Fire, water, jobs.
Northern New Mexico.
Fire and drought are breaking this landscape.
Fire
Decades of fire suppression and inadequate forest management have left many forests unnaturally dense and increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic wildfire. Yet the greatest and most lasting damage often comes after the flames are gone, when exposed soils wash away, watersheds deteriorate, and landscapes lose their capacity to recover. An inch of forest soil can take more than a thousand years to form, yet it can be lost in a single intense rainstorm following a fire.
Water
The Sangre de Cristo Mountains are the headwaters of three major river systems: the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Canadian. Together, these watersheds sustain communities, agriculture, and economies across New Mexico and far beyond its borders. Yet decades of forest degradation, increasing wildfire risk, and prolonged drought have undermined their capacity to capture, store, and gradually release water. The consequences are increasingly apparent. Parts of the Rio Grande now run dry during the summer, while communities throughout the region face growing uncertainty over water supplies. Our long-term goal is to restore the health and function of these watersheds, improving water security, reducing wildfire and flood risks, and helping New Mexico meet its downstream water obligations, including interstate compacts and international agreements.
Equally important, much of the work needed to restore these landscapes can be carried out by the communities that depend on them. Forest thinning, watershed restoration, improved grazing, and biomass processing can support local crews, cooperatives, and businesses. In Raton, for example, we envision a regional tech center for processing wood and other biomass into biochar and related products. Rather than exporting raw materials and relying on outside contractors, our goal is to keep more of the jobs, investment, and economic benefits within the region, creating an economy in which restoring the landscape also helps sustain the communities that steward it.
The cost of the status quo runs in the billions of dollars in damage and lost opportunities.
The 2022 Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon Fire alone burned more than 340,000 acres in northern New Mexico, with the federal government committing more than $4 billion to compensate affected communities and landowners. And the costs extend far beyond the areas that burn. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains supply water to the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Canadian river systems, supporting farms, cities, and communities across several states. What happens in these mountain watersheds affects water supplies, flood risks, and economic security hundreds of miles downstream. Investing in their restoration is not simply an environmental priority, but a way to avoid far greater costs in the future and can jump-start the renewal of a whole region.
Beyond extraction to renewal.
New Mexico receives billions of dollars annually from oil and gas production in the Permian Basin, yet faces mounting costs from wildfire, flooding, declining water supplies, and the deterioration of its forests and watersheds. The Sangre de Cristo Mountains feed three major river systems—the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Canadian—that sustain communities, agriculture, and industry across New Mexico and neighboring states. The State Investment Council already converts revenues from finite oil and gas reserves into lasting financial wealth for future generations. What if we applied the same thinking to restoring the natural systems on which the state’s long-term prosperity depends? Investing a portion of today’s mineral wealth in healthier forests, productive watersheds, and sustainable rural economies could create benefits that continue long after oil and gas production declines. Our preliminary analysis suggests that restoring approximately one million acres of the Sangre de Cristo landscape could generate more than $2.2 billion in economic and environmental benefits over ten years, including an estimated $690 million in avoided wildfire losses and $368 million in watershed benefits. That represents more than $100 million annually from these two sources alone, with additional benefits from agricultural productivity, rural employment, carbon storage, and ecological recovery. The potential value could be considerably greater when improvements to the Rio Grande, Pecos, and Canadian river systems are considered, particularly the benefits of more reliable water supplies, reduced sedimentation, and protection of downstream infrastructure. For perspective, the 2022 Hermits Peak–Calf Canyon Fire alone resulted in an estimated $5 billion in potential federal liabilities. While our restoration estimates remain preliminary and require independent verification, they suggest that investing in landscape recovery could avoid substantial future costs while generating economic and environmental benefits for generations.
The way back is known.
None of this depends on unproven technology. We build on decades of forest restoration and wildfire mitigation work pioneered by New Mexico State Forestry and others, combining selective thinning, watershed restoration, and managed grazing with new opportunities to put the resulting biomass to productive use. Rather than leaving low-value wood and slash to decay or be burned, we can convert much of it into biochar through controlled heating with limited oxygen. This produces a stable form of carbon that can improve soil structure, water retention, and nutrient availability, while also providing materials for filtration and other industrial uses. The heat generated during production can be recovered for energy, creating additional value from material that would otherwise be treated as waste. By linking these established practices, we can reduce wildfire risk, restore watershed function, and create local industries that help finance continued restoration.
The carbon expands landscape health while providing new markets.
Biochar is one part of a larger process of restoring the landscape and putting the materials recovered from that work to productive use. Applied where appropriate, biochar can improve soil structure, water retention, and nutrient availability, helping degraded soils recover and supporting the return of more productive vegetation. Combined with forest thinning, watershed repair, and managed grazing, these improvements can help restore the natural processes that regulate water, sustain wildlife habitat, and reduce the severity of future fires. Some of the biochar returns to the landscape, while other portions become agricultural soil amendments or are further processed into filtration materials for municipal water systems. As forests and grasslands recover, habitat for elk and other wildlife improves, while downstream farms and communities benefit from reduced erosion, cleaner water, and potentially more reliable seasonal flows. These benefits also create opportunities for new forms of investment, with municipalities, insurers, agricultural businesses, and corporate buyers helping finance restoration in return for measurable improvements in the services they depend on. The larger opportunity is to connect the work of restoring the mountain with the economic benefits it generates throughout the watershed, so that value created downstream helps sustain the communities and landowners doing the work upstream.
What we put together.
Restoring these landscapes takes more than crews, equipment, and good ecological science. It requires a financial and organizational system capable of supporting the work through the years when restoration costs exceed the revenues it generates, while recognizing that ecological recovery follows its own timetable rather than a conventional investment schedule. Our approach brings together transitional public and private capital, long-term contracts for the products and benefits of restoration, and insurance that addresses the real risks of wildfire, flooding, and interruptions to operations. Equally important is a shared system for measuring ecological conditions, tracking work and costs, and verifying results so that investment decisions can respond to what is actually happening on the ground. As forests, soils, and watersheds recover, risks decline, new sources of revenue emerge, and early financial support can gradually give way to commercial investment and locally sustained operations. The objective is not simply to finance a series of restoration projects, but to establish a regional system in which ecological recovery, economic activity, and finance evolve together, with each reinforcing the others over time.
The capital stack
First-loss transition capital carries the early years, when the work is underway but nothing is producing yet. A long-term bond refinances it once the land is productive. Institutional capital takes the durable position after that. Each layer is sized so the early risk sits with the parties built to hold it.
The risk tower
A parametric insurance tower protects the project against the perils that actually threaten this landscape: fire, drought, and the loss of water. We do not just insure against them. The work on the ground reduces them, and lower risk is what makes insuring a whole landscape possible in the first place.
The software
LandStack runs the field operations, the logistics, and the underwriting as one system, so every party financing the work is reading the same ground truth at the same time.
Measurement and verification
Every intervention and its effect on the land is measured continuously, before the farm gate, by our partner Merge Impact: from the thinning crew through the biochar to the water held in the soil.
Scenario modeling
Before any capital commits, we run the landscape forward under different fire, water, and market conditions, so the people putting money in see the range they are stepping into, not a single hopeful line.
Together, these elements keep financing, people, and operations aligned with the pace of restoration across the landscape.
See LandStack
Ecology, and relationships, across cultures.
Restoring landscapes is as much about people and relationships as it is about ecology. Our chief scientist Dr. Charles Curtin has spent more than three decades working across large landscapes and seascapes, including the Malpai Borderlands, Blackfoot Challenge, and Downeast Initiative, bringing together ranchers, fishermen, landowners, government agencies, scientists, and communities with different interests and perspectives to find common ground and work toward shared goals. The same principles apply here in northern New Mexico, where land grants, acequias, Pueblo communities, and ranching families have sustained relationships with the land for centuries. Lasting restoration must build on that knowledge and history, respecting local traditions and decision-making while creating new opportunities for communities to shape and benefit from the recovery of their landscapes.
One table.
A regional recovery strategy brings together local communities, landowners, counties, state agencies, insurers, and corporate buyers in a regional partnership that links those who steward the land with those who benefit from its recovery. Rather than simply paying for damage after a wildfire or flood, the partnership invests in reducing risks at their source, restoring the forests, grasslands, and watersheds on which the larger region depends. Sovereign Land helps organize the financing, operations, and long-term agreements, but takes no ownership interest, title, or lien on the land. Land ownership and decisions about its future remain with local communities and landowners, including the land grants, acequias, Pueblo communities, and ranching families whose relationships with these landscapes extend back centuries. Just as important, those who have sustained and cared for the land must share in the economic benefits of its recovery, creating lasting opportunities for local livelihoods rather than transferring wealth and control elsewhere.
We are assembling the capital to break ground across the first sites.
If you invest in this kind of infrastructure, build it, or govern the land it serves, we should talk.
Talk to us.