Photo: USFS

Officials from the Mountainair Ranger District of the Cibola National Forest have released the plan for the Tajique Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) Project. The HFRA of 2003 (Public Law 108-148) is a highly controversial statute passed by Congress and signed by President Bush in a state of hysteria following the shocking wildfires in southern California late in the summer of 2003.

About the Tajique Watershed Restoration HFRA Project

The Tajique Project is only the third time the Forest Service has used the new Healthy Forest Restoration Act in New Mexico and residents contend it is being driven more by economics rather than ecological conditions.

What is being proposed: 17,000 acres of thinning and prescribed burning facilitated by the construction of 28 miles of new road in a planning area already suffering the effects of 135 miles of existing roads. Read the Tajique Watershed Restoration HFRA Project Outline and the Citizens Alternative

Because the Bush Administration law is so contentious a coalition of homeowners and environmental groups asked the Cibola National Forest to consider an alternative proposal to restore forests in the Manzano Mountains. The Citizen's  Alternative Proposal would not require logging or road building.  The citizen's alternative was largely ignored by the Forest Service.

Results of Similar Forest Service "Thinning" Projects Near Tajique

Photos of thinning and logging debris - fuel for more wildfires - left by a recent U.S. Forest Service thinning project 10 miles south of the planned Tajique thinning area.