Las Humanas Cooperative

Location:

New Mexico

What challenges were faced and how were they overcome?

 

Honoring commitments has been an ongoing challenge that at times has strained the Partnership. There have been times when laborers were supposed to be paid for their work but the Forest Service was not able to follow through on its commitment. Ramirez recalled, “One of the most serious things that hurt us in the process is that they would make a promise that dollars would be there on a certain day and they wouldn’t be there. Well, when you have 30 people that have 30 families and they’ve worked already three weeks to a month and they are anticipating a check to pay those bills for electricity just to survive. The Federal government didn’t have the money [to pay] and [this] became a serious problem with the communities and for the Cooperative.” Estrada sympathized with the problem of delayed payments, “It’s hard to have a credible relationship with people when you say what you believe but then you lose your funding. As a line officer, you put yourself out on the line, and that takes away your credibility if you try to do things and make promises and then don’t have the money.” She stressed that “Congress could support collaborative partnerships by having multi-year funding for communities so that the Forest Service can meet their commitments.”

 

Despite improved relations between the Forest Service and the Cooperative and notable partnership accomplishments, there is still significant poverty in the area and limited economic opportunities. There are very limited markets for the forest products produced by the Cooperative and limited funds available to employ community members in forest restoration. Consequently, while progress has been made, many community members still illegally poach large trees and arguments over land use and access to the forest arise frequently. Fortunately, some of the poaching problems have subsided as a result of the partnership’s work. Estrada noted, “Now that the locals are doing the work [on Forest Service contracts], they are patrolling each other better, they are more invested, they are staying employed and they are having a legal source of wood.” Still, as Ramirez stressed, poaching and related problems will likely continue because “as long as a person’s stomach is hungry and his bills aren’t paid, you can preach all you want [about forest restoration] and they are going to sit there and nod…and then when you turn your head, they are going to go right back to doing what they are doing just to survive…But if you provide them with economic opportunity to provide for their family, that’s all they want.” In an effort to diversify the local economy, Las Humanas is attempting to balance intermittent forest restoration contracts with other activities utilizing forest resources such as Christmas tree and live tree sales as well as providing wood building supplies.

 

Given the poor economic conditions in the area and the need to migrate in search of work, the group has confronted significant difficulties in maintaining continuity of a well-trained and committed group of workers. For example, while working on the Anderson Project, laborers for Las Humanas were given permission to keep the wood they cut instead of being paid cash. However, during the project some workers found paid jobs and left the job site, causing long delays in project completion. This challenge has been particularly acute when laborers on forest stewardship contracts are paid well after the work is done, making it difficult for cash-strapped people to make long-term commitments to a project. In short time, leaders of the Cooperative have had to learn the agency’s administrative processes, safety specifications, and detailed thinning prescriptions, and then communicate this information to laborers who have never worked with the agency. Ramirez remembered the group’s first sixteen-acre project with the Forest Service, “You can’t just hand a bunch of chainsaws [to people] and point them into an area to start thinning because they don’t understand the prescriptions, they were dropping trees on each other and doing a destructive type of thinning that was not really good for the land.”

 

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