As a safeguard against wildfires, crews for the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico started to thin out the forest in certain areas of Rendija Canyon, lab officials announced last week.
The Rendija Canyon Wildland Fire Fuels Reduction and Defensible Space Project, which should be finished in November, will create a “fuel break” across 135 acres of DOE-owned land near Rendija Canyon Road, according to the Sept. 6 press release.
“The thinning will consist of removing pre-selected vegetation, brush, down woody material and other accelerants in a mosaic pattern,” Rich Nieto, who leads the lab’s emergency management division, said in the release. The end result will be a more open landscape that should curb the intense heat for firefighters, helping them to establish a foothold to fight a wildfire, Nieto said.
The affected area includes the Los Alamos Sportsmen’s Club range area, the powerline utility corridor and an area south of the archery range in the section north of Barranca Mesa, according to the release.
Los Alamos workers started planning the project, and marking some vegetation for removal earlier this year.
Rendija Canyon is a popular hiking area in Los Alamos County.
Over the weekend a 521-acre fire was burning around the Carson National Forest, the Los Alamos Reporter said in a Sunday article.
The national forest is more than 60 miles west of the Los Alamos County Municipal Building. In May of 2022, there were more than 1,000 firefighters battling the Cerro Pelado wildfire near the laboratory. It was 100% contained by July 2022, thanks in part to monsoon rains.
