Spring 2025

We are excited to announce an exciting hands-on opportunity. In June we will host a half-day workshop set in the heart of our piñon-juniper woodland. This interactive field experience will introduce you to the science and art of ecological regeneration—using simple, natural techniques to restore vitality to drought-stressed and erosion-prone landscapes.

Reviving the Wild: Hands-On Woodland Restoration in the Piñon-Juniper Ecosystem

Discover how to “read” the land and recognize key indicators of soil health, water flow, and vegetative patterns. Learn to design and build low-tech, low-impact restoration structures—like rock berms, brush weirs, and one-rock dams—that harness natural materials to slow runoff, capture moisture, reduce erosion, and foster resilient plant communities. Participants will come away with practical skills in land stewardship, along with an understanding of the ecological principles that underpin successful restoration in arid woodland ecosystems.

About the Instructor: Jan-Willem Jansens is the founder of Ecotone Landscape Planning, where he leads ecological restoration projects that integrate hands-on implementation with research and action planning. His work addresses the urgent challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change across the US Southwest, focusing on real-world solutions that build landscape resilience.

• Date: Friday, June 13th, 2025 (at SFBG)
• Time: 8:00 AM – 1:00 PM
• Cost: Adults $50/ Members $40

See our Events Calendar to learn more and register.

“Discovering the Diversity of Piñon Juniper”

Article republished with permission from Ecotone Landscape Planning, LLC.

Living in the Southwest, you will inevitably find yourself spending time in the various ecosystems dominated by piñon pines and juniper trees. This is not surprising because as a forest type these so-called “PJ” ecosystems make up about 55% of our forest lands and provide the ecological settings of many of our towns and villages. As a result, Ecotone’s work focuses on how to safely and enjoyably live in these ecosystems amidst the looming problems of drought, tree die off, erosion, wildfire, and flooding. We also work on making them attractive and productive for wildlife habitat, trails, scenic qualities, and harvestable products.

We either love our PJ or love to hate it. Some people are fond of the Southwestern landscape they grew up in or moved to with its woodlands and savannahs that hide so many secrets of wildlife, plants, mosses, and vividly colored rocks. Others loath it because the land may look eroded and uninhabitable, the trees do not adequately shelter us from the heat of the summer sun, or juniper pollen allergies make them miserable for much of March each year.

Yet, these ecosystems are remarkably important and diverse. They form the transition between the pine forests and grasslands of the Southwest. They have provided indigenous people and Hispanic communities the shelter and resources they needed for their historical settlements and agricultural systems. Our partner Jamie Tedesco, owner of Wood Sharks, LLC, says, “PJ is important to us for picnics, hiking, and hunting in relation to my family’s Hispanic and Taos Pueblo heritage.”

Former crew member and Truchas native Jessie Romero adds that PJ woodlands are sacred for all that they offer people. “From firewood we burn to warm our home to the wildlife we hunt and eat… and we get herbs and foods like piñon nuts.” The PJ forests also represent job opportunities for the Wood Sharks crew through woodland thinning contracts for ecological restoration that ensure healthy soil and good water supplies for the future. PJ ecosystems have, therefore, been cultural landscapes, shaped by centuries of people’s activities on the land.

There are several different kinds of PJ ecosystems that have strikingly different characteristics and opportunities for human use. On rocky plateaus and ridges above 7,000-7,500 feet, we often find what is called persistent woodland. This PJ ecosystem receives a fair amount of snow and can grow quite densely. It typically does not have much grass in the understory, and because grass is a typical “fire starter”, wildfire frequency is very low with fires occurring once in several hundreds of years. The low likelihood of wildfire combined with good wildlife habitat, an abundance of nuts and wood, and proximity to taller forest with many other resources gave these woodlands special significance for Native people. The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park and Bandelier National Monument, for example, are all in persistent woodland areas.

At elevations above 7,000 feet, we may also find a mosaic of PJ groves with patches of sagebrush or mountain mahogany in slight, moisture-holding depressions with patches of grass in between. These PJ shrublands also receive a fair amount of snow. Although good scientific data are still lacking, they probably have a fire frequency of several times a century.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 feet, the landscape is dominated by the PJ savannah type. This landscape has expanses of grass with many scattered piñons and junipers, often in small clumps amidst small or broad openings of grass. Precipitation in these ecosystems is dominated by seasonal rain with periods of significant drought in between; therefore, these savannahs would naturally experience frequent fire, probably once in two or three decades. However, due to the history of active livestock grazing and other human activities that removed much of the vegetation abundance the natural, frequent fire regime has in many places has been interrupted.

In recent years, Ecotone has studied the history of agroforestry (agriculture amidst trees) and silvopastoralism (grazing amidst trees) in PJ ecosystems as well as how a renewed agricultural purpose of these lands could heal and support their fraying ecosystem conditions. With our project partners, we are finding ways to better care for PJ ecosystems as productive landscapes.

One such partner is the Santa Fe Botanical Garden (SFBG), which recently opened a PJ savannah landscape example in the native plant collections. Linda Churchill, Director of Horticulture, explains that SFBG wants to help visitors “…understand and appreciate that this is, in fact, our ‘forest.’ Plants, animals and other life forms have evolved to thrive in this land of little rain and much sunshine, and all forms of life, even in death, are interdependent.”

PJ savannahs are quite biodiverse. According to Churchill, “Some of the important shrubs include the three-leaf sumac. This plant is one of the earliest to bloom; so, it attracts insects that are active in spring. Its seeds feed various animals including humans.” Churchill continues, “One of the crucially important as well as gorgeous PJ animal inhabitants is the piñon jay.”

This fascinating and social bird exclusively lives in a piñon pine ecosystem. She explains that each bird caches thousands of piñon seeds per season, and with each cache left uneaten it is essentially planting seeds for forest regeneration. Churchill notes, “The flocks of dozens of blue birds—sadly, once hundreds per flock—are also delightfully entertaining to watch and listen to.”

As we move south and east of Santa Fe below 6,000 feet, we typically find PJ grasslands. These ecosystems have small patches of juniper locally with some piñon and receive most of their water from occasional rainstorms. If left untouched, fire frequencies in these ecosystems are expected to have intervals of ten to twenty years between fires. Due to periodic droughts and fire risk, these ecosystems do not provide good human residential habitat, but they can be valuable for hunting and livestock grazing.

Because of intense use throughout history, many PJ ecosystems no longer show their complete ecological potential. In many places, the soil of PJ ecosystems is depleted and only shows gravel or mineral soil with scant grass cover and low plant species diversity. Erosion rates from wind and water are locally quite high, and many PJ ecosystems show rills and gullies. Lack of appropriate grazing or fire has caused the junipers and piñons to grow freely into the grassy openings. As a result, many ranchers and public land managers have been looking for ways to thin out overly dense PJ stands that form a fire hazard and limit the available forage for livestock and wildlife.

Linda Churchill suggests several practical ways that area residents can take care of our stressed PJ landscape. “Spend time through the seasons observing the systems. Caring about life, whether that’s a single individual or an entire biome, helps you to care for it,” she asserts. Some other actions are to support healthy uses of the woodland such as picking and eating piñon pine seeds, deeply studying PJ ecosystems, harvesting moderate amounts of wood for personal use, participating in erosion control workshops, and reducing the threat of destructive fire by pruning and removing trees on our properties.