Advancing Fire Detection Technology in New Mexico
The public view of the camera, Tesuque Peak 1, on the AlertWest website.
About the camera network
In July 2025, the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition and Forest Stewards Guild installed a fire camera atop Tesuque Peak to assist with fire detection across large swaths of the Fireshed, including the critically important upper Santa Fe Municipal Watershed, the Pecos Wilderness, and the Rio en Medio and Tesuque drainages.
In early 2026, the Coalition and the Guild began working with several communities in Santa Fe to install additional cameras. The Canyon Neighborhood Association and the Santa Fe Canyon Preservation Association collaborated with the Guild to raise money for a camera on Pichacho Peak.
In March 2026, we installed the second camera on Picacho Peak, supplementing existing views from Tesuque Peak. The Picacho Peak camera provides fire detection capabilities to additional communities such as Las Campanas to the west, around the Santa Fe Regional Airport to the southwest, and Sunlit Hills to the south.
A map showing the viewsheds of the Tesuque Peak and Picacho Peak cameras, shaded in blue. (The lighter blue area indicates where the viewsheds of both cameras overlap.)
The main purpose of the cameras is to provide communities and firefighters with faster and more accurate fire detections, enabling firefighters to respond more quickly to ignitions. The cameras are just one tool in the toolbox to help our communities, as well as forests and watersheds, be more resilient in the face of catastrophic wildfires — and must complement, but not replace, critical homeowner mitigation efforts (structure hardening and defensible space thinning) as well as landscape-scale treatments to reduce hazardous fuels.
The 24/7, 360° and 270° AlertWest cameras will support emergency response by improving rapid detection of wildfire starts as well as increasing situational awareness during wildfires. Each camera — which can see about 25 miles during the day and 50 miles at night, as well as zoom in up to 40x magnification — continually scans the landscape for smoke and heat signatures. AlertWest uses artificial intelligence to flag potential fires on the camera feed, and then alerts human technicians to confirm risk and notify our local response agencies.
The Coalition and the Guild are continuing to work to increase coverage of the cameras and develop strategic overlap between them to enable better triangulation and accuracy. In 2026, we plan to install a third camera on the southeast side of the city to achieve more complete coverage of the area’s Wildland Urban Interface. Depending on the availability of funding and continued support from local government agencies, we hope to install a fourth camera to aid wildfire detection in the middle and upper reaches of the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed, a source of much of the city’s drinking water supply.
The Tesuque Peak fire camera captures pile burning in the Santa Fe National Forest in early December 2025.
The cameras — which anyone can view on AlertWest — will also enable the public to more closely follow the progress of annual prescribed burns conducted by Fireshed Coalition partners to improve landscape resilience to wildfire. Key wildland fire management partners such as the Pueblo of Tesuque, Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico Forestry Division, Santa Fe Fire Department, and Santa Fe County Fire Department will have the ability to pan or zoom in the camera feeds.
The camera feeds will also be accessible on Watch Duty, a useful free app and web browser that provides real-time information about fire spread, evacuation areas, ongoing firefighting efforts during incidents, and access to recordings of community meetings held by government agencies leading the firefighting efforts. By enabling notifications and location sharing on your smartphone, you can receive notifications of incidents or changing conditions near your home and wherever you happen to be in the continental U.S.
Support fire cameras and wildfire communications in New Mexico
A screen capture of active cameras in the AlertWest network in early August 2025.
Although fire cameras are widely used and have proved effective across the West, the fire camera on Tesuque Peak was the first of its kind in New Mexico — an exciting development.
Jonathan Frenzen and Sandy Hurlocker of the Greater Santa Fe Fireshed Coalition’s communications committee catalyzed the project to begin building a network of fire detection cameras in New Mexico. Initial funding and support for the Tesuque Peak camera came from the Santa Fe Community Foundation, the Santa Fe-Pojoaque Soil and Water Conservation District, and the Forest Stewards Guild.
Funding to sustain the Tesuque Peak camera and launch the Picacho Peak camera has come from generous individual donors, HOAs, and community associations, with substantial support for the Picacho Peak camera from the Canyon Neighborhood Association and the Santa Fe Canyon Preservation Association. THANK YOU! We would also like to recognize The Nature Conservancy of New Mexico and Santa Fe National Forest for collaborating with us on the Picacho Peak camera.
The Fireshed Coalition continues to seek long-term sponsors of the technology. Please help us spread the word or donate to keep the Tesuque Peak fire camera in operation or support the Picacho Peak camera . In addition, download Watch Duty for your personal use and consider volunteering to become trained as a contributor to help monitor local wildfire incidents.
“AI-enabled fire cameras can help provide faster and more accurate fire detection, improving the safety of our firefighters and our communities. With more confident fire management, we will also be better equipped to continue our long-term efforts re-establishing fire-resilient landscapes in New Mexico.
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Getting ready to install the fire camera on existing towers atop Tesuque Peak.
A screencapture from showing the ALERTWest webpage showing a typical orientation of the Tesuque Peak (left) and Picacho Peak (right) cameras.