Projects
Project Highlights
Rock Creek
Rock Creek is located just east of Cuba, New Mexico in the Santa Fe National Forest. For millennia, communities in the southwest have relied on forests to provide vital resources such as wood, water, and food. The Wood For Life program in partnership with the 2-3-2 is reconnecting a part of that once vibrant relationship with the forest, linking excess wood from wildfire mitigation work in the Santa Fe National Forest to Navajo Nation Chapter Houses in Arizona as fuelwood.
The site includes 1050 acres of United States Forest Service land that has been targeted for forest thinning operations . Here, the Wood For Life program is purchasing small diameter trees that are not suitable for timber sales and donating them to the Tri-Chapter Navajo — Ojo Encino, Torreon, and Counselor Chapters.
So far, 40 acres have been treated as such with more acreage planned for 2023. As soon as ground conditions improve and dry out, 30 log truckloads will be distributed between the three Chapter Houses with room to expand to around 70 truckloads total based on need.
We’re in the process of highlighting more projects and creating an interactive map. Stay tuned for updates.
Next steps:
- Complete onboarding process with the development of a 10-year workplan and funding plan.
- Develop a multi-party monitoring plan that will ensure our goals are being met by the treatments implemented across the landscape.
- Prioritize projects across the CFLRP landscape by identifying focal areas, specifying values and expanding existing local industries.
- Plan and implement more cross-boundary projects and use them to leverage additional funds.
Challenges:
- Transportation
- Ingress/egress safest route for some communities is through the adjacent state
- Finances funding arrangements between states makes it hard to fund/collaborate on projects in the other state
- Fire management and fire response
- Expansion of wood and biomass utilization strategies
- Alignment of priorities