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Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Trust Argues for Status Quo
The Valles Caldera National Preserve's managers weighed in on the subject of turning the preserve over to the National Park Service recently, and they're not in favor of the idea. Better, they say, to simply change the federal law that created the preserve so that it allows for continuing federal funding past 2015, the year the preserve is supposed to become economically self-sufficient.
They certainly have a point: Freed from the onus of having to turn a profit, the preserve could easily continue to provide unique recreational and other opportunities beyond that date. A simple change in the law is certainly one solution worth considering to the problem of what will happen to the preserve post-2015 if it continues to operate in the red.
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. Moreover, since the Valles Caldera Trust, the preserve's manager, has used funds from Caldera recreational fees to renovate an old monastery for the educational center, couldn't some way be found to incorporate that — and the trust's first-rate scientific staff — into another agency's management plans? Some similar type of accommodation, after all, may be needed to continue the preserve's highly lucrative hunting and fishing programs if another agency takes over.
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.
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.
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