How future trees of New Mexico were almost destroyed by wildfires -

SANTA FE, N.M. — Saving tree seedlings critical to restoring forests in the Southwest from the fires ripping through northern New Mexico took four trucks and three trailers — and two trips into a wildfire evacuation zone.

The New Mexico State University John T. Harrington Forestry Research Center, which sits in the verdant Mora River valley in northern New Mexico’s mountains among scattered rural communities, houses the state’s only facility for growing tree seedlings and one of the Southwest’s only seed banks. As climate change fuels hotter, drier conditions that make it tough for seeds to survive and larger wildfires leave fewer pockets of trees from which a forest could regenerate, both resources play an increasing role in ensuring the Southwest’s forests make it into the next century.

But last week, the seeds and young trees themselves were in peril when the Calf Canyon Fire, New Mexico’s second largest fire on record, closed in on the center. So a team of university staffers and state employees sprang into action to save all they could from the flames, which have now burned 259,810 acres and are only 33 percent contained.

“This is a fire where both our current and future forests are threatened,” said Collin Haffey, New Mexico’s forest and watershed health coordinator and statewide leader for reforestation strategy. “The nursery in Mora and the tree seedlings are a critical resource that we’ll need to start recovering from these fires.”

In greenhouses at the center, seeds sprout into small trees that, when they’re a few inches tall, will be planted throughout the region, including in wildfire scars. A walk-in freezer in the facility also stores millions of seeds in plastic bags and bins, a kind of insurance policy for regrowing future forests.

Strong winds were driving erratic fire behavior and pushing flames across containment lines, particularly on the wildfire’s southern and northern perimeters, where the forestry center sits.

Faced with pending orders to evacuate on May 1, Owen Burney, the research center’s supervisor, mapped out priorities: See his staff moved to safety, save the seed bank, and then see about the seedlings. His staff dispersed.

The bank of more than 3 million seeds for 35 species — without which, he said, there’s no seedling program — moved with the nursery manager, Tammy Parsons, to freezers in the garage at her home near Las Vegas, N.M., about 30 miles south. Then, the wind turned, pushing the fire toward Las Vegas.

As neighborhoods on the city’s western edge were evacuated, Leslie Edgar, associate dean and director of the agricultural experiment station with New Mexico State University, drove the seed bank even farther south, to a university facility near Albuquerque. Then, she began the work of persuading fire officials to let Burney back into Mora Valley, where roadblocks barred reentry after evacuations, to rescue the seedlings, which meant turning around and driving hours north again through New Mexico to wait for a go-ahead. When they asked her to put a monetary value on the potential loss, Edgar said, “I started with ‘priceless.’”

On May 3, while Burney was running a meeting about efforts to ramp up reforestation efforts, Edgar began repeatedly calling. They’d been granted a window to fetch seedlings, and the time to go was now.

Burney and Haffey coordinated a dozen people in two teams with trucks and trailers and headed toward Mora. Smoke towered over the surrounding peaks, and the town was eerie and quiet, said Edgar. The wildfire had moved through the valley once before and hovered just beyond a ridgeline.

Burney had left the seedlings with a battery-powered watering system, and the doors to the greenhouse were open to keep them from overheating. But power had been cut to the town, and with it went the water supply. The longer the seedlings had been without water, the less chance any had of surviving. A staff member who lives a five-minute walk from the center had also reported seeing flames on the hillside behind the greenhouses.

“We had no idea what we were driving up into,’” Burney said. “It could have just been like, ‘Well, we’re turning around.’ ”

But he found the Douglas fir, blue spruce, Engelmann spruce, aspen, and ponderosa pine seedlings, all just inches high, in a greenhouse still spotted with puddles from recent watering.

His team hauled seedlings in racks about the size of a cafeteria tray to trailers. Burney’s group left with about 25,000 seedlings before Haffey’s arrived, unable to know whether they had made it through the roadblocks. The fire burned cell signal towers, so communication was impossible. Haffey’s team arrived just a few minutes after Burney’s pulled away and spent two hours loading another 20,000 seedlings into their trailer while a lookout watched the wind and wildfire pick up.

“Pulling out onto the pavement, we heard the emergency alert over the radio that anybody still in Mora needs to get out now,” Haffey said. A string of law enforcement vehicles drove by, lights and sirens going.

Burney was able to return on May 5 for 30,000 more seedlings, all of which moved into a recently emptied state forestry greenhouse in Santa Fe. Eventually, some will move into burn scars in Colorado and New Mexico.

They retrieved most of the current crop of about 95,000, Burney said, but that isn’t even a third of the center’s annual capacity. Without access to their growing facilities, they can’t plant more. Instruments and resources for ongoing research, much of which aids in learning how to improve reforestation efforts, were also left behind.

“If we don’t have that research in play, we’re losing a lot more than just the trees,” Burney said.

Where massive fires burn, it’s tough for trees to regenerate on their own, said Matthew Hurteau, a University of New Mexico professor who studies the effects of wildfires and climate change on Southwestern forests. Seeds spread only so far from the few remaining live trees, which can leave some burned areas to convert to shrub land. It’s also tougher for seedlings to establish than for mature trees to survive, he added, and there’s no time to waste in helping them do so.

“We’ve got a fairly narrow window over the next 10 to 20 years where we’re going to be able to have higher success planting tree seedlings in the southwestern U.S. than we will two decades from now because it’s going to be even hotter and drier,” said Hurteau, who works with Burney to secure seedlings for his own research. Some of the saved seedlings will be planted for a study he has underway on how to steer reforestation efforts with a changing climate in mind.

“If we’d lost this year’s crop because the reforestation center burnt down, we’d be in a real tough position,” Hurteau said.

The U.S. Forest Service also grows seedlings for national forest lands, but the Harrington Center’s seedlings are more diversely dispersed to state, tribal and private landowners, as well as to research projects. Even without the Harrington Center offline, nurseries have been unable to keep up with demand, particularly as global reforestation goals grow, according to a 2021 paper that Hurteau and Burney co-wrote.

If the center burns, they will rebuild, Edgar said, but, “We don’t need a year or two setback.”

The Mora area remains evacuated. This week, fire crews have faced strong winds and warm, dry conditions that have quickly spread the fire. Fire conditions generally persist in New Mexico until the monsoon season brings routine rainstorms in early July. If those storms are weak this summer, one fire official cautioned, the blaze could burn until snow falls, potentially doubling or tripling in size.

Already, work is underway to expand the seed bank in New Mexico and assess where and how to add growing capacity. That could include building greenhouses in areas that are less prone to wildfires. Even amid the fire, Burney finalized a $79 million proposal for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Climate-Smart Commodities program to add plant nurseries in the state. To him, the fire drives home the urgency of the work and the need to expand the effort so it’s bigger than what a few trailers can hold.

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