{"id":53586,"date":"2020-06-03T19:12:41","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T01:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/100-cords-of-firewood-provided-to-navajos-and-hopi\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:05:04","slug":"100-cords-of-firewood-provided-to-navajos-and-hopi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/100-cords-of-firewood-provided-to-navajos-and-hopi\/","title":{"rendered":"100 cords of firewood provided to Navajos and Hopi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Forest
Forest thinning in Northern Arizona is helping to provide firewood for Navajo and Hopi communities. The need for firewood is the result of COVID-19 crisis restricting travel and recent closure of a coal mine previously relied on for cooking and heating fuel.<\/span>Courtesy Joe Dirt Excavating<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The closure of the Black Mesa coal mine in 2019 has increased the demand for firewood for the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe.<\/p>\n

More than 100 cords of wood recently were donated to tribal members as part of a cooperative effort between the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, U.S. Forest Service, private and nonprofit companies.<\/p>\n

The wood is used for cooking and heating where border closures from the COVID-19 pandemic have made it difficult for tribal members to collect wood.<\/p>\n

The wood comes from forest thinning projects of the Four Forest Restoration Initiative<\/a> and National Forest Foundation\u2019s Northern Arizona Forest Fund<\/a>. Forests are thinned to help restore forests and reduce the risk of severe wildfire.<\/p>\n

\u201cNorthern Arizona has an overabundance of low-value, small-diameter trees that tribes can use,\u201d said a statement from the Lockett Meadow Fuelwood Project, which provided the firewood.<\/p>\n

Lin Sue Cooney, spokeswoman of the Northern Arizona Forest Fund added that an unhealthy forest can threaten communities, the economy and the water supply.<\/p>\n

Henry Provencio, coordinator with the U.S. Forest Service\u2019s Four Forest Restoration Initiative in Flagstaff, called it a \u201cwin-win\u201d situation.<\/p>\n

Trent Teegerstrom, director of Tribal Extension for the University of Arizona, work out logistics along with Jeanne Stevens, USFS Tribal Relations Specialist, and tribal extension agents Susan Sekaquaptewa (Hopi) and Grey Farrell Jr.(Navajo). Native Waters on Arid Lands<\/a> also joined the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re looking at a longer-term plan for making this program sustainable in the long run,\u201d Teegerstrom said in a news release.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to scale up these approaches, providing more sustainable opportunities to meet tribal fuelwood needs, while also growing our own capacity to implement forest and watershed restoration projects on Forest Service lands,\u201d said Rebecca Davidson, director of the Southern Rockies Field Program for National Forest Foundation.<\/p>\n

The group is looking for funding and hopes to include wood from New Mexico in collaboration with Cooperative Extension agents Nathan Notah and Kristy Kinlicheenie of Window Rock, and Alexandra Carlisle of Shiprock.<\/p>\n

Wood has been delivered by Joe Dirt Excavating, with funding from the National Forest Foundation and discretionary funds from University of Arizona Tribal Extension programs.<\/p>\n

Go to www.fs.usda.gov\/4FRI<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hopis receive wood needed for cooking, heat<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,2487,13,28,1655,29,549],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-53586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-forestry-and-timber","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-navajo-nation","tag-newsletter","tag-united-states-forest-service"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88320,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53586\/revisions\/88320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53586"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=53586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}