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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

The Santa Fe National Forest (SFNF) today released a draft environmental impact statement regarding its new Travel Management Plan, which includes five alternatives for managing where the public can drive motorized vehicles in the forest. The alternatives would eliminate between 47% and 63% of the Forest’s currently open roads (except for alternative one, which would do nothing). The SFNF also announced eight public meetings throughout Northern New Mexico in August to receive public comment about today’s released documents.

Also today, Daniel Jirón, the supervisor of the Santa Fe National Forest, announced that he is leaving his post to serve as the Deputy Regional Forest Supervisor for the Pacific Southwest Region, according to Staci Matlock of the Santa Fe New Mexican. Deputy forest supervisor Erin Connelly will serve as the interim supervisor for the SFNF. Click here to read Ms. Matlock’s article.

The Supervisor of the Santa Fe National Forest is automatically an ex-officio member of the Board of Trustees of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, so Mr. Jirón will also be departing from his position with the Preserve’s Board and will be replaced by Ms. Connelly. However, in practice, ex-officio members of the Board have had very little power relative to the politically-appointed members of the Board.

The Santa Fe National Forest manages 1.6 million acres of forest in Northern New Mexico, including most of land surrounding the Valles Caldera National Preserve, and about 20% of the geologic Valles Caldera itself.

Read the entire Draft Environmental Impact Statement by clicking here.

Access all of the documents released today by the SFNF by clicking here.

Read today’s press release from the Santa Fe National Forest (containing the five Travel Management Plan alternatives as well as details on the eight public meetings that the SFNF will conduct in August) by clicking here.

Continue reading ‘Between 47% and 63% of Santa Fe National Forest’s open roads could be closed under Travel Management Plan; eight public meetings planned for Aug.; Jirón departs as supervisor’

UPDATE: July 21, 2010 — The Valles Caldera Trust has announced that it will conduct a public meeting on Thursday, August 12th from 5:30-8:00 PM to discuss this landscape restoration and management plan, at the Preserve’s Science and Education Center at 90 Villa Louis Martin in Jemez Springs.

On Friday, a notice appeared on the Federal Register that had been submitted on July 8, 2010 by the Valles Caldera Trust, titled: “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.

The accompanying summary of the notice is as follows:

The Valles Caldera Trust (VCT) a wholly owned government corporation empowered to provide management and administrative services for the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP) intends to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to analyze and disclose the potential impacts of a proposed Landscape Restoration and Management Plan (LRMP) which includes mechanical treatments, prescribed burning, management of lightning caused wildland fires (wildland fire use), restoration or riparian areas, closure and maintenance of roads and eradication of noxious weeds and invasive plants.

The Trust requests comments on this notice by August 18, 2010, at comments@vallescaldera.gov.

In an article in today’s Albuquerque Journal, Stephen Henry, the Chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust, misrepresented essential details of the U.S. Senate bill that would transfer the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service. Click here to read the article. Non-subscribers must click on the “trial access pass” button to read this story.

Specifically, Mr. Henry misrepresented the portion of the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act (S.3452) that restricts certain activities on peaks above 9,250 feet in elevation on the Preserve. Henry is quoted in the article as stating:

“Ninety-two thousand feet [sic] also shuts down some of the major roads we have to transport people from one end of the preserve to another,” he said. “That can probably be changed, but who wants to run a national park known for its sightseeing, and no one can climb to the top of any peaks?”

However, despite Mr. Henry’s assertion, no restriction on climbing to the top of these peaks exists in the legislation.

Specifically, section 3(h)1 of the bill states that on 14 volcanic domes higher than 9,250 feet in elevation in the Preserve, “no roads or facilities shall be constructed; and no motorized access shall be allowed.” But the bill does not restrict hiking access to these peaks — it actually protects them from development and vehicular use.

As a matter of fact, in the nearly ten-year history of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, the public (with the exception of Pueblo members) has been entirely shut out of opportunities to legally hike to the top of all volcanic domes inside the rim of the Caldera at all times, apart from South Mountain, which was opened last year.

It is ironic, therefore, that Mr. Henry would be objecting to a bill by claiming that it would restrict hikers’ access to 14 stunning and dramatic volcanic domes, when under his leadership, the public has been forbidden to climb to the top of all but one of these peaks and savor the views of the scenic crown jewel of Northern New Mexico from nearly two miles high.

Mr. Henry also implies in the article that the legislation is inadequate because forest restoration and thinning priorities wouldn’t be tackled by the National Park Service if the bill passes. But the Journal article implicitly points out the weakness of this argument:

The new bill would specifically require the NPS “to protect and preserve the fish, wildlife, watershed, natural, scientific, scenic, geologic, historic, cultural, archeological and recreational values of the area.”

This would presumably allow for thinning to go on as it would at any other national park where tree density is a concern. Nearby Bandelier National Monument, for instance, conducts thinning operations.

During this crucial time in the post-Baca Ranch history of the Valles Caldera, debate should be encouraged as to the merits of the legislation. But all sides should stick to the facts.

The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, Stephen Henry, has amended his testimony that he provided last month to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee regarding legislation to transfer the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service. In Mr. Henry’s in-person testimony, he was one of two witnesses (out of eight) that did not express support for the Valles Caldera National Preserve Management Act, stating that he was “disappointed and concerned” about the bill. But he did not explicitly oppose the bill during his testimony.

However, on Friday, in a press release sent out by the Valles Caldera Trust, Mr. Henry unambiguously stated his opposition to the bill in its current form, proclaiming that it is “inadequate,” “rushed,” and does not address “complicated land management issues.”

There was no word from the Valles Caldera Trust regarding whether the two new members of the Board of Trustees that were appointed in May by President Obama, Melissa Savage and C. Kenneth Smith, agreed with the conclusions drawn by Mr. Henry, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

Friday’s press release is included below in its entirety:

Continue reading ‘Valles Caldera Trust chairman expresses objections to Senate bill in amended testimony’