This summer, a small group of guests gathered outside at Trinchera to talk about wildfire with Judy Lopez, the Reserve’s Conservation and Sustainability Director. The conversation soon turned to water: how a fire’s effects can linger in streams long after the flames are out.

Across Trinchera’s 172,000 acres in Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Natural Resources team considers the whole watershed. Forest restoration can help more snow reach the ground beneath the trees. Farther downhill, protecting beavers helps sustain wetlands. The team watches how the land responds over time, knowing that some benefits of its work may take decades to emerge.

This three-part series follows that conversation into the field. We begin with the relationship between healthy forests and water, exploring the role fire has played in shaping the land. The final installment takes us from the alpine tundra to the San Luis Valley, where farms and communities depend on the same water that sustains wildlife upstream.

“The landscape is always teaching us,” Judy says. “Our job is to pay attention, keep learning, and leave it healthier than we found it.”

After a winter storm at Trinchera, sunlight catches the snow covering the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

As temperatures warm, the melting snow will eventually feed the Rio Grande, carrying water through Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and into Mexico. Along the way, it supports wildlife and supplies water to farms and communities.

Forests influence how much of that snow reaches the ground and how the meltwater moves downhill.

Looking Beyond the Stream

Judy Lopez, Trinchera’s Conservation and Sustainability Director, describes a watershed as “everything that influences how water moves across the landscape.”

High in the mountains, forests capture winter snow and regulate how it melts each spring. Farther down, meadows and wetlands store water and release it slowly through the growing season. Soils absorb and filter moisture before it reaches creeks and rivers.

Plants and wildlife depend on water moving through each part of this system. “None of these things works on its own,” Judy says. “They’re all connected.”

Trinchera lies within the Upper Rio Grande Basin, in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Water from the snowfields high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Reserve’s streams and wetlands flows toward the Rio Grande, replenishing the valley’s aquifers along the way. Work to protect these headwaters affects communities and wildlife far beyond Trinchera’s boundaries.

Trinchera’s conservation work considers how changes in the forests affect the streams and grasslands around them. Each decision takes the health of the whole watershed into account.

Forests Weren’t Always This Dense

For thousands of years, frequent, low-intensity fires moved through these mountain forests. They cleared young trees and brush while leaving large, fire-adapted ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs standing. Aspen grew alongside them, and the open forest gave grasses and wildflowers room to grow.

“It was part of how these forests stayed healthy,” Judy says of fire.

That changed over the past century. As wildfires were aggressively suppressed, the natural cycle was interrupted. Trees that once would have been thinned by regular fires survived, creating forests that are far denser than they evolved to be.

Today, trees in many stands compete for the same limited water, sunlight, and nutrients. That stress makes forests more vulnerable to drought, insects, disease, and the kind of high-intensity wildfires that are becoming increasingly common across the West.

Why Forest Health Matters for Water

Judy calls healthy forests “one of our most important forms of water infrastructure.”

In an overcrowded forest, dense tree canopies intercept snowfall before it reaches the ground. Trees compete for scarce moisture, leaving less water in the soil to recharge groundwater and feed streams throughout the year.

Severe wildfire can affect a watershed for decades. Without healthy vegetation to anchor the soil, heavy rains can wash ash and sediment into streams, while more water runs off instead of soaking in. Stream temperatures rise and fish habitat declines.

Restoring Natural Processes

At Trinchera, the Natural Resources team works to restore the processes that have sustained these forests for thousands of years, while adapting to a changing climate. “The 2002 drought never really lifted,” Judy says. “Now we are seeing aridification of the region, which changes the way water works its way through the landscape.”

Working alongside the U.S. Forest Service, the Colorado State Forest Service, hydrologists, wildlife biologists, and other researchers and conservation partners, Trinchera identifies areas where restoration treatments can have the greatest ecological benefit.

Selective thinning reduces competition among trees while preserving fire-adapted pines of different ages and sizes. The work encourages aspen to regenerate and native grasses and understory plants to return.

Judy describes the goal as restoring ecological function. As forests recover, more snow reaches the ground. Returning native plants improve wildlife habitat, while cooler, cleaner streams support life downstream.

Thinking in Generations

As forests grow and streams shift, the landscape’s capacity to support wildlife changes, along with the populations that live there. The team must account for those changes as the climate continues to affect the watershed.

“Good stewardship means monitoring key indicators of changes and adapting as we learn,” Judy explains. Trinchera and its sister conservation foundation, Trinchera Blanca Foundation, support long-term work with institutions including Yale School for the Environment. Researchers there study how land management on the Reserve can inform efforts to sustain Western forests and rangelands. “We’re really a living laboratory,” Judy says.

A forest restored today may be better able to withstand a wildfire decades from now, while an aspen grove may provide habitat for future generations of wildlife. The team continues to monitor these places as the benefits of restoration emerge.

In our next Field Note, Learning to Live with Fire, we look at how fire shaped these forests and what that history means for restoration at Trinchera.