In the nearly four months since New Mexico’s U.S. Senators requested that the National Park Service study the possibility of assuming management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, there has been a great deal of discussion in the media about whether NPS management of the Caldera would be more fiscally responsible than continuing with the current Trust management structure.
One measure of fiscally efficient management for public lands is the amount of taxpayer funds appropriated to a unit of land divided by the number of visitors that the unit of land serves.
The analysis below has compared the annual federal appropriations and visitor totals for three separate groups of public lands:
- Each unit of the National Park Service in New Mexico (including National Parks, National Monuments, and National Historic Parks),
- each National Preserve managed by the National Park Service, and
- a group of 14 prominent National Parks in the western United States.
For fiscal year 2008 (the most recent year that official statistics reported to Congress by the Valles Caldera Trust are available), the Trust reported $3,750,000 of federal appropriations, and 15,000 visitors.
This comes out to $250 of taxpayer funds spent per visitor by the Valles Caldera Trust.
The data below reveal the following:
- The units of the National Park Service in New Mexico spend an average of $13 of taxpayer funds per visitor (which runs from $3 per visitor at White Sands National Monument to $84 at Fort Union National Monument). The Valles Caldera Trust therefore spends about 19 times the amount of federally appropriated funds per visitor than New Mexico’s National Park Service units as a whole, and about three times more than the NPS unit in New Mexico with the highest amount of taxpayer funds spent per visitor.
- The National Preserves throughout the U.S. managed by the National Park Service spend an average of $12 of federally appropriated funds per visitor. This figure runs from $2 per visitor in Florida’s Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, to $390 per visitor at Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in Alaska. However, among the NPS National Preserves in the lower 48 states, the figure runs from $2 at Timucuan to $33 at Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas. Therefore, the Valles Caldera Trust spends more than twenty times the amount of appropriated funds per visitor than the National Preserves managed by the National Park Service as a whole, and it spends 7.5 times the amount of taxpayer funds per visitor than the Preserve with the highest figure in the lower 48 states.
- The comparison group of well-known National Parks in the West (including Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Glacier, Big Bend, Rocky Mountain, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Petrified Forest) spends an average of $6 of taxpayer funds per visitor, which runs from a little over a dollar per visitor at Utah’s Arches National Park, to $19 per visitor at Big Bend National Park in Texas. Therefore, the Valles Caldera Trust spends about 41 times as much taxpayer money per visitor than this comparison group of prominent western National Parks, and 13 times as much as the National Park with the highest figure in this comparison group.
- The National Park Service’s Bandelier National Monument, which, like the Valles Caldera, is located in the Jemez Mountains (and shares a boundary with the Valles Caldera National Preserve), welcomed 243,765 visitors in 2006, while receiving federal appropriations of $2,705,000, yielding a federal expenditure to visitation ratio of $11 per visitor. Therefore, the Valles Caldera Trust spends more than 22 times the amount of taxpayer funds per visitor than its Jemez neighbor.
Please click below to see this analysis’ data tables.
The data used in this analysis is from fiscal year 2006, since this is the most recent year that finalized appropriation information and visitation figures could be found. The exception to this is data for the Valles Caldera National Preserve, which is presented for 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Please note that certain NPS units in Alaska are grouped together in federal appropriations, making it impossible to separate out the relevant appropriation per land unit. The data below indicate which land units have been grouped together by official federal government data.
| VALLES CALDERA NATIONAL PRESERVE | |||
| Appropriation | Visitation | Appropriations Spent per Visitor | |
| Valles Caldera, fiscal year 2008 | $3,750,000 | 15,000 | $250 |
| Valles Caldera, fiscal year 2007 | $3,500,000 | 12,405 | $282 |
| Valles Caldera, fiscal year 2006 | $5,074,231 | 9,938 | $511 |
| NATIONAL PARK SERVICE UNITS IN NEW MEXICO | |||
| 2006 Appropriation | 2006 Visitation | Appropriations Spent per Visitor | |
| Aztec Ruins National Monument, NM | $1,039,000 | 40,779 | $25 |
| Bandelier National Monument, NM | $2,705,000 | 243,765 | $11 |
| Capulin Volcano National Monument, NM | $664,000 | 49,823 | $13 |
| Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM | $5,472,000 | 407,367 | $13 |
| Chaco Culture National Historic Park, NM | $1,864,000 | 37,923 | $49 |
| El Malpais National Monument, NM | $1,144,000 | 107,792 | $11 |
| El Morro National Monument, NM | $683,000 | 52,297 | $13 |
| Fort Union National Monument, NM | $869,000 | 10,347 | $84 |
| Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, NM | $373,000 | 40,510 | $9 |
| Pecos National Historic Park, NM | $1,453,000 | 34,106 | $43 |
| Petroglyph National Monument, NM | $1,509,000 | 121,825 | $12 |
| Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, NM | $1,273,000 | 32,996 | $39 |
| White Sands National Monument, NM | $1,418,000 | 440,927 | $3 |
| Total of all NPS units in NM | $20,466,000 | 1,620,457 | N/A |
| Average of all NPS units in NM | $1,574,308 | 124,651 | $13 |
| NATIONAL PRESERVES MANAGED BY THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE | |||
| 2006 Appropriation | 2006 Visitation | Appropriations Spent per Visitor | |
| Big Cypress National Preserve, FL | $5,414,000 | 825,857 | $7 |
| Big Thicket National Preserve, TX | $2,361,000 | 91,126 | $26 |
| Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, ID | $1,124,000 | 176,998 | $6 |
| Denali National Park and Preserve, AK | $10,549,000 | 415,935 | $25 |
| Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, AK | $2,513,000 | 9,982 | $252 |
| Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, AK | $3,826,000 | 413,382 | $9 |
| Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, CO | $2,049,000 | 258,660 | $8 |
| Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, LA | $4,717,000 | 264,680 | $18 |
| Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, AK | $2,077,000 | 5,320 | $390 |
| Little River Canyon National Preserve, AL | $1,015,000 | 211,047 | $5 |
| Mojave National Preserve, CA | $4,104,000 | 537,250 | $8 |
| Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve, U.S. Virgin Islands | $492,000 | 2,526 | $195 |
| Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, KS | $912,000 | 27,260 | $33 |
| Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve, FL | $1,897,000 | 1,011,989 | $2 |
| Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, AK | $4,050,000 | 50,336 | $80 |
| Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, AK | $1,286,000 | 12,083 | $106 |
| Katmai National Park & Preserve, Aniakchak National Monument & Preserve, Alagnak Wild River, AK | $3,010,000 | 68,690 | $44 |
| Western Arctic National Parklands: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Kobuk Valley National Park, Noatak National Preserve | $3,151,000 | 9,231 | $341 |
| Total of all NPS National Preserves | $54,547,000 | 4,392,352 | N/A |
| Average of all NPS National Preserves | $3,030,389 | 244,020 | $12 |
| PROMINENT NATIONAL PARKS IN THE WEST | |||
| 2006 Appropriation | 2006 Visitation | Appropriations Spent per Visitor | |
| Yellowstone National Park, WY/MT/ID | $30,605,000 | 2,870,295 | $11 |
| Yosemite National Park, CA | $24,064,000 | 3,242,644 | $7 |
| Grand Canyon National Park, AZ | $19,529,000 | 4,279,439 | $5 |
| Rocky Mountain National Park, CO | $10,952,000 | 2,743,676 | $4 |
| Death Valley National Park, CA | $7,080,000 | 744,440 | $10 |
| Joshua Tree National Park, CA | $4,304,000 | 1,256,421 | $3 |
| Glacier National Park, MT | $11,855,000 | 1,964,399 | $6 |
| Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, CO | $1,074,000 | 160,450 | $7 |
| Mesa Verde National Park, CO | $5,307,000 | 557,248 | $10 |
| Zion National Park, UT | $6,371,000 | 2,567,350 | $2 |
| Bryce Canyon National Park, UT | $2,837,000 | 890,676 | $3 |
| Big Bend National Park, TX | $5,625,000 | 298,717 | $19 |
| Arches National Park, UT | $1,210,000 | 833,049 | $1 |
| Petrified Forest National Park, AZ | $2,836,000 | 581,681 | $5 |
| Total of prominent National Parks in the West | $133,649,000 | 22,990,485 | N/A |
| Average of prominent National Parks in the West | $9,546,357 | 1,642,178 | $6 |
The sources of this data include:
National Parks Traveler (visitation totals)
National Parks Conservation Association (federal appropriations)
National Park Service (federal appropriations)
Valles Caldera Trust’s Reports to Congress: 2006, 2007, and 2008 (visitation and federal appropriations)
There are many government programs that can cause one’s head to shake in negative affirmation. The NPS, however, is a government program that provides low cost benefit to every American and also our international guests. The NPS is demonstrably more capable of fiscal conservatism in this environment than any other land/attraction/destination management operation. How could the cost benefit ratio get any more sideways than it currently is at Valles Caldera? Give programs to those who know best how to run them.