"[The Southwest Forest Alliance] has currently three main campaigns: one is forest restoration, another is the wildland-urban interface--that is protection of communities from the threat of a forest fire--and the third is old-growth protection."
The Southwest Forest Alliance is a coalition of sixty-five member groups, which are environmental and community groups throughout the Southwest, and the Southwest Forest Alliance works on primarily environmental issues in Arizona and New Mexico. It has currently three main campaigns: one is forest restoration, another is the wildland-urban interface—that is protection of communities from the threat of a forest fire—and the third is old-growth protection. And currently that third one, old-growth protection, is centered primarily on the North Kaibab, the Kaibab Plateau on the north side of the Grand Canyon, where there is probably the greatest amount of old-growth ponderosa pine forest left in the Southwest.
Besides those three campaigns, we are largely a watchdog group, or even within those three campaigns, we're largely a watchdog group that monitors and follows and provides input to agencies—that is, federal, state, agencies, such as the Groveland Management and the Forest Service—on how to implement projects and the various programs and projects that come up in the Southwest.
Currently we have three staff members at the Forest Alliance. That's Sharon Galbraith, the executive director. I'm the conservation biologist; I've been working there for a year. And in just the past couple of months we hired Jason Thivener, who is working on community outreach and member outreach. We're centered in Flagstaff, and have our member groups throughout the Southwest, so we travel a lot through Arizona and New Mexico. That's about it.