For as long as she can remember, Melanie Torres and her family have spent time playing in the mountains and forests around Taos.
Growing up, I always remember just being outside no matter what time of year it was, Torres says. We were always fishing, hunting, camping or even just going for a cruise.
Until recently, Torres, an 18-year-old senior at Taos High School, said she never really thought about the health of the forests close to home. But after spending last summer collecting data on forest conditions as a member of the Taos Soil and Water Conservation Districts forest monitoring crew, Torres now realizes some areas are in dire shape, threatening not just the trees but the water that comes from the forests as well. Now she wants to pursue a career that will enable her to do something about it.
Since 2018, crews of local high school and college students have been doing monitoring as part of multiple forest restoration projects across Taos County. These monitoring teams are designed to introduce young people to working professionals in natural resources fields, expose them to the specific forestry protocols used to collect pre- and post-treatment data, and establish a career pipeline for those who are interested in pursuing a degree related to natural resources.
The big picture goal is to encourage young people from Taos who have an interest in natural resources, then show them how to get the education they need to become the next generation of land management experts in Northern New Mexico.
Last summer, Torres and her fellow crew members learned professional, scientific methods for collecting data on tree numbers, tree species, fuel loads and other characteristics used to gauge the health of a forest stand, as well as the corresponding vulnerability to wildfire, disease, drought and insect infestation.
She and her fellow crew members were assigned study plots that were set in areas slated for thinning and prescribed burning treatments. The crew collected data before the treatments occurred, then returned to do the same measurements after the work was completed. Faculty from New Mexico Highlands University provided mentorship to the students, and data collected by these crews is fed to the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
Weeks spent counting trees and learning more about forest ecology was a wake-up call, Torres says.
It was crazy, just looking at the forest from a totally different point of view, Torres says. Growing up, seeing all the trees, I always thought it was a pretty healthy forest. But now I know that all those trees arent necessarily good.
In many lower-elevation forests around Taos, fire suppression over the last 100 years has allowed an unnatural buildup of fuels in the form of small, fire-susceptible trees. This buildup of fuels means that, when a fire does happen, it explodes into an inferno with far greater severity than would have been typical in that ecosystem in the past. That kind of fire not only threatens lives, homes and the long-term well-being of the forest, but the erosion and ash flows that follow pose a risk to the acequias and drinking water systems in the valleys below. And with climate change already having an effect on drought and temperatures, those shifts are only expected to become more extreme.
With all those threats in mind, Torres says shes now decided to pursue a career in forestry, and she wants to stay in Taos to get involved in work meant to safeguard these watersheds. Torres says the summer with the monitoring crew not only encouraged her lifelong interest in science and the environment, but it also showed her the kinds of careers that exist in this field and offered a clear pathway on how to get there. When I was a little younger, I had planned to move to Colorado and figure out stuff to do there, Torres says. Now, after having this summer job, I realize my community needs a lot of help. And now that I have an actual goal, I know exactly what I need to do to get to where I want to be.
Torres is set to graduate from Taos High this spring, and shes already applied to the Climate Change Corps program at UNM-Taos. After two years here, she plans to transfer to New Mexico Highlands University in Las Vegas to get a degree in forestry, then apply for a job with the Carson National Forest. Its a clear path that others on her crew are already headed down, and one that makes finding a rewarding career thats close to home achievable.
Its crazy how one little summer job turned into a whole career that I want to pursue in the future, Torres says. It was definitely better than her last summer gig washing dogs for a pet groomer.
For the Soil and Water District, the monitoring program helps accomplish multiple objectives.
Melanie and her fellow crew members are helping us help the land, says Peter Vigil, District Manager for the Taos Soil and Water Conservation District. The Conservation District is most grateful for their contribution to stewardship and active land management. The local youth perspective is a gift that we must honor, and healthy managed forests keep our acequias and working lands alive and in turn keep us alive.
This summer, Taos Soil and Water Conservation District plans to field another seasonal monitoring crew. And discussions are already underway to tie data collected by these crews in the field to the database the Forest Service and other agencies use to develop forest treatment prescriptions in the future.
Hopefully, in many cases, the local students out counting trees this year might someday be the agency experts using that same data to help guide work to make our forests and watersheds more resilient for future generations.
David Gilroy, Conservation Education & Program Association for the Conservation District, says hiring Taos-area students to perform watershed monitoring shows young people that their knowledge and their future matters. It also provides a foundation for evidence-based management as our communities work towards greater resiliency of the ecosystems that we rely on.
Involving local students in scientific activities that help them understand the forests past and current condition is important to ensure that we have people prepared to make the tough resource decisions of the future, Gilroy says.
J.R. Logan is the Taos County Wildland-Urban Interface Coordinator and manager of several forest restoration projects that promote ecosystem health, traditional uses and economic development in Northern New Mexico. To learn more about the forest restoration and wildfire risk reduction in Taos County, visit taoscountywildfire.org.