Managing a forest can be tricky – whether a landowner is trying to reduce wildfire risks, restore burned areas, improve wildlife habitat, retain privacy, protect aesthetic values or achieve a combination of those goals. Three new guides provide tips and resources to help landowners make decisions about their forests. The guides are the latest landowner technical guides offered by the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute (NMFWRI) through the Fire Informed Restoration Education for New Mexico (FIRENM) program. All guides are downloadable for free on the NMFWRI website at nmfwri.org/stewardship/wildfire-resiliency/.
The latest Forest Management guides are:
- Knowing Your Forest provides information on identifying common trees, forest types, and forest health;
- Making Decisions About the Future of Your Forest identifies landowner values and management goals, and how to make thinning decisions with those values in mind;
- Recovery of Burned Forests After Catastrophic Wildfire details how forests may recover over time, including different stages and timescales.
The guides are the newest resources from the Querencia in Action, FIRENM’s landowner education initiative. Querencia describes a deep connection, love, and affection for one’s home ground, a place where one returns for strength and feels their most authentic self. Through practical resources and place-based workshops, Querencia in Action connects restoration science with local knowledge and landowners’ priorities to support care for these valued places.
Other Querencia in Action guides available on the NMFWRI website are:
- After the Fire: Reseeding and Revegetation
- Post-fire Plant Communities
- Sustainable and Ethical Seed Harvesting
- Contour Log Felling to Stabilize Burned Slopes
- Plant Terms and Definitions
- Bark Beetle Management: Bark Beetle Management Strategies
- Piñon Bark Beetle Signs & Symptoms
- Ponderosa Pine Bark Beetle Signs & Symptoms
- Douglas Fir and White Fir Bark Beetle Signs & Symptoms,
- Bark Beetle Field Guide for New Mexico Forests: A Photo Guide to Common Beetles
FIRENM aims to increase access to fire-adapted restoration knowledge, practices and experiences to promote resiliency in firesheds across New Mexico. Many local communities exist in a pre-, during- and post-fire continuum. This initiative focuses on community-engaged trainings, and restoration practices and implementation.
For more information regarding FIRENM, landowner guides or upcoming free workshops, contact Shantini Ramakrishnan at shantinir@nmhu.edu.