NPS Buys Jemez Springs Office Building
The National Park Service now owns the Jemez Springs Headquarters building that the Valles Caldera Trust rented from the Brothers of the Paraclete, an Ohio-based Catholic organization back in the early 2000s. The building and a small amount of land lie north of Highway 4 in Jemez Springs, just east of Jemez State Monument. The US Forest Service, Jemez District has been sharing the building with the National Park Service for several months while a new headquarters building for the Jemez District is constructed in Jemez Springs.
The law that transferred the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service specified that a science center would established by the NPS is Jemez Springs. It is unclear if that will happen soon but having the NPS own a building in Jemez Springs paves the way for the NPS to comply with this directive.
The NPS Headquarters in Jemez Springs is only open to the public by appointment. Call 575 829 4100.
Forest Restoration Work Continues
The National Park Service continued to burn piles of forest thinning waste in the Valle Seco and San Antonio Mountain area this winter. The NPS had hired contract crews to thin hundreds of acres of forest in this far western portion of the Preserve. (Thinning involves cutting many small diameter trees down. This is not commercial logging.) The contractors piled the small logs and slash from the thinning into thousands of piles in the forest. Crews worked this winter to ignite those piles (they burned very well). Later the NPS will broadcast burn the area at low intensity to further reduce the thinning waste and open the area to native plant recolonization.
Fire managers burn piles in the winter when snow covers the ground so the fire will not spread across the ground. This makes for cold and challenging work for the fire crews as footing is challenging at best in the dry cold snow. This year crews from the Bandelier/Valles Cadera NPS led the work with personnel from the US Forest Service, Forest Stewards Guild, Bureau of Land Management, and others helping out on different days. Thousands of piles remain to be burned on San Antonio Mountain and elsewhere in the Preserve.
Mountain Lions Use Thinned Forests
Valles Caldera wildlife biologist Mark Peyton and his team have been studying mountain lions in the Valles Caldera and Bandelier National Monument for the last few years. They have been tracking adults and cubs, watching their behavior using radio and GPS collars and game cameras set up in the forest. They have learned many interesting things but in particular they found that mountain lions continue to use areas after they have been thinned by forestry crews. The biologists found that mountain lions continued hunting, denning and other life activities despite forestry work.
This is good news since the reason forest thinning and burning work happens is to restore wildlife habitat and forest resilience in the face of wildlfire. Finding that an apex predator is undeterred by intense human activity and its aftermath is reassuring.
You can view two mountain lion study presentations by Mark Peyton and others given at the Pajarito Environmental Education Center this winter. The presentations include videos of mountain lions and cubs. Visit the PEEC website for more information.
Caldera Action Receives Grant
Caldera Action received a grant from the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation to support is educational and conservation work. We are grateful for the funding and welcome donations and grants from other sources. We are grateful to our friends in Seattle.
Please visit our website to donate. www.calderaaction.org.
(photo copyright Tom Ribe)
