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

This morning, VallesCaldera.com conducted an exclusive podcast interview with Dr. Bob Parmenter, the chief scientist of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. You can listen to the podcast here.

Parmenter provided a wide range of information regarding the Las Conchas Fire, including that highly burned forest areas will take up to a century and a half to recover. He also spoke of how the fire, which ignited “one acre of forest every 1.17 seconds for 14 hours,” is still burning underground as it torches through trees’ root structures. “A tree that may look like it escaped the flames just fine — 3 weeks from now can just fall over because all the roots are killed,” he said. He also stated that “a tree that looks like it might have only gotten singed by the heat and only the first ten feet or so might have brown needles, those trees could be dead in two, three, four years.”

The chief scientist also said that elk, deer, mountain lions, and most bears probably emerged unscathed from the fire, but that many songbirds, tree-nesting birds, and tree squirrels probably did not survive the inferno.

Parmenter also painted a distressing picture of the short-term future of the Jemez Mountains as he related a graduate study being conducted that has concluded that “there are many times in the past that the entire Valles Caldera burned over a two year period. So half the Preserve burned one year, and half burned the next year. And so, this type of pattern is not unprecedented either — it shows up in the fire record. So are we into the 2011 and 2012 fire season of two years and we’re going to burn the rest of the Preserve next year? It is not unprecedented.”

The interview also touched on the impacts of the cultural resources on the Caldera, firefighting operations on the Preserve, the chances of monsoons coming, as well as volunteer opportunities to restore the Caldera, and also what he hopes the fire’s impact will be on people’s opinions and behavior:

“I would hope that the trend continues for a wider acceptance of natural fire and prescribed fire as a natural ecosystem process, and that the tolerance for a couple weeks of smoke each summer, or fall if we do fall burns, or early spring if we do spring burns — that having a little smoke in the air is better than having a lot of smoke in the air, because these forests are going to continue to burn, and we either let them burn on our terms, or we let them burn on nature’s terms, and if it’s on nature’s terms, it’s very difficult to stop,” he said. ” So I would hope that, as we look back on this, that Cerro Grande, Las Conchas, and the CFLRP [Consolidated Forest Landscape Restoration Program], will all come together and have the citizens of, basically, all forested ecosystems in the west, really understand that there are natural ways to manage these forests by reintroducing fire and keeping the fuel loads down.”

The following is a transcription of key topics of the podcast:

Continue reading ‘Exclusive podcast interview with chief scientist of Caldera: Intense burn areas won’t recover for 100-150 years; Many birds and tree squirrels did not survive; Wet winter not expected; Fires in Jemez often occurred historically in consecutive years’

Seemingly biting the hand that feeds him, the executive director of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, Gary Bratcher, was quoted in the Santa Fe New Mexican on Friday publicly criticizing the Valles Caldera Board of Trustees’ newly announced support for legislation currently in the U.S. Senate that would transfer control of the Preserve to the National Park Service. The members of the Board of Trustees serve as Bratcher’s supervisors.

According to an article entitled “Valles Caldera board supports Park Service takeover,” by Staci Matlock of the New Mexican, “Bratcher said he serves at the will of the board, but as a former executive in the private sector, he believes the Valles Caldera Trust model is still worth a try, especially in an era of shrinking federal budgets. He said last year the board proposed changes to the legislation that would have made it easier to meet the mandates. ‘I had really hoped during this amount of time we would get changes in the original act and get a good recovery in the cost for the public,’ he said. ‘Even the way the legislation is written, we were making inroads. We were improving public access and reducing the amount of public taxpayer funds needed. If this bill passes, the whole model remains unproven.’”

Bratcher also publicly called out the Board for not informing him in advance that Chairman Raymond Loretto was going to endorse a Park Service takeover in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks last week.

According to the New Mexican, “Bratcher, the trust’s executive director, said he didn’t know the board was going to support the legislation. ‘I was not advised by anyone on the board,’ he said, ‘and I don’t think that anyone on the staff was advised that this was going to be their testimony.’”

The Chairman of the Board of Trustees responded to the criticism by his employee in the New Mexican: “Loretto said that a majority of the four presidential appointees currently on the board decided to support S. 564, but didn’t vote on it until after the last public meeting held April 19. ‘We only found out we were to testify before the committee last week,’ said Loretto, a former governor of Jemez Pueblo. ‘We had to make a decision.’ Loretto said the trust staff has done a great job, but with the trust destined to dissolve in 2015 without further congressional action, ‘we need to start transitioning, regardless of which agency it goes to. It comes down to an emotional decision we had to make.’”

Closer examination of Bratcher’s assertion that the Board of Trustees had proposed changes to the Valles Caldera Preservation Act of 2000 that would have “made it easier to meet the mandates,” is appropriate. In a letter to Congress from Oct. of 2009, Bratcher, asserting that “the requirement that the Trust be financially self-sustaining is impossible to achieve,” insisted that this legislative requirement be “removed and/or modified.” In other words, instead of proposing substantive changes to the original legislation to ensure that he could help achieve the mandate of financial self-sufficiency, he simply proposed that this goal be taken away so that it wouldn’t have to be achieved at all.

Bratcher has a record of making blatantly false and misleading statements in the media during his tenure as the Preserve’s executive director. In March of 2010, he was quoted in an article in the Albuquerque Journal as stating about the Preserve, “What will you cut out if you (a federal agency) take over?” [Executive Director Gary Bratcher] asks, then answers: “Everything but hiking and camping. That’ll be it.”

Of course, this is a whopper of a lie to the taxpaying public — the legislation before Congress specifically calls for hunting, fishing, and grazing, as well as a science and education program. The editors of the Albuquerque Journal publicly lambasted Bratcher for his obviously misleading statements the next day, including his false declaration that there would be no science program if the Park Service took over the Caldera, calling them “less than convincing,” “hard to believe,” and “laughable.” According to the Journal editorial from last year:

But the preserve managers’ argument that unique educational and scientific programs will not be available if the Park Service (or the U.S. Forest Service) takes over is less than convincing.

Showing off the preserve’s new educational and scientific center in Jemez Springs recently, executive director Gary Bratcher said stargazing with big telescopes, for example, might not be allowed under some other agency’s jurisdiction. Nor, Bratcher said, might class-loads of students, which the new center can host for overnight or even weeklong stays, be able to learn science hands-on by collecting data on the preserve and analyzing it in the center’s state-of-the-art lab.

That’s hard to believe — we recall Chaco Canyon National Historic Park, as just one example, hosting a bevy of state astronomy fanatics who treated park visitors to just such a night of stargazing.
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Bratcher characterized the trust’s programs as “special,” apparently because the trust maintains strict control over access to the Valles Caldera. Agencies like the Park Service can’t do that, says Bratcher, so their programs aren’t going to be as special. Somebody should remind Bratcher that lack of public access has been the No. 1 complaint about the trust’s management of the preserve.
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Bratcher also characterized the trust management as light on its feet and flexible. That’s laughable. The trust wasn’t even flexible enough to recognize the good financial deal offered recently by a national environmental group, which would have paid many times the going rate to lease the preserve’s grazing rights for the opportunity not to run cows.

The trust certainly hasn’t been flexible enough to figure out ways to increase opportunities for public access to the hiking, skiing, camping and sightseeing crowd, either. And that’s the main reason for the public sentiment that’s fueling the crusade to turn preserve management over to someone else.

Bratcher’s misleading assertions don’t stop with his misstatements to the press. In the Preserve’s most recent annual report to Congress, Bratcher falsely proclaimed in his “Executive Director Perspective” letter that there exists “strong public support” for management of the Preserve under his direction. However, as he is well aware, evidence shows the exact opposite to be true:

On Wednesday, a letter written by Staci Stevens of Santa Fe was printed in the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Far-sighted senators

Recently, Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall introduced legislation to transfer the management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service.

As anyone who has been to the caldera can testify, it is spectacular to behold and has a fascinating geological and cultural history.

The preserve is listed as one of Audubon New Mexico’s top 10 Important Bird Areas and provides habitat for a wide range of other wildlife, including 17 threatened or endangered species, and such animals as the black bear, mountain lion, goshawk, peregrine falcon and Río Grande cutthroat trout.

The bill introduced by our senators would still allow hunting, fishing and cattle grazing as well as ensure access by pueblos to tribal cultural and religious sites. Transfer of the caldera to park-service management will ensure proper management of this iconic area for generations to come. I thank the senators for their foresight!

Staci Stevens
Santa Fe

A legislative clash regarding the future of the Valles Caldera has emerged in Washington as two bills have been introduced in the U.S. Senate that would have starkly different outcomes for the Jemez Mountains: one would transfer the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service, while another would entirely eliminate all federal appropriations for the Valles Caldera if it remains as part of the Department of Agriculture, placing the Preserve’s viability in immediate danger.

The first bill, reintroduced yesterday from the previous Congress by New Mexico’s U.S. Senators, Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall, would dissolve the Valles Caldera Trust and designate the Valles Caldera National Preserve as a unit of the National Park system. The legislation, S.564, once again titled the “Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act,” was read on the floor of the U.S. Senate yesterday and has been referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which Bingaman chairs.

The Bingaman-Udall legislation, which you can read by clicking here, is identical to the marked-up Valles Caldera-NPS transfer bill that was unanimously approved by the Senate Energy Committee last August after the committee held hearings. Last year’s bill died in December after it was inserted as the keynote item into a large omnibus public lands bill that never came up for a vote in that month’s lame-duck session of Congress.

If it passed, the Valles Caldera would not become a national park. Rather it would be America’s 21st national park preserve, a designation designed to give certain NPS units an exemption from the Park Service’s usual rules that prohibit hunting and fishing — traditional activities on the Caldera that are explicitly protected in the Bingaman-Udall legislation.

The second Valles Caldera-related bill introduced in the Senate this month — S.475, the “Enacting President Obama’s Recommendations for Program Termination Act,” introduced by Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (R), would halt all federal appropriations for the Valles Caldera Trust (among many other federal programs) immediately. The bill states that “no Federal funds may be expended for the Valles Caldera of the Department of Agriculture,” and “any funds appropriated to or unobligated by the program shall be rescinded and returned to the Treasury.” Bingaman and Udall’s bill would thwart Coburn’s bill in the context of the Caldera by removing the Preserve from the auspices of the Agriculture Department. Coburn’s bill has been read on the Senate floor and has been referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Bingaman and Udall announced the reintroduction of their legislation in a joint news release yesterday:

The Senators today introduced legislation that directs the Park Service to take over management of the Valles Caldera in a way that protects the Preserve’s natural and cultural resources. Hunting, fishing, and cattle grazing would be permitted under the bill. Additionally, the measure strengthens protections for tribal cultural and religious sites and ensures access by pueblos to the area.

Bingaman and Udall first introduced their legislation last year, following a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) that said the Preserve is at least five years behind schedule in the development of an effective management control system and that the requirement to achieve financial self-sustainability by 2015 is the Trust’s biggest challenge and will be difficult to achieve.

A separate National Park Service study, which was requested by Bingaman and Udall, determined the Valles Caldera meets the high criteria for inclusion in the National Park System as a National Preserve. In particular, the report highlighted the nationally significant geologic resources found in the area.

“The Valles Caldera is one of the most spectacular places to visit in New Mexico. I believe it belongs within the National Park Service, which has a long history of managing our nation’s most special natural resources,” Bingaman said.

“By utilizing the resources and skills of the National Park Service, I believe the Valles Caldera National Preserve will continue to prosper as a natural wonder full of significant geology, ecology, history, and culture,” Udall said. “Park Service management is the next critical step in preserving this national treasure for future generations. I look forward to working with Senator Bingaman and all the stakeholders who care about the Caldera to accomplish this important goal.”

The first calls to bring the Valles Caldera into the National Park System were in 1899. In four separate studies throughout the next century the Park Service found that the area was suitable for protective status under its management. But it wasn’t until 2000 that Bingaman, former Senator Pete Domenici and then-Representative Udall were successful in acquiring the property for $100 million. The law also established an experimental management framework where a Board of Trustees would manage the Preserve as a working ranch with public access, with the goal of becoming financially self-sustaining by 2015.

Last year, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved the legislation, clearing it for full Senate consideration. Unfortunately, there was not enough time in the session to consider it. The bill will once again be referred to the Energy Committee, which Bingaman chairs.

The newly-reintroduced Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act stipulates the following:

• Hunting and fishing “shall be permitted” under NPS management of the Caldera
• Grazing of livestock “may” be allowed to continue, “to the extent the use furthers scientific research or interpretation of the ranching history of the Preserve”
• Immediately upon passage the Secretary of the Interior will have sole management responsibility of the Preserve. Within 180 days of passage, the Valles Caldera Trust will be terminated, at which time the Valles Caldera Preservation Act of 2000 will also be repealed (but this 180 period can be extended if the Secretary of Agriculture “determines that the termination date should be extended to facilitate the transitional management of the preserve”). During the 180-day interim period, “the Preserve shall remain open to public use”
• The NPS “may coordinate the management and operations of the Preserve with the Bandelier National Monument”
• A comprehensive management plan (which has never been prepared by the Trust) will be produced within three years
• The preserve’s universally-acclaimed science and education program will be continued until the aforementioned management plan is prepared, at which time the NPS will establish a new science and education program
• The feasibility of creating a Caldera Rim Trail (inside only the boundaries of both the Preserve and Santa Fe National Forest — not on portions of the Caldera Rim owned by Santa Clara Pueblo) will be studied within three years of passage
• The NPS may establish a science and education facility outside of the boundaries of the preserve (enabling the continuation of the VCNP’s science and education center in Jemez Springs)
• No roads or motorized buildings will be allowed to be constructed, nor will motorized access be allowed, on the Preserve’s many volcanic domes above 9,600 feet in elevation or 250 feet below the top of the dome, whichever is lower, except for administrative purposes or emergencies
• The NPS will ensure the protection of traditional and cultural sites in the Preserve (as well as access to these sites by pueblo members) and may “temporarily close to general public use one or more specific areas of the preserve to protect traditional cultural and customary uses”
• The boundaries of the Santa Fe National Forest will be modified to exclude the preserve
• All Trust employees will be retained for at least 180 days after the passage of this legislation, at which time the NPS may hire them on a noncompetitive basis for comparable positions at the Valles Caldera or elsewhere in the NPS or Forest Service in New Mexico

Here are some links to news coverage of the Bingaman-Udall legislation:

Santa Fe New Mexican: “Local News In Brief — N.M. senators renew Valles Caldera proposal”

Albuquerque Journal North: “Senators Make Another Push”

National Parks Magazine, the quarterly publication of the National Parks Conservation Association, features in its fall edition an in-depth profile of the Valles Caldera National Preserve and legislation currently in the U.S. Senate that would transfer it to the National Park Service. Read this article here. You can also click below to watch an accompanying video, which features some magnificent shots of the Caldera’s scenic splendor, as well as an interview with Bob Parmenter, the Preserve’s director of science and education:

Below are the first few paragraphs of National Parks Magazine’s profile of the Caldera:

Standing on Rabbit Ridge, on the southern rim of the Valles Caldera, two worlds unfold below you. Gaze to the north and you see a stunning, 14-mile-wide volcanic crater: Ponderosa-covered mountains ring a grassy basin so vast, you have to turn your head to take in its immensity. No roads or buildings mar these meadows.

It’s a profoundly calming landscape, yet occasional bits of glassy black obsidian embedded in the boulders at your feet hint at the volcano’s cataclysmic past. Magma once exploded from this yawning mouth in eruptions that molded the New Mexico landscape for miles around—including 33,000-acre Bandelier National Monument to the south.

In fact, Bandelier’s boundary sits just steps away from this hike-to viewpoint. A signed fence on Rabbit Ridge delineates Park Service land from Valles Caldera National Preserve, two separately managed parcels that have something in common: The ash spewed in one of Valles Caldera’s eruptive fits created Bandelier’s tuff, the chalky stone that ancestral Puebloans carved into dwellings. You can’t discern Bandelier’s ruins from here, but you can admire big swaths of tuff that give the whole panorama a rosy glow.

For now, barbed wire separates the two properties, but advocates seek to close that rift by bringing Valles Caldera under Park Service management. Not only would its inclusion recognize this corner of northern New Mexico as a geological treasure, it would expand access to it—something would-be visitors have long desired.

More than a century of private ownership and ranching kept Valles Caldera off-limits to all but a few. Even after 2000, when it was purchased by the federal government and became public land, access was limited. Valles Caldera sees just 17,000 visitors annually, compared with 212,500 at Bandelier.

On Tuesday, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson sent a letter to Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall expressing his support for the legislation introduced in Congress last month that would give control of the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service. Click here to read the press release announcing Gov. Richardson’s support for the legislation, and click here to read the Associated Press story on this announcement.

In his letter, the governor wrote: “I appreciate the good work of the Board Members of the Valles Caldera Trust and the Preserve staff over the last decade. However, I concur with you that transfer of management to the National Park Service is appropriate for the long-term preservation of the Valles Caldera.”

The letter is included below:

June 22, 2010
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Dear Senator Bingaman and Senator Udall:

Thank you for your leadership in introducing the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act to ensure the long-term protection of one of New Mexico’s most magnificent natural areas. New Mexico’s Valles Caldera is one of only three supervolcanoes in the United States, in the company of Yellowstone, Wyoming and Long Valley, California. The Valles Caldera is home to important tribal and cultural sites as well as natural resources including elk, deer, and other wildlife. Permanently protecting this unusual landscape as a Preserve in out National Park Service system is the right thing to do.

I appreciate the good work of the Board Members of the Valles Caldera Trust and the Preserve staff over the last decade. However, I concur with you that transfer of management to the National Park Service is appropriate for the long-term preservation of the Valles Caldera.

It is critical that activities such as hunting, fishing, and cattle grazing continue to be permitted in the new Preserve, and your bill allows these traditional uses of the land to continue. The state will still have an important role in wildlife management. As this proposal moves forward, I request that your offices and the National Park Service work closely with the State, particularly the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish and State Game Commission, to ensure that traditional uses of this landscape are preserved for future generations.

I encourage timely passage of the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management act.

Sincerely,
Bill Richardson
Governor of New Mexico

William DeBuys, who from 2001 to 2004 served as the founding chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, wrote an editorial this week on the New West website advocating passage of the legislation introduced by U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall that would transfer management of the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service and dissolve the Valles Caldera Trust.

Mr. DeBuys, among whose books is Valles Caldera: A Vision for New Mexico’s National Preserve, wrote this piece in response to this week’s editorial written by Courtney White that was titled “A Step Backward: the Valles Caldera National Park.”  Mr. White’s piece argues against the legislation and questions whether the late Stewart Udall, who served as Secretary of the Interior under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (and is the father of Sen. Tom Udall), would have supported the bill that his son co-sponsored.  Click here to read Mr. DeBuys’ piece.

Mr. DeBuys includes some compelling insight, revealing that he visited with Stewart Udall a month before his death in March, and according to Mr. DeBuys, Mr. Udall “expressed deep satisfaction that introduction of the bill was imminent.”

Below is a portion of the editorial, headlined “Valles Caldera: What Would Stewart Udall Think?”

Courtney White has my sympathy. He regrets that the land management “experiment” of the Valles Caldera Trust should be abandoned. I share his regret, but not his conclusion. It is time for all of us to face facts and not entangle the fate of a peerless natural landscape in dreamy notions about “new approaches.” The caldera has been the subject of a new approach for nearly a decade. It hasn’t worked.
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Lamentably, the complex and conflicted mission with which the Trust was charged has produced paralysis, not synthesis, and the public is understandably frustrated by the conspicuous lack of both progress and access at the preserve.

The trust would have better served its fortunes in recent years by focusing its energies on building a broad public constituency; ultimately, its failure is not that it cannot be self-sufficient in dollars, but that the people it should be serving have failed to care sufficiently about it. As a result, the enormous reservoir of public goodwill with which the Trust started its journey has largely been consumed. Let’s move on.

Mr. White’s assertion that the “national park idea… is not well-suited for the onrushing, global challenges of the 21st century” is nonsense, and it is offensive that he should utter this foolishness in reference to Stewart Udall. If Stewart were still alive, he would be the first to say that the national park idea has proved adaptable and enduring, not least in lands beyond the borders of the United States where the defense of the natural world is led by citizens with sharper vision than Mr. White’s. The national park idea continues to represent one of the best strategies yet devised for protecting the environmental commons against the relentless push to privatize and exploit the earth’s goods.

Making the Valles Caldera National Preserve a unit of the National Park System will assure the protection and effective stewardship of an extraordinary place. New Mexico Senators Bingaman and Udall are demonstrating realism and leadership in championing the necessary legislation. Their bill would permit continued grazing and hunting on the preserve, and it also calls for continuation of the preserve’s science and education program, one of the signal achievements of the Trust’s early years. When I last saw Stewart Udall, about a month before he passed away, he expressed deep satisfaction that introduction of the bill was imminent.