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

The Los Alamos County Council presented U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman with its “Key to the County” honor during a visit by Bingaman to Los Alamos last week. County Council Chairman Michael Wismer offered four primary reasons why the Council chose to bestow this award on Bingaman — one of which was the Senator’s ongoing effort to secure passage of legislation that would transfer management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service. The other reasons Wismer provided were Bingaman’s support for green technology, support of LANL projects and Northern New Mexico’s economy, and funding of specific county projects and programs. Click here to read a story in the Los Alamos Monitor about Bingaman’s award.

Chairman Wismer presented the following remarks regarding Bingaman’s advocacy of transferring the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service:

This Summer, the Senator has been very active in matters concerning the Valles Caldera National Preserve – acreage near Los Alamos that is near and dear to our community – and one that we hope will have a favorable outcome soon with congressional action. I was honored to be in Washington D.C. to testify last June when Senator Bingaman chaired the Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to discuss legislation that he and Senator Tom Udall wrote to transfer the management of the Preserve to the National Park Service. We support the Senators’ bill which directs the Park Service to take over management in a way that protects the Preserve’s natural and cultural resources. The preserve is a national treasure and we hope the legislation will be successful.

The Valles Caldera Trust has debuted a new section of its web site designed to educate the public regarding its “10-year strategy for the restoration and management of the forest, grassland, shrubland, and riparian ecosystems” on the Valles Caldera National Preserve, and to take public input regarding this plan.

Click here to visit the new section of the Trust’s official government web site.

While replete with information and supporting documents, the web site does lack some particulars. Namely, it does not mention how the proposed strategy would change if the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act, legislation that would transfer management of the Preserve to the National Park Service, is passed by Congress. This bill has been unanimously approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is now up for consideration by the full Senate. In fact, the National Park Service is not mentioned at all on the site. The document also mentions enhancing objectives of surrounding National Forest lands, but fails to discuss how to enhance objectives of the forests of the National Park Service’s Bandelier National Monument, which shares a boundary with the Preserve.

The Associated Press ran a story about the new section of the Preserve’s web site:

The web page includes documents, maps and other links related to the proposed 10-year strategy for restoring and managing the forests, grasslands and riparian ecosystems on the 89,000-acre Valles Caldera National Preserve.

Trust officials say restoration and management of the preserve’s resources is at the heart of their stewardship responsibilities and will be 1 of the most important planning efforts undertaken by the trust.

The plan will guide decisions on forest thinning, prescribed fire, wetland restoration, travel management and noxious weed control, among other things.

Comments will be accepted through Sept. 29.

Bandelier National Monument, directly adjacent to the Valles Caldera, will host a grand reopening celebration of its visitor center on Wednesday, August 25, from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm. The public is welcome at the reopening, and entry to the park is free all day on the 25th. The center had been closed for more than a year for construction of improvements, including a new theater. According to Bandelier’s web site, planning for the revamp was ten years in the making.

New museum exhibits that will be featured in the retooled visitor center include a new 12-minute, high-definition park film, panoramas of backcountry sites, topographic displays, ecosystem profiles, and priceless artifacts.

The reopening will include Zuni dancers, craft demonstrations, tours of the new museum exhibits, a viewing of the new park film, as well as a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 3:00 pm.

Bandelier has a presence throughout the internet. Click the links below to visit its sites:

Web: http://www.nps.gov/band/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BandelierNPS?ref=ts
Twitter: http://twitter.com/bandelierNPS
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/BandelierNPS

UPDATE: Aug. 21– The Albuquerque Journal reported Saturday that the total amount that will be awarded for the Southwest Jemez Mountains Collaborative Forest Restoration Project will be up to $40 million (the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week reported this amount to be $392,000). Click here to read the Journal article (non-subscribers must click on the “trial access pass” button to read this story). The article points out that the preferred density in a ponderosa pine forest is between 40 and 60 trees per acre. In much of the area targeted by the project, there are between 1,200 and 1,800 trees on each acre, and in some spots there are more than 2,000 trees per acre. This problem will be mitigated by this project through thinning on 90,000 acres and prescribed burns on 76,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest and Valles Caldera National Preserve.

ORIGINAL POST: U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced last week the funding of ten forest restoration projects throughout the nation, including the Southwest Jemez Mountains Collaborative Forest Restoration Project, for which a total of $392,000 will be awarded to the Santa Fe National Forest and the Valles Caldera National Preserve.

Below is some information from the Department of Agriculture regarding the Southwest Jemez Mountains project:

The Southwest Jemez Mountains area is 210,000 acres, 93 percent of which is divided between the Santa Fe National Forest and the Valles Caldera Trust-Valles National Preserve. The project will improve the resilience of ecosystems to recover from wildfires and other natural disturbance and sustain healthy forests and watersheds. This will be accomplished by thinning and prescribed burning to restore more natural fire regimes. Additional project components include streambank stabilization, invasive plant control, road and trail decommissioning, riparian and wildlife habitat improvement, conservation education, and rehabilitation, closure, and improvement of roads.

Matt Gagnon, a student at the University of New Mexico who is pursuing a graduate degree in geography, is conducting a thesis study regarding folks’ perceptions of, and aspirations for, recreation access to the Valles Caldera National Preserve. The study is titled “Management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve: the Recreationist Perspective.” 

One aspect of his study consists of the enviable task of spending parts of his summer in the Jemez Mountains and asking people — both visitors and locals — to fill out a survey that quantifies what they’d like in terms of future management of the Preserve in terms of recreation offerings and access.

His survey can also easily be filled out online. Anyone with an interest in outdoor recreation on the Preserve can fill it out. The anonymous survey shouldn’t take respondents more than ten minutes.

Please take some time and fill out this survey. Not only will it assist a grad student with his thesis, but it will contribute a great deal of insight to what the public wants in terms of future management of our National Preserve.

Mr. Gagnon’s cover letter describing his study can be read here.

You can fill out the survey by clicking here.

The Valles Caldera Trust will conduct a public meeting in Jemez Springs in the evening on Thursday, Aug. 12 to receive public comments on their “Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement for a Long-Term Landscape Restoration and Management Plan To Restore and Manage the Forest, Grassland, and Riparian Ecosystems of the Valles Caldera National Preserve.”

You can read this 1,860-word notice by clicking here.

Who: Valles Caldera Trust
What: Public meeting to discuss its proposed ten-year landscape restoration and management plan
When: Thurs., Aug. 12, 5:30 -8:00 PM
Where: VCNP Science and Education Center, 90 Villa Louis Martin, Jemez Springs

In a unanimous, 13-0 vote, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday approved S.3452, the bill that would award management of the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service and dissolve the Valles Caldera Trust. The bill (the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act) is now up for consideration by the full U.S. Senate.

Bill Wicker, spokesman for the committee, told VallesCaldera.com that bills such as this one are “rarely considered as standalone legislation” by the full Senate, and that the Senate would likely vote on the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act as part of an omnibus bill, a piece of legislation that packages together multiple measures into one. “Given the time constraints, this is the logical way forward,” Mr. Wicker said.

Mr. Wicker also provided some insight into the timeframe of the path forward for this legislation, predicting that an omnibus bill containing the Valles Caldera legislation would probably be voted on by the full Senate in late September or early October.

The legislation approved (or, officially, “reported”) yesterday was slightly different from the version originally submitted in May. Click here to read the revised version that was approved by the committee. While mostly identical, the most significant change regards the restrictions on motorized access (and constructing roads and facilities/buildings) on the Preserve’s volcanic domes. In the original version of the legislation, motorized access and construction on domes above 9,250 feet was restricted. Now, such access and construction is prohibited:

within the area of the domes and peaks above 9,600 feet in elevation or 250 feet below the top of the dome, whichever is lower.

New Mexico’s U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, who co-sponsored this bill, touted the approval of this legislation by the committee.

From Sen. Bingaman:

The Valles Caldera is one of the most beautiful public landscapes in the country, and the nation would benefit from its inclusion in the National Park System. With [the] committee’s endorsement of this bill, we’re able to send it to the full Senate for consideration.

From Sen. Udall:

With this vote, we are another step closer to bringing one of New Mexico’s most stunning natural landscapes into the National Park System, where it will be protected for the enjoyment and appreciation of generations to come. I congratulate Senator Bingaman on his leadership in shepherding this critical legislation through his Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and I look forward to its consideration by the full Senate.

However, statements by spokesmen for several Republican senators in the online publication Environment and Energy Daily yesterday call into question the prospects of an omnibus bill passing the Senate this year:

“The chance of an omnibus bill is pretty much dead for the year,” said Robert Dillon, spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the Energy and Natural Resource Committee’s top Republican. “There’s just not a lot of Republican interest in moving such a big bill.”

Dillon also said there was unlikely to be time on the crowded Senate calendar, especially if the omnibus ran into opposition. “Even if it’s a bipartisan omnibus bill it can still be controversial,” he said.

Such was the case with the last omnibus, which Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) threatened to filibuster in the final months of 2008, delaying the bill through early last year.

The passage of another public lands omnibus by this Congress is “extremely unrealistic, if not impossible,” said Coburn spokesman John Hart, who added that his boss would demand any new spending in the bill be offset by cuts elsewhere.

The Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act (S.3452), which would transfer control of the Caldera to the National Park Service, is a candidate for inclusion in an omnibus lands bill this fall, according to the Federal Parks and Recreation Bulletin, a biweekly publication for federal employees of parks and recreation areas. An omnibus bill is a piece of legislation that packages together multiple measures into one. From the Bulletin:

Two important outdoor bills took major steps forward last week, raising the possibility they will be eligible for an omnibus lands bill this fall. Assuming of course an omnibus lands bill is assembled.
…
The Senate Energy Committee, which usually assembles the ingredients for an omnibus measure, has not yet begun to put together a new omnibus, but that doesn’t mean one will not be prepared. The ultimate call will be made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

Obvious candidates for the omnibus are a bill to transfer the Valles Caldera area in New Mexico to the Park Service, as well as measures to designate wilderness and trails in central Idaho, to extend a popular federal land sales bill, to designate a national park in Delaware (the state has none now), designate a handful of national heritage areas, and much more.

The Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act was introduced in the Senate on May 27. Hearings on the bill in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee were held on June 30.

On July 25, 2000, exactly ten years ago today, the Jemez Mountains of Northern New Mexico were forever transformed as the Valles Caldera Preservation Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. In his signing statement, Mr. Clinton proclaimed that the law “protects a magnificent natural resource for New Mexicans and all Americans, and we can all be proud of this legacy that we leave for generations to come.”

The Valles Caldera Preservation Act enabled the purchase of the Baca Location No. 1 (the “Baca Ranch”) for $101 million, and set the course for an “experiment in land management” — the Valles Caldera Trust, a wholly-owned governmental corporation tasked to run the land as a working ranch on a financially self-sustaining basis — to govern the newly-created Valles Caldera National Preserve for the American people. At the time, the Baca Location No. 1 was 94,761 acres, so this transaction worked out to about $1,065 per acre. The source of the money to purchase the Baca was the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which comes from a portion of receipts from offshore oil and gas leases that are placed into a fund annually for state and local conservation, and to purchase land, water and wetlands for the the benefit of all Americans.

The land had been privately owned for 140 years, from 1860 to 2000. You can read more about the history of the Baca Location No. 1 in the History section of VallesCaldera.com.

The bill made it to the President’s desk after having been approved by the U.S. Senate unanimously on April 13, 2000, and after the House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 377-45 on July 12, 2000.

Enjoy some of our reading material regarding the history of the Baca Location No. 1 and the efforts to purchase this land for the public by clicking below:

The National Park Service’s narrative of many efforts in the 20th century to purchase the Baca Ranch – the land that became the Valles Caldera National Preserve – for the American People

VallesCaldera.com’s “Recent History of the Land that Became the Valles Caldera National Preserve”

You can also download the entire U.S. Government publication, More Than a Scenic Mountain Landscape: Valles Caldera National Preserve Land Use History, by Kurt F. Anschuetz and Thomas Merlan. This book is in the public domain.

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