Two letters were published in New Mexico newspapers in the past week regarding the U.S. Senate’s legislation to transform the Valles Caldera into a National Park Preserve.
The first one was in the Santa Fe New Mexican:
‘Park’ Valles Caldera
The Valles Caldera needs our support, and it needs it now. On June 30 in Washington D.C., the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on S. 3452, the bill to dissolve the Valles Caldera National Preserve Trust and have the National Park Service assume management of the preserve.
How wonderful for this gorgeous preserve to get some experienced management, and who better than our beloved Park Service? Connecting Valles Caldera with the Park Service’s prestige and public outreach will gain it much needed visibility, opening it to greater enjoyment by New Mexicans and our out-of-state visitors alike. Don’t you just love it when the government does things we can be proud of? Thank you, Sen. Jeff Bingaman!
Kimberly MacLoud
Santa Fe
The second was printed in the Journal North:
Valles Caldera Better With NPS
New Mexicans could be relieved that our U.S. senators have advanced legislation to transfer the Valles Caldera National Preserve from the temporary experimental trust to the National Park Service, which would afford permanent protection to this national treasure. The Bingaman/Udall proposed legislation will help the regional economy, give the public quality access to the preserve, protect natural and cultural resources, expand hunting opportunities, and protect tribal interests.
The current managers of the preserve apparently will not let this necessary change happen without some discord. Valles Caldera National Preserve Trust Chairman Steve Henry has recently expressed great concern, in a Journal article dated July 14, about possible forest fires and the need to thin the forests on the preserve. It is hard to understand why he would mention this now. In 10 years, the Trust has only done only one small thinning project and has delayed its planning for fire and thinning up to 2013. Further, thinning and fire has rarely been mentioned in over a decade of Trust public meetings.
Meanwhile, neighboring Bandelier National Monument, operated by the National Park Service, has managed all wooded acres of the park with a combination of thinning and/or prescribed fire to make the monument fire resistant and restore it to a pre-European contact condition. All National Park Service areas in the West have detailed, publicly vetted forest or grassland restoration programs.
Chairman Henry also mentioned his concern about parts of the new Valles Caldera legislation which would protect the mountain peaks in the preserve from development and motorized access but which would allow hiking. Mr. Henry is worried that the public won’t have access to those peaks. Yet under his leadership, all of the peaks except one on the Preserve have been completely closed to public access, with a $200 fine for trespass. Likewise, his worry about hunting under the new law seems detached from recent history. Expensive private hunts and a nearly hopeless lottery under the Trust would be replaced under the new law by a system accessible to all hunters under New Mexico Game and Fish control.
Sen. Bingaman has long experience with public land legislation and knows that inserting micromanaging ideas would be both unnecessary and counterproductive. We fully support the bill in its current form and urge Congress to pass it as soon as possible.
TOM RIBE
Executive Director, Caldera Action
Santa Fe
