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. Read part one here.

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

 

 

Visitors walking through Trinchera’s forests often ask the same question.

“Why are the trees spaced out here and really closely packed over there?”

The team has thinned the more open stand and has yet to treat the denser area. Sunlight reaches native grasses beneath mature ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs. Trees of different ages and sizes grow among the seedlings. Young aspens are beginning to fill small openings, while birds move between the trees.

Thinning helps restore the spacing that allowed these forests to develop with fire.

“These forests evolved with space between the trees that allowed a variety of plant species to flourish,” says Judy Lopez, Trinchera’s Conservation and Sustainability Director.

 

Fire Was Part of the System

For thousands of years, fire moved across these mountains. Lightning ignited some fires. Indigenous peoples intentionally set others to improve wildlife habitat and encourage new plant growth, helping keep forests healthy. Most of those fires stayed low to the ground, clearing young trees and brush. They returned nutrients to the soil while leaving the largest, most fire-resistant trees standing.

Regular, low-intensity fires helped these forests remain resilient. Mature ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs thrived alongside grasses, wildflowers, and aspen, giving wildlife a range of habitats.

When We Took Fire Away

During the last century, fire suppression became widespread across the American West. It protected communities and saved lives. Over time, it also interrupted a process that had shaped these forests for thousands of years.

Without frequent fire, young trees filled the spaces between older pines, increasing competition for water as the forests became denser. Dead wood accumulated on the forest floor, and today’s forests often contain far more fuel than they once did.

That accumulated fuel can feed fires that reach the tree canopy and spread quickly from hillside to hillside. These fires can burn hotter and for longer than the low-intensity fires that once moved through the understory.

 

Fire and Water

When high-intensity wildfire burns through an overcrowded forest, its effects on water can continue for years. Without healthy vegetation to anchor the soil, heavy rains wash ash and sediment into streams. More water runs off, leaving less to soak into the ground. Fish habitat declines, and recovering forests may take decades to regain their ecological function.

“Healthy forests protect streams and riparian areas,” Judy says. “That’s why restoring forests is really about restoring the entire watershed.”

Restoration helps more snow reach the ground and improves soil moisture. It supports wildlife habitat as the forest recovers, helping streams stay cooler and cleaner.

 

Restoring Resilience

At Trinchera, the team studies how individual forests have changed over time, working alongside the U.S. Forest Service, the Colorado State Forest Service, researchers, and other conservation partners. Selective thinning can reduce competition while preserving large, fire-adapted trees. Other areas may benefit from mastication to reduce fuels. Carefully managed prescribed fire may eventually help restore fire’s role in the forest.

Judy says the team asks, “What does this landscape need to become more resilient?” The answer differs from one hillside to the next.

 

Thinking Beyond the Next Fire

Wildfire will always be part of life in the Rocky Mountains. Trinchera’s goal is to help forests withstand it while retaining the processes that sustain them. Restoration takes time, and the team measures the land’s response over decades.

In the open spaces visitors notice, sunlight reaches grasses and forbs growing alongside shrubs. Birds move between the trees as the understory returns.

For Judy, the measure of a healthy forest is the life it supports and its ability to withstand the next fire.

Our final Field Note, Thinking Like a Watershed, follows the water from the alpine tundra to the San Luis Valley, where communities depend on the same system as the wildlife upstream.