In April 2022, the U.S. Forest Service formally announced its “Initial Landscape Investments” - high risk areas across the West where the agency and its partners believe that a major influx of funding and other resources can effectively reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Among those landscapes is the Enchanted Circle, a 1.5 million acre area that straddles the southern end of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains beginning at the New Mexico/Colorado border and extending south to the villages of Las Trampas and El Valle.

This 10-year effort seeks to signifcantly ramp up the pace and scale of forest restoration and hazardous fuels treatments while also promoting local industry and workforce development, and encouraging traditional uses of forest resources in northern New Mexico.

In Taos County, the Enchanted Circle effort dovetails into exisiting local collaborative groups such as the Taos Valley Watershed Coalition and Tres Rios Watershed Coalition, which have been jointly planning and implementing forest restoration work in the same area for nearly a decade. These collaborative groups will continue to serve as the forums where community members, local organiations, tribes and other governmental agencies determine how best to accomplish this work in order to promote the long-term ecoloical, cultural and economic health of our area.