Recent decisions on the Valles Caldera have left ranchers and environmentalists feeling not so at home on the range.
Within the pages of Rudolfo Anaya's latest Sonny Baca mystery novel,
Jemez Spring
, the nefarious antagonist sneaks a nuclear bomb on to the Valles Caldera. Writes Anaya: "There, about half a mile from Highway 4, which cut along the edge of the volcanic maw, sat the phallic spaceship, its nose stuck into the wet earth and winter-sere grass of the crater, its coat
of shining metal reflecting the morning sunlight."
In reality, those tasked with running the Caldera don't have a ticking nuclear bomb to diffuse.
At least not
literally.
But metaphorically speaking, the private ranch-turned-public-lands experiment has become increasingly explosive. Over the last few months, everything from its financial accountability to environmental conflicts to the preserve's board of trustee's management style has created conflict between the different entities invested in the project's success.
In part, the conflicts represent the natural growing pains for a project of unprecedented ambition. In 2000, when the federal government bought the private Baca Ranch in the Jemez Mountains for $97 million and created the Valles Caldera National Preserve, that move in and of itself was seen as a victory.
The 89,000-acre preserve sits about 50 miles from Santa Fe and spreads across a million-year-old collapsed volcanic crater, as well as grassy valleys, volcanic domes and the 11,254-foot-tall Redondo Peak. The thought of those lands finally being open to the public had elk
hunters, trout fishermen, backpackers, cross country skiers and ranchers alike champing at the bit.
The preserve was set up to run like no other in the country. It was to function as a working ranch, be financially self-sufficient and managed by a nine-member trust, rather than the US Forest Service or National Park Service.
In the early days, that trust, a Clinton-appointed board, worked well with the Valles Caldera Coalition, a group of conservation, recreational and ranching groups that lobbied for the preserve's creation and
remain involved now.
"Our approach was not to be confrontational, but to work collaboratively with the board of trustees," says Ernie Atencio, who was the coalition's first co-ordinator from 2001 until 2003.
Those days have changed.
Members of the coalition, as well as members of the general public, now complain of feeling left out of decisions-the preserve's grazing program has become a particular point of contention.
The preserve's most recent director, former state land commissioner Ray Powell, resigned in August-citing differences with the President Bush-appointed board. In November, the Government Accountability Office released an evaluation of the preserve's management. Among other things, the report said, the trust has neither set specific goals for its programs at the preserve nor found other
opportunities for generating revenue, such as from private donations. The trust also lacks a fire plan or liability insurance for the preserve, has not monitored its financial progress with audits, and along with staff, experienced high turnover. The report acknowledges that the trust has made progress-but says it still has a lot of work to do to meet the goals set under the founding legislation.
"We're at the tough part, which is to make it work," says Tracy Seidman Hephner, chairwoman of the board of trustees. "At the beginning, it's like dating, now it's like we're married."
And the honeymoon is over.
Cows are one of the trust's most contentious issues.
The trust opened the preserve to grazing in 2002 under a controversial interim grazing plan. The original plan was hastily approved under the auspices of helping northern New Mexico's ranchers during a time of drought. It included two different programs
for local ranchers to graze their herds within the preserve: The Conservation Stewardship Program and The Heifer Replacement Program.
The Conservation Stewardship Program allows local ranchers, such as those from Jemez Pueblo, to run their cattle on the preserve while undertaking restoration of their own rangeland.
Under the Heifer Replacement Program, the trust bred its 18 certified bulls with approximately 450 first-time heifers (female cows that haven't been bred before) in order to produce low-weight calves. The program is meant to allow ranchers to build up their herds with "genetically superior cows."
Neither program has ever been profitable. Bob Parmenter, the preserve's scientist, says they were never meant to
be profitable but, rather, to protect riparian areas.
The board's next move is to try and make a
profit off of running cattle. In August, the trust announced it was extending its interim grazing plan. Even more contentiously, it has made clear it is prioritizing its plans for livestock grazing to the exclusion of studying recreation, resource management and wildlife management.
That focus on grazing has long irked local environmentalists such as Betsy Barnett with the
Rio Grande Chapter of the
Sierra Club. The preserve was bought with money from the Land and Water Conservation
Fund, says Barnett. That is a federal fund that guarantees "present and future generations be assured adequate outdoor recreation
resources" and requires that lands be open to all members of the public within two years.
Five years have now passed since the preserve was bought; the public still lacks meaningful access, she says, and are only allowed on the preserve under a controlled reservation or lottery system.
According to Billy Stern, grazing program co-ordinator for the Forest Guardians, the trust must
develop a comprehensive plan that protects natural and cultural resources within the preserve before deciding how much grazing is healthy for the entire system.
He also notes
that many of the streams within the preserve violate both state and federal water quality standards-thanks to extensive livestock grazing in the past. By focusing so intently on livestock issues, Stern believes the trust is "putting the cow before the fish, elk, birds and streams," and he points out
that "running cattle costs more than it brings in"-thus hindering the trust from reaching its goal of being financially self-sustaining.
It's not just environmentalists
who point out that grazing has become an unprofitable business: A federal report released this fall showed that in 2004 alone, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management lost at least $115 million as a result of their livestock programs.
On the other hand some ranchers say it's the limits
placed on grazing that prevent the program from becoming profitable. "The reason this operation is not generating profit in livestock is
because it is restricted in numbers so they can't possibly be successful," says rancher
Roger Tilkemeier. "Anyone who knows anything about ranching knows there is an excessive level of grass [out on the preserve.]"
Regardless of the historical rift between many of the state's environmentalists and its ranchers, recent actions by the trustees have made the situation on the preserve far more complicated than just cows versus no cows.
The trustees held public meetings in November and December;
confusion and tension reigned at both.
At issue was how to deal with the revenue losses of the grazing programs on the preserve. At the November meeting in Albuquerque, Trust Chairwoman Hephner, who runs cattle on her own two ranches in eastern New Mexico, advocated ending the two interim programs. Instead, she advocated a program to bring in steer from out of state, saying that to do so would draw more revenue than any of the other options (although it still would be a revenue-losing proposition).
At the meeting, Hephner estimated off the top of her head that by running 1,200 450-pound steer and charging owners $65 a head for each animal per month, the preserve would earn about $78,000 for the entire grazing season. That compares with the $32,000 the trust earned in revenue-not profit-from grazing in 2005.
When asked where the steer would
come from, Hephner replied from beneath her trademark black cowboy hat: "It would take me a 15-minute phone call to Texas to arrange for steers from one source."
But the board's lack of hard numbers about the grazing programs left audience members frustrated and critical of the process. As one woman in the audience asked: "Did you ever run these numbers? You're just throwing out these numbers and no one's even brought a calculator."
With that, the board vowed to come back to the next meeting with the grazing options laid out more clearly-and with actual budget numbers attached to them.
In mid-December the trust reconvened. More than 50 people squeezed into a small room at the Ghost Ranch Conference Center in Santa Fe.
This time, however, trust members had more on their minds than just grazing. While reviewing the Fiscal Year 2005 budget numbers, trustee Larry Icerman came across a $500,000 deficit-about $300,000 of which still needs to be "validated," or accounted for.
According to Icerman, the preserve has been operating with two different accounting systems and it now needs to find an independent auditor who can sort out the mess.
But other board members took the
opportunity to defend themselves against the growing complaints from the public about their budget decision-making process-and to criticize former staff members at the preserve.
"The board has been pretty polite…the past management really did a mediocre job, or worse," says board member Jim Gosz. "The board has taken a lot of criticism, but it's been impossible to figure out."
Hephner added that the board would be "looking very carefully at past financial records to
make sure there were no past improprieties"-though she says there is no actual indication that any improprieties had occurred.
The announcement of the preserve's financial problems did not derail the meeting's purpose-figuring out what to do about the cows.
It's an important question for
people like Larry and Anthony Armijo from Jemez Pueblo, which ran approximately 170 head of cattle on the preserve over the past two grazing seasons. At the December meeting, Larry Armijo, president of the tribe's livestock association, said the program has given the tribe "the opportunity to rest its own rangeland and learn how to improve it. Our participation has given us an understanding of the value of new programs and we're looking at ways we can use at home to improve our management practices."
Pojoaque rancher David Ortiz, a participant in the Heifer Replacement Program, says the grazing programs have benefited him and more than 20 other local ranchers. By bringing in steer from out of state, he says, "the only one to benefit is one wealthy, out-of-state rancher who can afford to bring in 1,800 steer."
When asked by Palemon Martinez-member of the New Mexico Livestock Board and a former preserve trustee-why the board is not even considering the Heifer Replacement Program as an option, Hephner says that she realizes it's been a "great benefit to the community." On the other hand, she says, the trust sold off its bulls last year and the market is such right now that it would be too expensive to buy new ones. She adds: "We haven't shelved the program, we're just taking a break."
"We've really been wrestling with this," says an increasingly frustrated Hephner to Martinez. "You have to put yourselves in our position."
In the end, all the board members, except for one,
spoke in favor and voted for the steer-only program. (Barbara Johnson, co-founder of the collaborative group, The Quivera Coalition, voted against the plan.)
Marty Peale, co-ordinator of the Valles Caldera Coalition, characterizes the vote as one that "looks like something made by people who are exhausted and in survival mode." That worries her: "I hope we're not that desperate. If they would let the public in, they wouldn't have to be doing it alone. There wouldn't be such desperate and oversimplified solutions to the problems they're facing-and that we could all be facing together."
One issue everyone is facing together is the condition of the
preserve and the low precipitation levels-currently 38 percent of average. With a dry winter underway, there may not be any livestock on the Caldera at all.
Cows aren't the only creatures out there eating the grass-elk and grasshoppers are as well-and with drying conditions, there's a limited number of species the area can support.
In the meantime, preserve scientist Parmenter is doing his best to collect data on everything happening on the
Caldera, from how fenced riparian areas change when they're
not being trampled by elk and cattle to monitoring wildflower cover and water quality.
Even in areas where cattle and elk have been fenced out, certain types of grasses and shrubs are disappearing: Upland sedges have steadily declined from 35 percent ground cover in 2001 to 5 percent today.
"Whatever is causing the apparent decline is not related to cows or elk," he says. Next year, he and other scientists and volunteers will go out and specifically look at the
sedges to figure out what's happening.
"Is it fungus? Rust? Some kind of disease? Aphids or some combination of those?" he asks. "And if it's human-related, we can then adjust our management plan."
Even the abundant elk herd is having its share of problems: Elk numbers seem to be shrinking and calf mortality rates are twice as high as the state average. Again, Parmenter has studies in place to figure out what's going on: Is the population dip a result of drought, nutritional deficiencies, predators or hunting? More study will tell,
and again, the management plan can be adjusted.
Parmenter's ability to run scientific studies-as well as to work with universities, find grants and put eager volunteers to work-was specifically built into the preserve's mandate. One-tenth of the preserve's budget is dedicated to science-compared with about 1 percent for other federal land management agencies. That science is meant not only to help managers run the preserve, but also to benefit scientists worldwide.
There also remains a great deal of work to do on the preserve. "People think this is a pristine place," says former director Ray Powell. "In reality, it's been working land for a hundred years, and it needs a lot of help to restore it back to health." The previous owners ran thousands of head of cattle, but as the 1,300 miles of logging roads can attest, the area also was heavily logged throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Some areas are heavily eroded, and the three major streams that cross the preserve violate state and federal water quality standards.
As director, Powell envisioned the preserve as one that would draw scientific researchers, educators and recreationists, as well as ranchers. Not only would those activities bring cash onto the preserve, the work being done would help managers better understand the ecosystem and how it can be healed. "It's imperative, if people are going to love (the preserve), that they have access to it," he says. "Then they'll fight for it in the future."
In the immediate future, the board faces a decision about what to
do in the upcoming grazing season. A decision must be made early this year in order to be ready for June. Local ranchers are doing the same.
"We have no other option but to find a way to keep livestock on our rangeland and implement some kind of strategy to minimize any damage to the parts that are still recovering," says Larry Armijo, president
of the Jemez Pueblo Livestock Association.
Over the past two years, the tribe has run between 150 and 180 cattle under both of the preserve's programs while they try to restore their own rangeland. They have kept cattle off their own lands for the past four years while they try to recover from the drought.
Now, adds tribal administrator Anthony Armijo, they are mechanically removing cholla cactus and sage from approximately 2,000 acres in order to make room for more desirable rangeland species, and they are also looking for someplace, off the reservation, to graze cattle for the next season. "Certainly, we're not pleased with the outcome [of the vote,]" he says. "It's certainly a setback for this year-but we hope to keep on working with the board and the preserve."
But even members of the public are wondering how the board's recent actions may affect long-term support of the preserve: "The board is losing public support," says Steve Fettig, a Los Alamos resident who has long supported the preserve. "Recreationists are irritated, elk numbers are dropping and now they've alienated local ranchers."
