The Innovative, Unlikely Idea That Could Save America’s Forests

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.takepart.com/feature/2014/10/17/rio-grande-water-fund-forest-treatments?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2014-10-17




Cochiti Canyon, outside Los Alamos, N.M., is part of an area that burned at the rate of half an acre per second during a 2011 wildfire. (Photo: Paul Tullis)

TAKEPART FEATURES
The Innovative, Unlikely Idea That Could Save America’s Forests

Warming and drought are contributing to bigger and more frequent wildfires. A new approach—helping trees get the rain and snowfall they need—could be a model to help forests worldwide.

October 17, 2014 By Nancy Averett

Nancy Averett is a freelance journalist who enjoys writing about science, social issues, and athletes. Her work has appeared in Audubon, Pacific Standard, and Inc.


In late August 2011, the Rio Grande ran black through New Mexico. Earlier in the month, the largest wildfire in the state’s history had burned in the mountains northwest of Santa Fe, and without vegetation to hold the soil in place, seasonal monsoon rains sent mud, dead trees, and other material down the mountain in a 70-foot-deep mass of debris that ended up in the river. The water utilities in Albuquerque and Santa Fe announced they were closing their intake valves from the river because managers feared the gunk would damage water treatment facilities, which might hamper their ability to provide clean water for months.

Dale Dekker, an architect and member of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, took a pragmatic view of the situation. “Having a black river flowing through town was definitely bad for business,” he said. Damages amounted to $45 million.

Laura McCarthy remembers it too. As director of agency and government relations for the New Mexico Nature Conservancy, she and others had been working for years to prevent this kind of occurrence—one that local TV news stations were now broadcasting footage of over and over, as if on auto-repeat. The flood was the foreseeable outcome—foreseeable to McCarthy and her fellow travelers, at least—of increasingly large wildfires of increasing severity lighting up the increasingly hot and dry mixed-conifer forests of northern New Mexico. The Las Conchas fire that July and August surpassed the Cerro Grande fire of 2000 as the largest in the state’s history. The Dome fire of 1996 had flames hundreds of feet long. McCarthy and similar-minded scientists and conservationists in the area had been virtually shouting from the mountaintops that something had to be done to help the forests, and that the consequence of inaction would be felt outside them. It was hard to argue, now, that they hadn’t failed.

But all those fires happened far away from the power brokers in Albuquerque, the state capital, and Santa Fe, home to much of the state’s monied elite. Here was evidence of the issues McCarthy and others had for years been desperately trying to convince their community—legislators, bureaucrats, business owners, community groups, and anyone else they could corner—needed attention. Maybe now the public would listen. McCarthy decided it was time to think big.

FULL story at link: http://www.takepart.com/feature/2014/10/17/rio-grande-water-fund-forest-treatments?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2014-10-17