2025 has been a year of deep stewardship and community-powered momentum at Taos Land Trust. Together, we’ve restored lands and traditions, expanded youth opportunities, and invested in the long-term health of Rio Fernando Park, Rio Hondo Fishing Park, and working lands across Taos County.
Here are some of the highlights of 2025. Look at all the things you helped us do!
At Rio Fernando Park, Taos Land Trust received a Noxious Weeds Management Grant from the New Mexico Department of Agriculture to tackle invasive plants and support healthier, more resilient ecosystems along the Vigil y Romo acequia, building on our own Healthy Soils Grant to revitalize degraded areas at the park.
Highlight 2: Investing in Rio Hondo and Rio Fernando Parks
Taos Land Trust received a $99,999 grant from the New Mexico Outdoor Recreation Division to improve Rio Hondo Fishing Park and Rio Fernando Park, including a new sustainable trail, improved signage, benches, picnic tables, and a children’s garden.
This funding is paired with hands-on work by the Youth Conservation Corps crew, who are redesigning trails to reduce erosion and make access safer and more welcoming for all visitors.
Highlight 3: Building a Community Horno at Rio Fernando Park
The Youth Conservation Corps crew made adobe bricks, constructed the oven, and celebrated with a traditional foods workshop, creating a new gathering space for cultural events and future community workshops.
Highlight 4: Growing Youth Leadership and Land Lab
This summer’s YCC crew fenced educational gardens, constructed eight Johnson-Su bioreactors, mapped and cleared trails at Rio Hondo Fishing Park, managed garden pests, and controlled invasive species at Rio Fernando Park, all while earning Wilderness First Aid certification, OSHA trainings, and practicing orchard care.
At the end of 2025, Taos Land Trust launched expanded work-based learning programs for local middle and high school students, including rebranded “CEO Fridays” at Taos High, giving up to 12 youth hands-on experience in regenerative agriculture, construction, and forestry.
Other education programs this year included composting workshops, garden-based learning, nature-focused activities that brought families and classrooms into the park, and a new series of STEM workshops in collaboration with Taos Learning Lab. We’re calling this series Land Lab, and all the lessons are focused on connecting seasonal themes of land, nature, and environment with engineering design challenges and lessons in physics and chemistry; the curriculum from this series will be available to elementary and middle school classrooms in 2026.
An Outdoor Equity Fund grant from the New Mexico Economic Development Department’s Outdoor Recreation Division is supporting our “Goats in the Garden” regenerative agriculture programs, fundingeducation around goats, soil health, and regenerative practices, as well as providing added support for our work-based learning programs.
Highlight 5: Celebrating 10 Years of Rio Fernando Park
2025 marks the 10-year anniversary of Rio Fernando Park, transforming roughly 20 acres of degraded wetlands and fallow fields into a community hub for conservation, education, and recreation.
With support from the Taos County Lodgers Tax Grant, Taos Land Trust organized a free Rio Fernando Park Day celebration featuring food, music, workshops, hayrides, and family activities to honor a decade of shared vision and grassroots action.
Highlight 6: Powering Stewardship with New Grants
Funding from the LOR Foundation is supporting a crew vehicle, dump trailer, and a new workshop where youth build benches, tables, and other park features using reclaimed materials and locally harvested Russian olive wood, as well as a second LOR grant for goat and turkey grazing that is helping us build sheds and fencing, purchase a trailer, and launch a goat-grazing loan program as part of our Working Lands Resiliency Initiative.
The Nusenda Foundation is supporting our Working Lands Resiliency Initiative by helping fund an equipment operator, which expands access to tractors and other tools for community members who do not own equipment or cannot afford to hire these services.
Funds from the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute, awarded through the Vigil y Romo Acequia Association, are backing water conservation initiatives on our property and for fellow parciantes, with on-the-ground measures rolling out in 2026.
Zimmer Community Fund provided flexible, unrestricted support that helps sustain our programs across conservation, education, and community engagement.
Stay tuned for a big conservation announcement coming next month!
Gratitude and Invitation
None of this work would be possible without the commitment of our community and donors. Your generosity fuels restoration projects, cultural programming, and hands-on learning for the next generation of land stewards; if you are able, please consider making a year-end gift, signing up as a volunteer, or joining us at the park in 2026 to keep this momentum going.
