Pine, oil and gas fingered for New Mexico's fires

In June US Forest Service Chief Randy Moore told a congressional committee that before widespread settlement in the West populations of ponderosa pine were about forty per acre but are as high as 600 per acre today. Dense stands of water-sucking, heat island-creating ponderosa pine concentrate volatile organic compounds or VOCs that become explosive under hot and dry conditions. The aerosols are like charcoal starter fumes just waiting for a spark.

Wildfire has removed an estimated 100 million ponderosa pine from public lands so far this year in New Mexico and the monsoon season is putting billions of gallons back into stressed watersheds. Transpiration from New Mexico’s forests has provided thunderstorm rainfall for Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas for far too long but this year's wildfires will enable us to keep more of our water in reservoirs and aquifer recharges instead. 

In contrast to two of New Mexico’s biggest fires in settlement history the Cerro Pelado Fire moved through burn scars from the 2019 Conejos Fire, the 2017 Cajete Fire, the 2013 Thompson Ridge Fire, the 2011 Las Conchas Fire and in the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire. The Forest Service burned numerous slash piles along NM4 in the higher elevations of the Jemez range and in places where low intensity fire had already been introduced.

"Approximately one century of fire suppression in the watershed has resulted in a highly modified ponderosa pine forest structure that is more prone to high-intensity and high-severity wildfires," the report states. [‘A disaster waiting to happen’]

Extracting oil and gas from public lands releases about 20 percent of energy-related US greenhouse gas emissions so the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management intend to scale back leases to the industry in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and other states. According to Interior the social costs of VOC emissions from oil and gas production on public parcels exceeds $4 billion annually.

“People are looking for someone to blame for the devastation,” says Liliana Castillo, deputy director of Climate Advocates Voces Unidas (CAVU), a Santa Fe-based environmental group. “That is completely understandable.” But a key cause of the blaze isn’t directly addressed in the report. But where does that climate change come from? “It’s driven by human beings exuding carbon to the atmosphere,” says Lucas Herndon, energy and policy director of Progress Now New Mexico. “And, unfortunately, in the state of New Mexico, the biggest contributor to that is the oil and gas industry.” [Uncontrolled Burning: The Role of Oil and Gas in New Mexico’s Historic Wildfires]

Clear the second growth ponderosa pine, restrict non-native cattle, conduct fuel treatments, restore aspen and other native hardwoods, build wildlife corridors, empower tribal nations like the Picuris Pueblo and Confederated Salish and Kootenay Tribes in Montana then approximate Pleistocene rewilding with bison and cervids.

Learn more at NPR.

ip photo: mixed pine, fir and aspen stand after the 2011 Las Conchas Fire.