Coconino restoration project supports Wood for Life partnership, benefits local tribes

Wood for Life Tribal crew gathering wood on Hart Prairie restoration project. USDA Forest Service photo.

ARIZONA—The Coconino National Forest will contribute firewood from the ongoing Hart Prairie meadow restoration project to local tribes as part of the second annual Wood for Life partnership.

More than 20 organizations constitute the Wood for Life partnership, which provides local tribes with sustainable firewood sourced from forest restoration projects.

The project is conducted in conjunction with the National Forest Foundation, local tribal governments and communities, and Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps.

In addition to providing firewood to communities, the Wood for Life partnership also clears forest areas of dead wood that could fuel future wildfires and strengthens relationships between local agencies and organizations.

More than 300 cords of wood in Hart Prairie will be donated to the Hopi and Navajo tribes, as well as other vulnerable indigenous populations.

The Hart Prairie restoration project’s goal is to remove young and fast-growing conifers that are encroaching into the meadow due to a lack of competition. Fire suppression and overgrazing—a result of European settlement around Hart Prairie—have exacerbated this encroachment and had negative effects on both meadow-dependent species and ground water retention.

The objective of meadow restoration is to bring tree density, size and arrangement back to what it was pre-settlement. This process is conducted using pre-settlement evidence—such as old trees, dead trees, stumps and logs—as guidance.

The Hart Prairie project will follow the Coconino’s old tree implementation plan to restore the area while still retaining as much old forest structure across the landscape.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from USDA Forest Service. Published by the USDA Forest Service and, as a work of the United States government, in the public domain; pictures credited elsewhere are left out.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.