In New Mexico, a unique plan to manage a rare national preserve

VALLES CALDERA NATIONAL PRESERVE, N.M. (AP)--The slanting rays of the late afternoon sun turn the thick carpet of grass to gold and steepen the shadows on the surrounding mountains.

The wind has died down, and the insistent burbling of a narrow, winding stream is the loudest sound. A pair of hawks swoops low. A watchful coyote stares from a hillside.

The serenity of the landscape belies its origins: This series of big, grassy bowls is the interior of a collapsed volcano, which more than a million years ago spewed ash and lava in a humongous eruption that helped form the surrounding Jemez Mountains.

"The geology here is singular and interesting but what really attracts people is just the sheer beauty of the place," said William deBuys, one of the authors of a new book on the caldera and a former chairman of the board that runs it.

"When you're in the Valles Caldera, everything you see is in the Valles Caldera with you. The rim completely encloses you, and it's as though it's a separate, beautiful world."

The Valles Caldera is singular, too, in another way. Purchased six years ago for $101 million by the federal government, the 89,000-acre former cattle ranch--with its meadows, pine forests, hot springs, streams, volcanic domes and huge elk herds--is managed not by a federal agency, but by a board of trustees appointed largely by the president.

The board's daunting task: protect the land's natural and cultural resources, provide recreational opportunities, operate it as a working ranch, and be financially self-sufficient by 2015.

It's an experiment in the way public lands are managed--only the Presidio in San Francisco, the military base-turned-park, has a similar governance--and one that is now under fire from the same conservation groups that urged the government to buy the land in the first place.

The Valles Caldera Coalition accuses the nine-member board of poor management, of dragging its feet on crucial long-term planning, and of being unresponsive to a public hungering for input and access.

"My take is, we haven't started the experiment yet," said Marty Peale, coordinator of the coalition, which is considering suing the board over the planning issue.

The coalition says an event on a Saturday in late August was "the tip of the mismanagement iceberg."

The Valles Caldera was opened to the general public for a first-ever, free drive-through. More than 3,700 visitors in 1,400-plus vehicles clogged the preserve's narrow, muddy roads, and hundreds more vehicles were shut out when the overwhelming traffic problems forced organizers to close the gate early.

The trust "could not properly design a relatively simple drive-through event," the coalition complained in a recent letter to U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-NM.

Critics also say the board isn't allowing its professional staff enough leeway. Former New Mexico Land Commissioner Ray Powell quit as the trust's executive director in 2005--after less than a year on the job--saying it wasn't a policy-making position.

Powell envisions a world-class preserve with hands-on educational and scientific programs--a place "to celebrate the natural world while learning about it." Such programs could underwrite related ventures, he says, such as a rim trail around the circumference of the preserve.

Instead, Powell said, the board wanted to focus on the cattle ranching component.

A federal Government Accountability Office report a year ago said the trust "still has much work to do to meet its goals"--including financial viability.

"We've had some rough spots, and that's predictable," board chairwoman Tracy Seidman Hephner says in response to all the criticism. She likens it to the post-honeymoon period of marriage: "This is real life; you have to make it work."

Hephner, a rancher for 32 years, says the board has been focused on the cattle program because--unlike the fee-based hunting, fishing and recreation programs offered on a limited basis by the preserve--it was costing money and "just wasn't working very well."

She said the Valles Caldera Trust faces big challenges: The goals stated in the law must be balanced, staggered terms means board members change regularly, and the public has "huge expectations about what they want to see happen on that landscape."

"It doesn't happen as fast as any one of us wants it to," Hephner said.

The day of the August drive-through Hephner was on horseback, chatting with waiting motorists and asking them how long it had taken to get through the preserve's gate.

One local man's answer: "Fifty-nine years."

"There really are people who have looked out from the highway and dreamed about what it would be like to be on that place for years," the chairwoman said.

Roughly 75 miles from Albuquerque and 50 miles from Santa Fe, the Valles Caldera has been used by humans for thousands for years--for hunting, for gathering food plants and obsidian for tools, for sacred rituals, more recently for running sheep and cattle.

The biggest of its grassy bowls is the Valle Grande, almost four miles across, visible from a state highway that cuts across the southeast edge of the caldera. The stunning view prompts many motorists to put on the brakes, get out the binoculars, and peer at the massive herds of elk, like so many black dots in the valle.

While there are only a handful of structures on the property, it is not a pristine wilderness. There are nearly 1,500 miles of logging roads, and 40,000 of the caldera's 65,000 forested acres have been timbered.

"What you've got is an absolutely magnificent environment that has been severely compromised, so you need the emphasis on restoration," Powell said.

Powell and the coalition say what's needed is long-term planning that takes into account all the competing interests and views--and for that, the public must be involved.

"What I have learned is if you're not experiencing something directly, you're not going to care for it and you're not going to fight for it," Powell said. "If people feel like they can only look across the fence line, the place is doomed."

Date: 12/21/06

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