Tom Ribe, the Executive Director of advocacy group Caldera Action, wrote a letter to the editor of the Albuquerque Journal that was published this past Sunday. An excerpt follows:
For eight years the public has experienced the “Trust” model of managing the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Disappointment and frustration are increasing as the experiment in public land management has veered off in a direction much of the public doesn’t want and never intended when we pushed for public purchase of the Baca Ranch in 2000…
The current “access and use” planning process where the Trust is proposing everything from hotels, parking lots, gift shops, hiking trails and RV parks is a case in point. Since logging and grazing are not profitable for the VCNP, the Trust has turned to commercial developments in an attempt to attain financial self sufficiency.
The Trust experiment is a chronically flawed management system. This privatization of public land emphasizes money over the tremendous watershed, wildlife, recreation and educational values of the VCNP. It’s time to end the Trust experiment, transfer the land to the National Park Service as the 19th NPS Preserve, see professional management, financial efficiency, quality public access, and enjoy a sense that we have created a true asset to our region in a well protected nationally significant place. Please contact Congress to support this transfer before irreparable damage is done to our preserve.
Read this letter to the editor in its entirety here (after clicking on the prior link, non-subscribers must click on the “trial premium pass” button on the bottom left of the screen to read the story).
