and outreach staff spend many days each month, working side-by-side with residents and partners, including agency staff in local offices, county officials and other local leaders, and landowners, who our staff meet with at collaborative group meetings, organized trainings, school events, or restoration work days on residents’ land. The focus of the work is restoration, but NMFWRI’s restoration mission applies not just to restoring ecological health to local forests, but also preserving and building economic opportunity and social well-being in communities. We are dedicated to finding ways to improve natural areas, to reduce the risks associated with damaging ecological disturbances, and to connect people and communities to the landscapes where they live, so that New Mexico’s rural communities can endure, maintain their unique character, flourish and thrive.