By Tracy Farley, Office of Communication, USDA Forest Service
Benedictine monks at Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery answer many calls – the call to serve God and their faith, the call to their nightly vesper’s service and even the call to reduce wildfire risk in their community near the Gila National Forest in western New Mexico. In fact, they are leading an effort to bring Silver City community members together around reducing risk from wildfire.
The founder of Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, Father Cyprian Rodriguez, originally from the Midwest, came back to the United States from France in 1988 seeking a place of solitude to begin a monastery. After searching for more than two years he found and purchased this forested land near Silver City, N.M.
“When we first came here, everything was overgrown. It’s part of the nature of the Benedictine order to restore. We started with 20 acres, and now we have about 600 acres,” said Brother Lawrence, a monk living at the monastery.
Between impacts from early settlers and historic mining operations, the forest on the monastery land was in bad shape. The overgrown conditions were bad for wildlife and presented a fire hazard for the forest, monastery and community.
“There’s been efforts to restore the forest by bringing in species of trees that now have overtaken and become too dense,” said Brother Santiago “Perhaps this is the situation for us, but it’s the same for the entire forest, where fire suppression for years has built up the ground fuels. Now, when a fire crew tries to suppress a fire, it’s too much. It’s out of control.”
Illustrating Santiago’s point, the massive Whitewater Baldy Fire that burned in 2012 left fire scars on the forest and impacted the Monastery with long-lasting smoke. This motivated them to expand their fuel reduction efforts around the perimeter of the monastery.
“We’re re-managing how we address the forest and its health by using fire as a tool, not just as a destructive element. That’s a very delicate case and it just can’t be done randomly,” said Santiago. “It requires that we’re all on the same page working together because it involves everyone.”
The Monastery has been one of the champions for the Gila Landscape Collaborative, which formed roughly 10 years ago to bring the community together with a focus on the Gila National Forest.
“I have discovered a lot about how partnership is very important in order to maintain an ecosystem and battle against devastating fire,” said Brother Santiago. “That word partnership is the key word, right? A society is made up of parts of members. And the parts are not greater than the whole. we as Benedictines know we’re part of the greater whole. Our part is primarily spiritual, but that carries on to everything else we do in the material realm.
“The Monastery helped us get ‘buy-in’ from the community to do Firewise work on and adjacent to landowners’ properties and to teach them the importance of fire hardening around their homes by thinning and clearing brush,” said Daniel London, Fuels Planner on the Silver City Ranger District, Gila National Forest.
Firewise is a program led by the National Fire Protection Association in conjunction with state and federal forest management agencies that provides simple steps for homeowners to make homes safer from fire embers and radiant heat.
As the program gained momentum in the community, the partnership showed community members what successful fuels work looks like on the ground, and why it’s valuable to the whole community.
“The Benedictines have unique perspectives, values, and insights they bring to the table,” said Daniel. “It’s also valuable to have someone outside the government stressing the importance of this work. They live here. They have a special connection to it. They’re some of the best people to share this important message.”
The Forest Service has the personnel, experience, knowledge and tools to do their part in wildfire prevention on agency-managed lands. But it takes whole communities to prevent wildfires across the entire landscape – where land is managed by many different people and organizations.
“Management is something that’s been given to man by God. In Genesis, man is put as a steward over nature. So, we need to go out there and do our part in allowing the ecosystem to grow and to flourish.” said Lawrence.
“It’s a real crisis. It’s not pretend,” said Santiago. “In Latin we say, ‘ignis numquam dicit, ‘satis’. Fire never says, ‘enough.’ If it’s got fuel and oxygen, it’s going to keep burning.”
Reprinted with permission of the U.S. Forest Service.
