By Andy Hawk

As we have all recently witnessed, it is never too soon to discuss wildfire preparedness and mitigation. Whether it is through one of the regional forest collaboratives, a home ignition zone evaluation, or a planning meeting with an HOA, living in one of the Nations’ Priority Firesheds takes a collaborative approach. Although it is only February, please be certain the extensive networks of governmental officials, scientists, citizens, educators, and fire professionals are already executing plans which have been developed via community processes over many years.

Local government staff, US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management fire professionals, fire mitigation contractors, consulting foresters, wildlife scientists, and education organizations such as San Juan Mountains Association (SJMA) gather around a collaborative table monthly discussing and planning for the inevitable threat our communities, ranchers, and land managers face when a fire has grown beyond healthy and beneficial for the landscape into something catastrophic.

One of SJMA’s three key tenets is “Learn.” We must learn from subject matter experts and experienced professionals before we can then, in turn, educate others. Southwest Colorado is fortunate to have well-established groups of diverse stakeholders such as the 4-Rivers Resilient
Forest Collaborative, known locally as “4-Rivers,” in La Plata and San Juan counties as well as the Dolores Watershed Collaborative in Montezuma County to provide such a valuable information sharing and learning environment.

SJMA’s role at these community tables is to both learn and to educate, which is a very welcome role indeed. We take project scoping documents from National Forest planning endeavors to our teams of dedicated staff and volunteers, helping them understand what is happening across the region. Our education team takes the evolving realm of fire ecology and fire adaptation into the outdoor classrooms and experiential labs in which regional kids thrive. We amplify the voices of organizations such as Mountain Studies Institute, Wildfire Adapted Partnership, the Wildfire and Watershed Protection Fund, Durango Fire Protection District, the La Plata County Wildfire Information Center, and many others so our community has access to as much information as possible. Our network of volunteers and Forest Ambassadors can then take these learnings to the growing numbers of visitors who are here to escape the heat of home, bag a peak on the
list, spend an unforgettable afternoon sitting in solitude while absorbing the expanse of a flower filled meadow or connecting a young child to our precious outdoor resources.

This late winter and early spring, in a year when current snow water equivalents are not promising, I encourage you to take advantage of the fire planning, fire mitigation, fire preparedness, and forest health resources which have been developed by our community over a decade or more. Fire is in the bones and bedrock of our region, it is our job to be educated and prepared.

Andy Hawk is the Associate Director of SJMA, he takes delight in sharing stories of a life lived thus far up and down the spine of the country.