Enchanted partnerships: in New Mexico, a congressman's idea becomes a Forest Service program that inspires collaboration and protects local forests - Communities

American Forests, Spring, 2003 by Bryan Foster

Sharfin tells me about Ray, a 20-year-old Hispanic who has worked for the Corps for two years. Ray was a bagger at a Taos supermarket before his mom told him about the Corps. He now works on fire fighting and fire-reduction thinning for the Bureau of Land Management.

We find a crew working at the Singing River Field Center, a foundation-funded camp that takes in local children for the summer to teach them about nature. Just south of the camp lie the remains of the 7525-acre Hondo Fire; after six years the front of the mountain is still a pincushion of burnt trees.

At Singing River, groups of 7- to 12-year-olds pair with Corps members. One group cuts small trees from around a cabin, another drags trees down to the main lodge by hand, a third then cuts those trunks into 6-foot lengths for fence poles.

"This is just a dent in reducing fire hazard," says crew leader James Porter, a bearded young man with a degree in geology. "But these children are learning forest thinning and how small trees can he turned into something useful."

I sit down with the Corps crew and campers for lunch. Eight-year-old Reyna looks at me from under her hard hat, toy sunglasses slipping off her face, her hands just reaching out of the sleeves of an old Army jacket.

How big are the trees you're cutting? I ask her. She makes a circle with her hands about as big as her face. How many will you cut today? Reyna holds up all 10 fingers. Why are you cutting the trees? I ask. "We're cutting trees to save the forest," she says as if it were a childhood rhyme.

Bryan Foster, author of the sustainable forestry book "Wild Logging." writes from Santa Fe. New Mexico.