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Valles Caldera National Preserve
BY JOSHUA ZAFFOS
UPDATED: MARCH 2006
"When we started, I think a lot of people assumed it would be just another part of the national forest," said William deBuys, former chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust, in July 2004. "Now, I think people are really recognizing that the Valles Caldera is different."
Location: 20 miles west of Los Alamos, New Mexico
Objective: To preserve the working landscape and protect the biological, geologic, recreational, and cultural resources of the region through science-based adaptive management and financial autonomy.
History: When the historic Baca Ranch went up for sale in 1998, people from New Mexico and all over the country called for the federal government to provide the money to protect the 89,000-acre, high-country grasslands. The Baca Ranch comprises geologic wonders, a considerable elk herd, headwater streams, and undisturbed archaeological and cultural sites. Citizens feared that if the government passed on the offer, the ranch would be subdivided into ranchettes that would scramble the landscape and shut off public access. Still, New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici had strong reservations about the federal government enlarging its holdings in New Mexico. Ultimately, Domenici and the Clinton Administration struck a deal in 2000 that enabled the government to buy the Baca Ranch for about $96 million and be administered by the Valles Caldera Trust, a new and experimental management scheme for federal land.
The trust of the Valles Caldera National Preserve has seven presidentially appointed members who represent ranching, conservation, forestry, natural and cultural history, financial, and local government interests in the preserve. In addition, the managers of adjacent federal lands—the supervisor of Santa Fe National Forest and the superintendent of Bandelier National Monument—also serve on the board.
"When we started, we didn't own a pencil or a screwdriver," said deBuys, whose term on the board expired at the end of 2004, "and the only instructions we had were the text of the Valles Caldera legislation." Those instructions included objectives to operate the preserve as a working ranch, open the land to public recreation, and protect the cultural resources of the property—all while pursuing a goal of financial self-sufficiency.
The board of trustees went to work creating a comprehensive management framework (CMF) for the area, which was published in 2005.
Photo by Don J. Usner
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Accomplishments: The CMF provides strategic guidance aimed toward balancing the numerous objectives of the preserve. Science-based adaptive management has guided resource policy and gives the trust flexibility—a rare attribute for federal land administration—to amend programs based on monitoring and assessment. The preserve scientist is on equal footing with the preserve manager, an "unheard of" opportunity for public lands management, says Thomas Swetnam, former forestry chair on the board and a professor at the University of Arizona.
In cooperation with the Council on Environmental Quality, the board developed its own procedures for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). These guidelines are designed to facilitate interaction with the public and are tailored to the preserve, its resources, and the trust's commitment to adaptive management.
In 2002, an interim livestock-grazing plan specifically addressed needs among modest ranches in the region. The trustees created a replacement heifer program to supply area ranchers with bulls for breeding with their own heifers and improving their stock. A second component was the cow-calf "stewardship conservation program," which allowed private ranchers, including Jemez Pueblo Indians, to move their herds to the preserve for two-year stints while resting and restoring their own pastures.
Only one-fifth of the preserve was initially opened to grazing, with intentions to expand the program over time, based on environmental analysis. Now, the board of trustees is working on a comprehensive, preserve-wide forage management plan for the cattle and the elk herd.
The board is also finishing a recreation plan that will maintain limited access. Guided tours of the geology, wildlife and natural history—by foot, van, or horse-drawn wagon—take people around the preserve. Through reservations and lottery systems, small numbers of hikers, anglers, hunters, skiers, and mountain bikers can also explore the preserve for a minimal fee. About 10,000 visitors recreated on the 89,000 acres of Valles Caldera in 2005.
Photo by Don J. Usner
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Limited access provides solitude and, according to deBuys, assures visitors will not "love the place to death"—a serious danger for so attractive and unspoiled a landscape. Those regulations are also a design of the management plan and fit in with the science-based approach by allowing the trust to carefully monitor impacts on the site.
"The science and adaptive management and monitoring programs are the greatest opportunities for collaboration," says Swetnam, "because they're a vehicle for education…and learning what's going on in the preserve."
The preserve has also received continued support from Sen. Domenici, who sponsored Senate Bill 212, which President Bush signed at the end of 2005. The law authorizes the acquisition of a private company's subsurface mineral rights beneath the preserve. It also ensures that wildfire management is paid for through the U.S. Forest Service. A small fire in 2005 cost $300,000 and others could easily consume preserve funds and impede the goal of financial self-sufficiency.
Challenges/constraints: Financial autonomy is a unique mission among federal land reserves. Maintaining a balance between so many directed uses, as outlined in the CMF, and the interests among the board of trustees, is also a daunting and exceptional goal.
"The CMF was a very broad and encompassing view of the possibilities of the preserve, and now we're dealing with the reality," says current Trust board chair Tracy Seidman Hephner. "The honeymoon period's over."
The grazing program typifies the challenges for the board of trustees. Hephner estimates the preserve lost about $80,000 a year in 2004 and 2005 through the grazing program. The results led the trust to sell its bulls and end the heifer replacement and the cow-calf stewardship conservation programs. In summer 2006, the board hopes to break even by grazing steers on the preserve. That will likely exclude local ranchers and the previously established objectives of the interim grazing plan.
Marty Peale, coordinator of the Valles Caldera Coalition, says the board of trustees has neglected public input when forging ahead with these decisions. The coalition—a group of 41 organizations and individuals promoting the implementation of the preserve's legal guidelines—doesn't oppose grazing on the preserve. But members feel that management component has received attention at the expense of recreation and education, which provide more opportunities for financial self-reliance and are less likely to degrade resources.
"That strategy of just focusing on grazing is making everyone else really impatient," says Peale, "It's not about grazing, it's about inequity."
A November 2005 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), titled "Valles Caldera Trust Has Made Some Progress, but Needs to Do More to Meet Statutory Goals," also raised concerns. The GAO report criticized the board of trustees for a lack of strategic planning and monitoring systems to achieve financial self-sufficiency.
Trustees have had to deal with a wave of staff turnover in the last year, and they continue to work as pioneers in a unique land-management experiment. But they realize they have an agile tool in adaptive management to guide their decisions.
"It's part and parcel of what we do every day," says Hephner of adaptive management. "We're trying to take care of our financial resources as well as our natural resources."
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