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

The Santa Fe New Mexican published an op-ed Saturday by Phillip A. Young, a “retired National Park Service senior special agent and former State Historic Preservation Division archaeologist and SiteWatch coordinator who lives in Santa Fe.” Young asserts in his op-ed his support for a National Park Service takeover of the Valles Caldera.

The Valles Caldera Trust has been soliciting opinions, and I think it would make an excellent addition to our National Park system. The preserve is next to the National Park Service’s Bandelier National Monument, and it has extensive experience with national preserves, managing them from Alaska to Florida.

The enabling legislation asked the trust to seek financial self-sustainability in 15 years. They have tried to manage the preserve in a manner to achieve that objective; it has fallen short. Most public lands and open space do not generate the income needed to be self-sufficient.

Public lands and preserves provide opportunities for encounters with our heritage and for the soul: wildlife, the peace of quiet, the lung-full of fresh clean air, the azure sky. These direct benefits are worthy of public cost. The preserve could also benefit gateway communities like Jemez Springs. Sustainable economic opportunities abound around our open lands in tours, lodging, restaurants, etc.

Click here to read the full op-ed.

Roger G. Kennedy, a former director of the National Park Service, revealed his support for that agency to assume control over the Valles Caldera National Preserve yesterday.

He announced this in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, in response to another opinion piece in that paper earlier this week that dealt with the concept of the national park, a topic that has been receiving a great deal of media coverage recently due to the airing of the Ken Burns PBS miniseries “National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”

Kennedy lauds the concept of having protected land near cities, stating that “accessible places near urban areas are, as well, examples of good land use and as re-inspirators for everyday life. That is the joy of the accessible park lands around San Francisco, Denver, New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.”

And now we need another great national park. The Valles Caldera, near the growing metropolitan areas of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, N.M., should be a national park.

Click here to read Kennedy’s op-ed in its entirety.

On Thursday, the Albuquerque Journal published an article in its “GO!” travel section that examined some “substantial operational differences” that could result for visitors to the Valles Caldera after a potential transfer of management to the National Park Service takes place. The profile, written by frequent contributor of Journal op-eds, Dave Menicucci, was headlined “Land of the People.”

“The possibilities are endless,” Tom Ribe exclaimed as he peered over the fence into the Valle Grande, the largest of the grassy valleys in the Valles Caldera National Preserve. “With the possibility of the Park Service assuming management, we are on the cusp of taking this property back to the citizens who own it.”

Ribe was pondering the possible changes if the Valles Caldera, currently under an experimental management system, is converted to a National Park Service preserve. It would become the country’s 19th preserve, and most users would recognize substantial operational differences.

“Access will be significantly increased, fees will be reduced or eliminated, and activities will be expanded,” Ribe said. “But resources will continue to be protected.”

Read this article in the Journalby clicking here. After clicking on this link, non-subscribers to the Journal will have to click “trial premium pass” at the lower left corner of the screen to read the feature.

Non-profit advocacy group Caldera Action issued a press release last week announcing the conclusion of an analysis of public comments from four workshops conducted in 2007 by the Valles Caldera Trust to gather input from members of the public regarding the future of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. According to Caldera Action, the Valles Caldera Trust is overlooking the opinion of the 95% of public comments that opposed revenue-driven development of the Preserve.

In 2007, four public meetings were held in separate locations throughout New Mexico to gather public opinion about future management of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. A consulting firm was paid approximately $150,000 by the Trust to conduct the meetings and prepare a compilation of the public comments.

However, Caldera Action said that the final report contained no analysis of the comments, with the comments themselves simply having been listed. “In December 2007, at a public meeting of the Valles Caldera Trust, several members of the public questioned why the report contained no analysis of the data,” Caldera Action stated in the release. “The response was that the contractor [Mary Orton Company] had been directed to supply data only. The Trustees provided no further explanation and indicated that no additional analysis was planned.”

Given the new round of public meetings held in Albuquerque and Santa Fe last month to gather public opinion about five possible alternatives for future access and use of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, Caldera Action performed its own analysis of the comments gathered by the Valles Caldera Trust in 2007. According to the group:

The analysis shows that more than 95% of the 154 comments received at the 2007 public meetings favored natural, undeveloped, wild conditions and values at the VCNP. Yet the VCNP Trust’s current “Access and Use” planning alternatives all tilt strongly toward heavy development of the VCNP including new roads, RV parks, hotels, gift shops, parking lots, etc.

“It is clear from the statistics that the overwhelming desire of the attendees of the 2007 public meetings was that the Preserve should be managed to retain its natural features and to preserve its natural state—as it exists today.” said the study’s two authors, Betsy Barnett and Dave Meniccuci. “So few comments favored commercialization that they were all grouped in the “other” categories (4.5%) along with similarly disparate comments.”

Tom Ribe, Executive Director of Caldera Action, questioned the focus on development in the Trust’s five public access and use alternatives, given the evident opposition to this in public opinion from 2007. “Revenue driven development plans, disconnected from public vision and desires could lead to inappropriate and environmentally damaging construction,” Ribe said.

The group also called for the creation of the comprehensive management program that the federal Valles Caldera Preservation Act of 2000 requires:

Caldera Action is also troubled that the Trust has never developed the comprehensive management program (plan) mandated by Congress in the 2000 legislation establishing the VCNP. Without a comprehensive plan the current access and use planning process is disconnected from other plans, could conflict with key cultural and environmental values at the Preserve and could result in environmental damage, public expense, and legal problems. The courts have challenged such haphazard planning in the past. Caldera Action is calling on the VCNP Trust to suspend its access and use planning process until a comprehensive management plan is completed.

Caldera Action has also expressed its support for the National Park Service to assume management of the Valles Caldera as a National Park Preserve.

Santa Fe resident Don Dayton, a former park ranger in three National Parks and superintendent of four National Park areas including White Sands National Monument and Carlsbad Caverns National Park, wrote an op-ed published in the Santa Fe New Mexican this weekend, “commend[ing] Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall for requesting a study by the National Park Service” to assess the feasibility of having that agency manage the Valles Caldera as a National Park Preserve. An excerpt follows:

It seems very relevant that articles regarding the future of Valles Caldera National Preserve appear in the New Mexican, just as KNME-TV airs National Parks: America’s Best Idea. The film relates the history of the creation of Yosemite National Park when the fight was between creating a commercially dominated National Park versus a park for the people. In some ways, this is the question posed for Valles Caldera today.

From my 36 years experience with the National Park Service, there is simply no way that Valles Caldera can operate on a self-sustaining basis without heavy commercialization that could be highly detrimental to the area. In fact, the recent study commissioned by the Preserve Board recommends a “high-end” luxury hotel for the wealthy. The current operation, with the restrictions imposed, is already fast outpricing the average citizen’s ability to enjoy the area.

Read the entire op-ed here.

Edward Olona, president of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, a 95-year-old sportsman’s conservation organization, penned an op-ed in the Santa Fe New Mexican today, headlined “Public resource management needed for Valles Caldera.” This piece was written in response to an editorial published by the New Mexican last week, which called for a delay in a proposed takeover of the Valles Caldera National Preserve by the National Park Service until the recession ends. An excerpt of today’s op-ed follows:

Most important, and a point missed in Monday’s editorial, is that despite all the high fees, this experimental management system is actually costing the taxpayers more money than traditional management. At present, Valles Caldera hosts 15,000 visitors per year with an operating budget of around $4 million, a cost of about $266 per visitor. Bandelier National Monument, which is managed by the National Park Service, hosts more than 250,000 visitors per year on a budget of around $2.5 million, or about $10 per visitor.

People are demanding a new approach, one in which the preserve is maintained but professionally managed as public land for the benefit of all citizens. For these reasons the New Mexico Wildlife Federation supports the move by New Mexico’s two U.S. senators to start exploring options to turn management over to a professional, public natural resource agency, such as the National Park Service or U.S. Forest Service.

Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall have jointly asked the National Park Service to study the option of managing Valles Caldera as a national preserve —- not as a national park as was erroneously stated in your editorial, an important distinction because hunting is allowed in national preserves.

Read this op-ed in its entirety by clicking here.

The editors of the Santa Fe New Mexican published an editorial this week in which they examine the possibility of the Valles Caldera National Preserve being managed by the National Park Service. In response to a June request by U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall (D-NM), the NPS has been preparing a “reconaissance study,” analyzing the feasibility of the agency assuming control of the Caldera and running it as a National Park Preserve. Read the editorial here.

The editors note that, “with pretty good reason, the push is on to turn the Valles Caldera into a national park,” pointing out that “many New Mexicans are bridling at the lack of accessibility” on the Preserve, and that “prospects of profitability are, to put it mildly, bleak,” with the Preserve “producing only about $800,000 a year in fees; a fifth of what’s being spent to run it.”

However, the editorial asserts that a National Park Service takeover “should wait until the nation’s economy recovers from its depression-like condition, and big-time revenues return.”

A clarification should be made about an inaccuracy in this editorial: New Mexico’s two U.S. Senators requested a study on the possibility of turning the Valles Caldera into a National Preserve run by the National Park Service, not into a National Park itself. There are 18 other National Preserves in the National Park system — read about all of them here. A major difference between a National Park and a National Park Preserve is that hunting and fishing are allowed at most Preserves, which would retain some key Caldera revenue sources.

It is also interesting to read the various online comments that have been posted on the New Mexican web site in response to this editorial. Despite the declaration in the editorial that it would be more expensive to run the Valles Caldera by the National Park Service, the first comment asserts that it would be less expensive to run the Caldera by the NPS, since “the management system we have now is terribly inefficient and spends about 20 times per visitor what Bandelier [National Monument, bordering the Caldera] spends and 3 times per acre what Yellowstone Park spends, but provides very few services in comparison.”  Read all of the online comments here.