Just outside of Coronado National Forest in southeastern Arizona, the mountaintop village of Summerhaven can breathe a sigh of relief. Thanks to the cooperation of the Forest Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the State of Arizona through shared stewardship, Summerhaven was able to avoid the devastation of the Bighorn Fire, which burned nearly 120,000 acres.

Broadly speaking, shared stewardship describes a framework where land managers commit to working together to solve problems that affect the entire landscape. In 2018, Coronado National Forest and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fort Apache Agency signed a four-year interagency agreement for shared stewardship projects that maintain connections between Native American tribes and their ancestral lands. Partners work together to remove overgrown forest from lands important to tribes for gathering foods and medicines for cultural purposes.

The Catalina-Rincon Fire Scape project was one of these shared stewardship projects, and aimed to restore forest where fire suppression had led to overgrowth. Too many trees can fuel larger wildfires, which pose an increased threat to homes, ranches, recreation sites and areas considered sacred to Native American tribes. Reducing the number of trees in overgrown areas also means forests will do a better job of bouncing back following wildfires.

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