Santa Fe Forest Coalition

Background

The Santa Fe Forest Coalition was founded in 2018 to advocate left-of-center environmentalist policies towards forest management and other conservation issues within the state of New Mexico. The Coalition opposes alleged growth and mismanagement by the U.S. Forest Service on behalf of fellow conservation groups and land owners, while criticizing the USFS’s activities within the Sante Fe National Forest in northern New Mexico.  ^{2  3}

Leadership

Sam Hitt is the president of the Santa Fe Forest Coalition.  He previously founded several local conservation groups such as Elk Mountain Action and Forest Guardians (WildEarth Guardians as of 2025). Hitt is also the founder and director of aquatic conservation group Wild Watershed, which is a member organization of the Coalition. ²

John Horning is the vice president of the Santa Fe Forest Coalition. Horning was previously the executive director of WildEarth Guardians before retiring. Michael Stewart is the secretary and treasurer of the Coalition. Stewart is the founder and former executive director of environmentalist group LightHawk. ²

Advocacy

In 2022, the Santa Fe Forest Coalition joined with The Forest Advocate and WildEarth Guardians to release several joint objections to the state’s “Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resiliency Project” that thins the forest line outside Santa Fe through controlled burning and tree cutting “to increase forest health and to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire.” The objections released by the Coalition and other conservation groups claimed that such actions harmed the ecosystem while producing harmful levels of smoke within the region. The objection also called for a new Environmental Impact Statement to assess the proposal’s impact.  ^{4  5  6}