April 09th, 2015

Before leaving the warmth of New Mexico I wanted to post some new information. The other day I read about efforts the U.S. Forest Service has been working on to develop interaction between various interests to improve forest health. Let me first commend the Agency for their effort to focus on the need to improve forest health. Certainly, bring the various interests together helps reach agreement on needed treatments of our remaining forests,but the vital question is what treatments and how will they be applied! The article suggests that a collaborative effort resulting in agreement to treat more acres with silvacultural prescriptions will reduce the threat of catastrophic events occurring in the future. I can not emphasize strong enough that the solutions to future improvements rest in how we apply the much needed prescriptions. Unless and until we are able to recognize and identify the unique forest communities and apply the treatments on a community basis, we will destroy diversity and set yourselves up for more catastrophic events in the future. I recently had a farmer explain to me how new equipment, using computer controlled applications, are able to apply application of fertilizer, pesticides and herbicides to each individual acre based upon the need of each unique unit. I explained that the computer capability was based on the advanced knowledge of the programer that prepared the computer disk. It is this advanced knowledge that is required by our forest scientists if we are to properly apply the required prescriptions to maintain or improve diversity and health within our forest communities or eco-systems.
To begin to work toward economic sustainability requires significant change in the way we manage our remaining forested lands.
We are hoping to start an effort this summer to bring new environmental material to our young people, so they might begin to appreciate the knowledge our indigenous people developed about the complexity and detail of our surroundings.