Cimarron District 
P.O. Box 5
Ute Park, NM 87749
575-376-2204 575-376-2384 fax

The Cimarron District is the Division's northeastern New Mexico District and covers about 5.6 million acres with 60 percent or 3.36 million acres of state and private commercial forest land. The Cimarron District Office is located on Highway 64, just east of Ute Park.

District Forester Ernie Lopez is a New Mexico native. Ernie is from Mora County and worked as a timber scaler and timber sale administrator before coming to the Division in 1977. He became District Forester in 1991. Because of unavailable federal timer the Cimarron District continues to monitor heavy activity in private timber sales throughout the area. Urban sprawl also requires lots of attention from the District staff especially in the Angel fire, Red River and Black Lake areas. The district staff provides homeowners with tips on how to create defensible areas around their mountain homes to protect against wildfire.

Ernie's staff, Chris Romo, Fire Management Officer; Arnie Friedt, Timber Management Officer; Mike Neathmer, Forestry Field Technician; and an Administrative Management Officer who are all involved in timber management and wildland urban interface or, simply, urban sprawl.

Ernie said, "State Forestry must meet several objectives when monitoring timber sales. One, is to make sure we have complied with State Regulations and make sure landowner objectives are met on every sale. We must make sure the resource is left in a productive state To do this, we must ensure that logging activity has not degraded water quality or created a fire or insect and disease hazard. Increased emphasis on private land makes it extremely important that State Forestry stays on top of all harvesting activity because a poor logging operation may create a long term impact on resource and water quality."

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