Las Humanas Cooperative

Location:

New Mexico

What is fostering progress?

Partnerships can only occur when personal connections are made and shared interests are recognized. The Las Humanas case demonstrates how important it is to take the initiative to identify leaders in the community or organization and to connect with them. Estrada stressed that opportunities become available if you can identify a leader in a community that you can see eye-to-eye and work with. She noted, “Within communities you have people that are leaders and when they come that’s when you have an opportunity for things to happen. [The Forest Service] can’t force partnerships on communities, but when there is someone who can be a driver [with] vision…that critical community leader is what it takes.” Ramirez summed up his vision for Las Humanas and the Partnership, “What we are trying to do is to not be part of the problem, but rather to be part of the solution and that’s exactly where we go forward…[After all,] our youth, our adults, our mountains, our water, it’s all one picture.”

 

Sustained commitment to the partnership and relationship-building has helped the parties tackle new, unexpected challenges. Patience on everyone’s part has been an important factor as well. The two organizations were willing to move beyond the animosity that characterized their past and to define a new future together. Ramirez noted, “[Estrada was] very patient. She understood the situation with the community of trying to build capacity…[to create] a sustainable opportunity for us.” Estrada stressed that one must expect the unexpected, “There has been a lot of learning on the fly…we are flexible and we problem solve as issues arise.” For example, some individuals working on the Anderson Project began issuing permits to clear wood to their friends in other parts of New Mexico. This issue was totally unexpected and would have jeopardized the project had, according to Estrada, the people who were involved not been “problem solvers” with creative energy who dealt with adversity head-on and remain committed to a process over the long-term.

 

Ramirez commented on the importance of the community mapping experience started by Western Network, “[The mapping] is a very valuable tool to not only map our resources and concerned medicinal herbs and traditional uses, but also our watershed and springs and the impacts of thinning practices [on the forest].” He stressed that the mapping process was ongoing and adaptive, “The mapping has never ended because we continue to learn from it…[More recently] we started mapping where the fire dollars were coming down to and who was getting the defensive [fire] spaces...[asking questions like:] Where are the federal dollars going? What types of thinning projects [are going on?] What types of fuel breaks? Are we putting defensive spaces around rural communities or around metropolitan areas?” With this information in hand, the Cooperative has been able to participate more fully in agency planning, providing valuable advice on proposed projects such as the impact of prescribed burns on medicinal herbs or groundwater recharge zones. Mapping community interests and uses has also helped the Forest Service better understand the community and identify projects that meet local subsistence and economic needs.

Shared monitoring and outreach projects have also strengthened ties between the community and the agency. In cooperation with the Forest Service, Las Humanas has set up photo-monitoring points and taken before-and-after pictures of thinned stands, and prescribed burns. The Cooperative’s photo monitoring has been an inexpensive way to monitor the results of its work and the photos have been useful as teaching tools. Indeed, Las Humanas and the Forest Service have used these photos in nearby schools to discuss fire, forest management, and watershed protection. Ramirez noted, “It is very important that communities understand how their forest impacts them and their way of life and not take it for granted.” The parties recently began involving youth to photo-monitor changes in local forests and communities; some middle-school classes have also adopted individual juniper trees which they visit year-by-year to see if they are still standing. Estrada noted, “We are getting youth to think of them [junipers] as their trees, so they’ll feel a personal loss when someone cuts it with a chainsaw.” The Cooperative also set up photo-monitoring installations in local villages to develop a record with which to communicate to others what life is like in the villages and how they adapt to economic and ecological changes.

 

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.