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Thursday, July 01, 2010
Control of Preserve May Change
By Michael Coleman
Journal Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — A bill to transfer stewardship of the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico from a trust to the National Park Service earned widespread support at a Senate hearing Wednesday.
The Senate measure, sponsored by Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall of New Mexico, aims to put the pristine 89,000-acre preserve under closer government management.
Purchased by the federal government for $100 million in 2000, the Valles Caldera has been managed as a presidentially appointed trust with a working ranch for the past decade. Public access to the land is limited, and some would like to see the National Park Service make it more readily available for hiking, fishing, hunting and other recreational uses.
"In my view, the agency that can best achieve the mission of protecting the preserve's natural and cultural resources, while providing for improved educational and recreational opportunities and ensuring the long-term financial success of the preserve, is the National Park Service," said Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Bingaman and others said the transfer is in no way meant to denigrate the work of the existing management trust, which was devised in 2000 as a highly unusual management program for such a vast tract of public land. Perhaps the trust's biggest challenge is that it was charged with establishing financial self-sufficiency for the preserve, a goal that many thought unrealistic at the outset and has never been met.
A National Park Service study determined the Valles Caldera meets the criteria for inclusion in the national park system as a national preserve.
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