People ask us about cattle they see grazing in the Valles Caldera National Preserve. Are they allowed there?
Yes and mostly No. When Congress transferred the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service in 2014, the NPS set up a small livestock grazing program in a specific fenced area of the Preserve. That program is going well.
Congress mandated that the NPS allow limited grazing at the Valles Caldera. Based on extensive studies, NPS scientists confined grazing at the Preserve because of wildlife and watershed protection needs*.
Yet all is not right elsewhere in the Preserve. Ranchers are illegally grazing their cattle in the Preserve outside the designated grazing area.
We visited the north side of the Preserve on Saturday (October 17, 2020) and found 70 trespass cattle in the Valle Santa Rosa and the Valle San Antonio. We saw cattle in the Valle Toledo in August and on this visit. The cows we saw last week were standing and defecating in San Antonio Creek, trampling the stream banks, and grazing down areas of grass and forbs that the NPS has been working to restore. Their droppings were thick on the streambanks.
These cattle have been there for weeks according to an NPS staff member who we discussed the situation with. The Valles Caldera is in severe drought and agencies usually remove or restrict cattle during drought.
The cows come in from US Forest Service lands outside the Preserve. The cows have ear tags with USFS insignia. They came in through damaged fences between USFS and NPS lands. Ranchers may intentionally push cattle into the Preserve through damaged fences. Vandalizing a government fence is a violation of federal law 18 USC 1361 and 36 CFR 2.31.
Under the legal grazing program at the VCNP, cattle may graze a fenced area in the Valle de los Posas. Jemez Pueblo bid on the grazing permit this summer and last and paid some of the highest grazing fees in the Western US for privilege. They had to remove their cattle September 30. The trespass cattle owners pay nothing, and nobody knows when or how their cows will be removed.
Bandelier and the VCNP are supposed to be a generally cow-free island in an otherwise heavily grazed Jemez Mountains landscape.
Caldera Action will be taking further action on this issue in November.
*Senate Bill 285 “directs the Secretary of the Interior to allow the gazing of livestock within the National Preserve consistent with this Act and at levels and locations determined by the Secretary to be appropriate and to the extent the use furthers scientific research or interpretation of the ranching history of the Preserve.”
Cattle droppings in and near San Antonio Creek. Note trampled banks and grazed off grass, and a lack of willows.
The SFNF, especially the Jemez Ranger District, seems totally disinterested in enforcing grazing lease regulations. Cattle have been in the riparian areas of the Rio Cebolla above the fish hatchery all summer. For a few years, they were kept out as they should have been, but no longer. Good luck!
This is very sad. Please keep us all updated on this issue.