In 2022, New Mexico’s luck ran out. For years, forests in neighboring states and across the West burned at unprecedented levels, while our landscapes remained largely intact. Then, in tragic and catastrophic fashion, one of the hottest and driest springs in recorded history gave rise to four of the state’s largest-ever wildfires.
While there are several underlying conditions that allowed these fires to flourish, the biggest culprit is our hotter, drier climate.
These wildfires shined a bright light on the state’s need to invest in resilience — in adapting communities to the climate’s “new normal” as we simultaneously chip away at the backlog of work needed to restore the health of our forests and watersheds. Yet, New Mexico lacks a source of dedicated, recurring funding for things like river restoration, forest and soil health, community resilience, or ensuring equitable access to the outdoors.
Other Western states like Colorado, Arizona, and even deep-red Wyoming committed significant state funds to ecological restoration work long ago. Meanwhile, New Mexico programs have had to rely on the boom-and-bust cycle of oil and gas revenues to fill the coffers and eke out sporadic appropriations when the state is flush.
Thankfully, this may soon change. The Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund — sponsored by bipartisan legislators Majority Leader Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, and Sen Steven Neville, R-Aztec, as Senate Bill 9 and championed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham — seeks to inject some certainty into the planning and funding of critical conservation projects. However, at the current proposed $100 million, the fund is far from the required balance to be truly self-sustaining and meet the needs of our communities in perpetuity. We need at least $350 million and here’s why.
SB 9 essentially would create a permanent trust fund for conservation with part of the state’s budget surplus — estimated to be nearly $3.6 billion this year — and use the interest and investment revenues to fund projects that improve ecological health.
The value of this investment goes beyond annual returns, however, as the majority will be used to leverage the abundance of federal money available — much of which has historically been left on the table because New Mexico could not come up with required matching funds.
For some of these programs, $1 in state money will return $3 in federal funding.
But this approach only works if the Legislature appropriates enough money for the fund revenues to meet demands. Projections by the Energy, Minerals, and Natural Resources Division indicate that anywhere from $12.5 to $20 million per year is necessary to make a dent in the backlog of forest restoration, river stewardship and soil health projects needed.
The current budget only proposes a fund large enough to provide $5 million per year. By increasing the initial seed investment to $350 million — less than one-tenth of the state’s surplus this year — we can better meet the projected need and begin the hard work needed to ensure a healthy environment for future generations.
The Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund is poised to ensure we have the resources we need to protect and preserve our natural resources, no matter what challenges we may face or when we may face them. By making the right investment right now, we can prioritize land and water stewardship throughout the state and increase community resilience to the dual threats of climate change and catastrophic wildfire — no longer leaving our livelihood to luck.
Jonathan Hayden is a resident of Santa Fe and the Western lands senior policy analyst with Western Resource Advocates, a regional nonprofit advocacy organization fighting climate change and its impacts to sustain the environment, economy, and people of the West.
