The National Park Service at the Valles Caldera National Preserve has released their long-awaited General Management Plan for the Preserve. If you are interested in the future of this landscape, you may want to read it and respond. The public comment period ends at the end of August.
We are happy to see the Valles Caldera managers continuing their work to make the VCNP a real national park type visitor experience and to continue their work protecting this recovering landscape from further damage.
The General Management Plan adds another layer of legal protections for the Preserve and obligates the Park Service to follow the plan in the years to come. The planning incorporates large scale National Park Service mandates and relevant laws such as historic preservation laws and endangered species laws among others. Our goal is to make sure the plan mandates strong protection for the land (wildlife, plant life, watersheds) and its visitor’s experience.
The Park managers summarize the purpose of the management plan:
“Congress designated Valles Caldera National Preserve as a unit of the national park system in 2014, but the park has lacked an overarching management vision. A management vision is needed to guide decisions about enhancing visitor experiences while simultaneously safeguarding the park’s natural and cultural resources; and to guide prioritization of facility investments to support visitor use, park operations, and resource protection.”
What does the plan say? It talks about upgrading and changing basic facilities in the Valle Grande so that visitors will have more access to a new visitor center and fewer cars will enter the Preserve on a rerouted access road. In a big change from past conversations, the NPS has abandoned the idea of putting the main visitor center in the Cabin District and now proposes a new visitor center by Highway 4. The current access road, left over from the private ranch days, would be converted to a trail and a new paved road would access the Cabin District and the backcountry from the south. There are other details to read in the plan and they have three alternatives to read about.
The GMP does not talk about natural resource management such as fire management or cattle management. Those issues are discussed in separate plans.
In general, many of the ideas that Caldera Action has been advocating for years are now part of the preferred alternative. While we can’t take any credit, we are happy to see positive changes over previous ideas park staff had discussed informally
To read the General Management Plan click here and go to the bottom of the page for links to the GMP and the Environmental Assessment.
The NPS will be having a virtual public meeting on August 13. We encourage you to tune in. Here is the link.
They also plan to meet with people in public in places near the Caldera. Keep an eye on the VCNP website for those meetings.
Also please share any concerns you have about the GMP with Caldera Action. We value your ideas and concerns very much to inform our advocacy work. Write us at calderaaction@gmail.com.
