VallesCaldera.com – The independent news source about the Valles Caldera

A forum on “Public Access and Future Management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve” was conducted by the Albuquerque Chapter of the New Mexico Native Plant Society on June 3. The Albuquerque public event’s primary speakers were Tom Ribe of the advocacy group Caldera Action, author and activist Dorothy Hoard, former president of the NMNPS Chick Keller, and Valles Caldera National Preserve Chief Scientist Bob Parmenter.

The Los Alamos Monitor covered the forum in a story entitled “Plant society forum finds fault with Caldera trust,” which can be read by clicking here. According to the Monitor’s Roger Snodgrass:

The New Mexico Native Plant Society might sound like an unlikely place for a rebellion. But two of the four speakers at a meeting of the Albuquerque chapter this week called for an overthrow and a third said it was time for people to stand up and say they were not going to take it any more.

The object of their criticism was not the taxonomy of desert wildflowers, but rather the system of governance of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, the 89,000-acre experiment in public land.

According to the Monitor, the Preserve’s Chief Scientist Robert Parmenter stated at one point during the meeting that with regard to the criticisms of the Preserve conveyed during the forum, “virtually everything they’ve said is just about right.”

Tom Ribe, President of Caldera Action, advocated ending the Valles Caldera Trust and merging the National Preserve into a separate entity within an existing federal land management agency, such as the National Park Service:

“Public land management is being reinvented by people who are generally unqualified to do that,” Ribe said, noting that the current executive director has no experience in public land management and that there are no supervisors other than Congress, “which understandably has its attention elsewhere.”

[...] The trust’s current emphasis on private, money-making concessions may provide more access but at a higher cost, he said, and higher fees means catering to wealthier people who can afford to pay them.

He said Caldera Action is working on a national legislative proposal that will eliminate the trust and turn the property over to professional managers in the National Park Service, while maintaining the property’s independent character.

Author Dorothy Hoard of Los Alamos was also a featured speaker. Her publications include Exploring the Jemez Country, A Guide to Bandelier National Monument, and Flowering Plants of the Southwestern Woodlands.  Her books can be found on this site’s Books section, as well as on Amazon.com.  According to the Monitor, “for two decades Hoard has been devoted to an ambitious effort to bring about an 80-mile Valles Caldera rim trail that will circumnavigate the preserve and provide majestic 360-degree views of the preserve and the surrounding area” (visit this web site for a map of the proposed trail). During Hoard’s comments, she offered her view of the politics of the Trust:

She described the founding board, appointed by President Clinton as being more conservationist in orientation while the Bush appointees were more “development-oriented.”

There are currently only four appointed trustees and two ex-officio trustees, enough for a quorum, but three Obama appointees are expected to be named this summer.

Hoard expected the Obama appointees could in their turn throw out everything the Bush appointees had done.

She said one day an employee at the preserve told her he could no longer help her on her Rim Trail proposal, because the entire staff was being devoted to grazing.

In a follow-up letter to the editor to the Monitor regarding this story, Hoard wrote that the article “described very well the mood of the panel,” but clarified some details that had been discussed regarding the proposed Valles Caldera Rim Trail.

In her letter, Hoard stated that access to many of the most scenic vistas on the rim of the Caldera is owned by the Forest Service, whereas the Preserve owns most of the vistas themselves, behind a barbed-wire fence.