Towards New Paradigms in Community and Ecosystem Empowerment and Renewal 

Our Path of Innovation:

We have been exploring different approaches to community and ecological renewal. The synthesis of these perspectives is essential because they are too often considered in isolation - whereas, in reality, they are intimately entwined. This work builds on decades of experience initiating and sustaining some of the highest-profile collaborative conservation projects on the planet. However, the paradigms that grounded this work are increasingly problematic for three reasons.

• First, social and ecological systems are transitioning so fast in an increasingly human-dominated world that traditional assumptions about continuity are no longer adequate - for dramatic events ranging from COVID to wildfire are increasingly the norm. So we have to develop durable approaches that harness nature’s dynamics as well as those of markets - rather than fighting them.

• Second, conservation and other forms of social action are increasingly a zero-sum game with more organizations chasing fewer dollars - when in reality, the only true organizational sustainability is by creating one’s own income streams that do not rely on donor dollars.

• Third, both economic development and ecological conservation represent paradigms that are increasingly problematic because they are based on assumptions of continual growth and endless resilience that no longer hold - if they ever did. Especially in a world of declining resources, new models are needed, and we use our work as a laboratory to develop new approaches that can be exported across the continent and beyond.

The most important aspect of engineering organizational durability, or what we call prosilience, is through sustaining a principle-based learning organization that is able to evolve and adapt in response to experience - rather than being rigidly hidebound to old paradigms of approaches that do not work or are not viable.

To this end, we began with a focus on regenerative strategies, using biomass from tree thinning to restore our forests as a means of creating well-paying jobs that would also reduce wildfire risk and improve watershed health. However, following the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history that burned over much of our region in the spring of 2022, we realized that we also need strategies that create markets for burned and other non-merchantable trees. This approach represents a dynamic coupling of new paradigms in conservation and economic development. This is occurring at two scales: an overall system focus on San Miguel County, New Mexico, and a general regional approach to landscape and community recovery, known as NM RIEZE.

Sangre de Cristo Mountain Landscape Recovery:

Through support from the Las Vegas New Mexico Community Foundation and others, we are collaborating with local and regional economic development organizations, stakeholders, and governments across the region and beyond, along with sophisticated ecological analysis, to develop a holistic, place-based approach to community and ecological renewal. Beginning with a nested design that leverages partners already active in the process and expanding outward, we have achieved significant buy-in from regional, county, and local leadership in building the process.

Towards a Regional Renewal Strategy:

In addition to an intensive cross-sector approach spanning more than a million acres in Mora and San Miguel Counties (New Mexico), building on dozens of community meetings, we are developing a regional economic development strategy focused on forest recovery to create a regenerative, circular economy. Through dozens of partners and a database of over 200 people, we have built the trust and social capital to have broad community and ecosystem-level benefits, including:

• Fire prevention and reduction (Over $6M in fire mitigation benefits annually)

• Help maintain and revive local and Indigenous communities (Without access to healthy forests, people will lose access to their lands and livelihoods – an incalculable loss.)

• Gross receipts tax increase in NM

• Local jobs and income enhancements (Even a single biochar plant and associated jobs in the woods can provide $2M annually in regional benefits)

• Increased tax base for counties (e.g., in Mora County, 1.7% of $2,000,000 = $34,000 annually)

• Enhanced agricultural, hunting, and fishing, and eco-tourism revenues 

• Watershed protection and enhanced water access for downstream irrigators

  The benefits of this integrated approach include:

• Additional opportunities for funding from public and private investment through sustainable ecosystem restoration and revitalization

• New markets for nonmerchantable timber and other forest products

• Increased harvesting capacity 

• Intelligent infrastructure and transportation logistics 

• Value streams for non-merchantable timber and biomass 

• Investment capital for all stages of the value chain 

• Blockchain, carbon markets, and other alternative valuation methods

• Coordinated ecosystem/watershed, landscape, and community recovery 

Regional Regeneration exemplifies what is possible when diverse individuals and organizations think, plan, and invest together. In addition to being an economic and ecological issue, this is a social justice issue, for without forest and watershed health, the whole system collapses. Centuries of Indigenous and Hispanio culture are at stake. While the income from multiple value streams can pay for the clearing of dead timber and the thinning of green wood, which, in turn, has immense importance to local people who, for centuries, have used our forests for firewood, grazing, hunting, and other traditional purposes. At the same time, forest thinning protects roads, power lines, and watersheds while improving the land’s ecological health. Local communities, state, and federal agencies will reap huge benefits if we unite as a thoughtful and engaged community.

As shown in the image above, the strategic creation of cleared patches that can be grazed can reduce fire spread, improve carbon and nutrient cycling, and enhance water flows, thereby creating additional income streams for local people by recreating the sorts of fire-adapted landscapes that were common in the past. We are collaborating with researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratories to use their supercomputers to model optimal configurations of cleared/grazing land, aiming to reducing fire spread and enhancing nutrient flux across large landscapes.

Monetizing Landscape Renewal Through Stacking Assets:

We have been working on developing a regenerative biomass-based system in the vicinity of Mora and San Miguel Counties, New Mexico. In partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratories and Dr. Chonggang Xu, as well as carbon and ecosystem benefit specialists Ben Adolph of Merge Impact and Ryan Letourneau of Grain Ecosystem, we are determining how biomass capture can mitigate wildfire impacts while reducing carbon emissions and improving forest and watershed health. However, the returns from any one strategy are thin and often unpredictable. So, maintaining a regenerative system requires, like a pile of pancakes, a stacking of social, ecological, and economic benefits to generate multiple streams of assets.

Pathways of Recovery:

Our process involves a two-pronged approach: Centralized and Diffuse Strategies. Each of these provides different opportunities with Centralized Strategies primarily focused on the development of biochar plants to optimize biochar production from burned and nonmerchantable timber. In this strategy, we are focused on the development of an ARTI (Advanced Renewable Technologies International) plant that can provide a substantial return within several years, with an IRR of 24.5 %.