Herald Staff Report
The San Juan National Forest recently received a Regional Forester’s Honor Award from the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region in Denver for strengthening communities, connecting people to the outdoors and ensuring forests deliver needed values, uses, products and services.
The Regional Forester’s Award for “Delivering Benefits to the Public” includes recognition for:
Working with the San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership to complete fuels reduction and biomass removal on national forest lands adjacent to private lands near Pagosa Springs through small-business contractors that employ local residents.Providing public education through Firewise of Southwest Colorado and Mountain Studies Institute.Reducing hazardous fuels on additional national forest acreage and private lands near Pagosa Springs in cooperation with the Natural Resources Conservation Service and other partners.Completing 6,000 acres of prescribed burning on federal, private and state lands across the Fosset Gulch landscape near Bayfield.Replanting native seedlings on several thousand acres of the 2002 Missionary Ridge fire scar with funding from the National Forest Foundation. Working to help protect the watersheds of the San Juan, Chama and Rio Grande rivers, which supply water to 1 million people in the region, through partnerships with the Rio Grande and Carson national forests, Bureau of Land Management, San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership, Chama Peak Land Alliance, Nature Conservancy, Natural Resource Conservation Service, Colorado State Forest Service, New Mexico Forest Service and Southern Ute Agency.Working with the Dolores Watershed and Resilient Forest Collaborative and Montezuma Firewise Chapter to create more resilient fire-adapted landscapes across jurisdictional boundaries to protect water resources of the Greater Dolores River Watershed. Contracting with local businesses to install a final confluence barrier on Hermosa Creek to bring the total occupied Colorado River Cutthroat Trout habitat in the Hermosa Special Management Area to 23 miles, the largest contiguous habitat in the entire Colorado River drainage basin.For more information, visit www.fs.usda.gov/sanjuan.
