The Spanish land grant community of Manzano, New Mexico is located adjacent to the Mountainair Ranger District in the Cibola National Forest, which covers lands in New Mexico, western Oklahoma, and northwestern Texas. The arid and semi-arid climate of the region varies with elevation; desert vegetation thrives in lower elevations while juniper, pine, and spruce-fir forests exist at higher elevations reaching over 11,000 feet. Manzano is a small, agricultural community with a predominantly Hispanic population. The community lies within Torrance County, which is a rapidly growing but economically-challenged area struggling to diversify its economy while maintaining a rural way of life.
Conflicts over land use and ownership between the community of Manzano and the Forest Service are powerful and deep rooted. Manzano and neighboring land-grant communities were established prior to the Mexican-American War and were annexed as part of the United States in the 1846 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Historically, families in the region farmed private lands and collectively managed communal lands for other uses. In the Treaty, the US agreed to recognize any titles and ownership to lands honored by Mexico, however Manzano communal lands were not recognized and those lands became incorporated into the Cibola National Forest. Distrust and frustration persist between the community and the Forest Service because community members must pay fees and gain permission to log and graze on lands they believe belonged to their ancestors.
In addition to disputes over resources, the community is dealing with many other challenges that have strained relations with the Forest Service. Due to inadequate training and economic opportunity, youth are emigrating from the community at alarming rates. A Manzano community member noted, “We were losing a lot of our youth because there were no economic opportunities or training...The more intelligent kids would get jobs and travel and never come back…that’s our resource, we need them to come back, we need them to preserve our historical way of life here.” Plagued by economic adversity, community members are selling their ancestral lands to community newcomers, thereby changing the population’s values and needs. At the same time, dense growth of Ponderosa pine and pinon/juniper on National Forest lands surrounding the communities are creating a potentially catastrophic fire threat. Many community members are poor and uninsured so when fire destroys their homes they lose everything.
Tensions between community members and the Forest Service were exacerbated in the mid-1990s when the federal government listed the Mexican Spotted Owl as an endangered species and further restricted access to the national forest for firewood, medicinal herbs, hunting, and other uses. Desperate for income to feed their families and to pay bills, local residents went deep into the forest to poach large trees such as four and five hundred year-old Alligator Junipers to sell for firewood. At this point local Forest Service officials realized that they needed to build a new relationship with the community, one that recognized both community and agency needs.
Steps Towards Collaboration
To begin addressing the escalating conflicts between the Forest Service and the community, in 1995 the Forest Service contracted with Western Network – an organization that assists in community problem-solving processes – to facilitate meetings between community members and the Forest Service to better understand how the parties could work together to address local concerns.
Western Network’s first role was simply to listen. They provided a forum within which the community could freely discuss its views and concerns about the Forest Service and its management of the adjacent national forest. The agency was so distrusted by the community that communication between them was strained; community members felt that their concerns were falling on deaf ears and the arrival of Western Network provided an opening in this tense relationship. Western Network then helped facilitate a “community value mapping” process in Manzano structured to both identify community interests and needs in the forest, and to solicit ideas for how the community and the Forest Service might begin working together. In the value mapping process, community members identified areas of particular concern to them on maps of the forest. They identified where important medicinal herbs and sacred sites were located; where community members cut wood, hunt and graze cattle; and areas that the community has attempted to preserve in order to protect water resources. Western Network served as a trusted source to relay these important mapped areas to the Forest Service.
By visually mapping their key areas of concern and specific needs, the community began refocusing their attention from a conflict with the Forest Service to dialogue about how best to manage the mapped areas in order to protect sacred areas and water resources and how to satisfy community resource needs. The mapping effort helped break the ice between the parties and provided a way for community members to communicate their traditional uses of the forest to the Forest Service. Through this process, some of the conflict between the parties subsided and the community realized that the agency was willing to openly discuss and listen to their concerns.
Recognizing the opportunity to turn generations of conflict into collaboration, community leaders around Manzano formed Las Humanas Cooperative or “The Humanitarians,” to restore the local environment and watershed while providing economic opportunities for traditional communities. One of the founders of the Cooperative and its current President, George Ramirez, noted, “we learned that the Forest Service was [willing] to come into our community and talk to us and show an interest. We didn’t need a mediator; we could [build a partnership] ourselves.” The community had come to realize that working together to build capacity for economic development was the key to a more economically robust and environmentally healthy future. As Ramirez commented, “[Community members] realized that struggling with the government … was not the answer.”
The First Partnership Projects
Capitalizing on the opportunity to ease tensions and address unemployment in the region, in 1996 the Forest Service partnered with Las Humanas to develop the first national Community Stewardship Project (CSP) to thin a sixteen-acre forest tract near the wildland/urban interface on the Cibola National Forest. What was started through this CSP has evolved into a strong partnership that has helped to alleviate conflicts over land use, bring more jobs to the community, and mitigate the severe threats of fire in the region. Today, the Cooperative employs 30 individuals on a mostly consistent basis, with the number of employees fluctuating with the seasonal workload.
Although the first CSP took over two years to complete, as the parties worked together their relationship improved considerably. District Ranger Estrada noted, “The critical aspect [of this project] was that people began working together and started trusting each other.” The learning that occurred and the relationships built while working on the CSP sowed the seeds for further collaboration and in 1999 the Forest Service organized another thinning project with Las Humanas known as the Anderson Project. This project’s goal was to provide community members with forest materials, while also developing the Cooperative’s administrative and restoration skills. The parties set up a two-year pilot contract to thin a 120-acre forest track; the contract itself provided detailed specifications for thinning, the equipment to be used, as well as deadlines for completion. According to Estrada, “Anderson was about developing training and skills…some folks have gotten training on how to thin, how to use a chainsaw, how to select which trees to cut, but also what do we want the tract to look like when it’s done.” The project generated considerable goodwill between the parties, addressed a serious fire threat in the area, and also helped the Cooperative develop new administrative and technical skills associated with contracting and forest restoration.
Building Community Capacity
By the end of the Anderson Project, members of the Cooperative recognized the need to strengthen administrative skills and provide better training and compensation for locals to participate in agency contracts. The Cooperative applied for and was awarded $350,000 through the USDA Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Restoration Program. This grant provided support to pay for low-impact thinning equipment like chainsaws and safety equipment, as well as money for payroll and salaries. With this support, combined with the guidance of the Forest Service and the commitment of community members, Las Humanas has become a viable independent contractor; indeed, the group recently bid successfully on two local fuel break contracts - a true milestone.
Under these new contracts, Las Humanas is training its workers to follow detailed thinning prescriptions while also developing business skills to navigate contracting complexities such as workers compensation, liability insurance, federal requirements for wages and safety, and deadlines for completion. Moreover, the Cooperative has made significant progress in using the lumber they cut to diversify the economic base of the community – supplying wood chips to a local sign company and landscapers, Christmas trees in the winter, and constructing wood building supplies like Santa Fe-style house beams and posts. The parties are optimistic that these projects are only the beginning of a long-term, productive partnership to bring economic opportunity to the community and address growing forest restoration needs.
This site was developed by the Ecosystem Management Initiative through a partnership with the US Forest Service and the US Department of Interior. Read more.
