Spring is slowing coming to the Valles Caldera and Bandelier after an unusually warm and dry winter. We’ve all seen the unusually early spring. Snowpack in the southern Rocky Mountains is 22% of normal. This means that unless more spring and early summer rain comes, we will be seeing extremely low fuel moisture levels in the Jemez Mountains with high risk of wildfire.
The National Park Service at the Caldera has made some recent improvements to the visitor contact area by La Jara. Most impressively, they have removed the old steel corrals by the Contact Station and rearranged the area to accommodate traffic flow. It is good to see cattle industry infrastructure give way to a wilder place. The Visitor Center is now located in the Cabin District with a new parking area nearby while the old Contact Station building will be used by law enforcement rangers and others.
We are pleased with the stability and professionalism from the NPS staff in a difficult time.
Fire Shakeup
The Trump people decided to create a new agency called the US Wildland Fire Service and pull all federal firefighters into this new agency. It has one staff member, no headquarters, no budget, and no approval from Congress. Yet the National Park Service firefighters at Bandelier and the Caldera have been reassigned to the US Wildland Fire Service under great uncertainty about their future, the source of their paychecks, and who they answer to.
Overall, we are concerned along with many other conservation groups, that taking the fire staff out of the park level organization will sever connection between resource managers and fire staff. Until now, staff ecologists worked with fire staff to plan vegetation management in the parks and plan burns together. Now the fire staff will work for someone else, unknown exactly who, and many worry that the USWFS will be oriented toward fire suppression alone rather than fire management with local knowledge. Senator Martin Heinrich and others have been sharply critical of the USWFS concept.
To date, the US Forest Service fire organization has not been included in the USWFS. The administration recently has said that the creation of the USWFS is “contingent on enactment of legislation from Congress” even though employees in the field have been reassigned to this unauthorized agency.
Trump’s New Budget
The administration, led by Office of Management and Budget Director Russel Vought has sent a new budget proposal to Congress for 2027, and as expected it contains major cuts to the US Forest Service and the National Park Service and other land agencies. The budget shows that the Trump people intend to incrementally dismantle the federal land management agencies over the remaining 3 years of the Trump presidency. Presidential budgets are statements of philosophy meant to influence how Congress writes agency budgets.
In the 2026 budget process, Congress rejected big cuts to the federal land agencies proposed by Trump’s team but still made some cuts. This year, Trump proposes to cut the National Park Service budget by 25%. According to experts, this would necessitate firing thousands of park staff, after the Trump’s people eliminated 25% of the NPS staff in 2025. It would lead to understaffing for ranger services and lost revenue from fee collection. Further, the Trump people plan eliminates funding for the Historic Preservation Fund which is used to protect historic properties like Bandelier and Chaco Canyon.
This is not a budget designed to serve the American people, and it is unclear what purposes the cuts further, except to cripple the agency to some ideological end. Visitation to NPS sites continues to increase with 26 parks setting visitation records in 2025 even as staffing declines and Trump have ended reservation systems meant to improve visitor experiences.
Trump “Reorganizing” the US Forest Service
Meanwhile, the agency that manages 193 million acres of national forest land mostly in the western US, is facing major reorganization at the hands of Trump’s staff. Trump’s Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz announced that the agency was “reorganizing” by closing its regional offices, including the Region 3 office in Albuquerque, and creating state level offices led by political appointees. Six of the offices like the one in Albuquerque will no longer be called “regional offices” and will be converted to “Business Support Service Centers” and/or “Operations Centers.” The Trump people will close 57 of the agency’s 77 research centers where agency scientists work with universities to understand the ecology, fire science and hydrology of national forests in their regions.
Many of the research stations have existed for more than a century and have large databases, relationships with area scientists and land managers and study the specifics of the land in their areas. The research stations are critical to fire management, especially in a time of a rapidly warming and drying climate.
The Trump people also are closing the Forest Service Headquarters in Washington DC, though some staff will remain there. The office will move to Salt Lake City. (When the first Trump administration moved the BLM headquarters to Grand Junction in Trump’s first term, 87% of the headquarters staff quit.) Trump may be counting on the same happening with the Forest Service as they seek major cuts in staffing. The headquarters will be in Salt Lake where Trump’s Forest Service people signed an agreement with the state of Utah allowing the state to make many management decisions on our federal forests. Clearly, the Trump people seek to give the states more power over the national forests.
These changes at the Forest Service are already happening. If you have concerns, write Congress.
The US Forest Service interacts with the Valles Caldera staff often since the Forest Service manages the land on three sides of the Preserve.
Meanwhile, Trump has proposed to cut the Bureau of Land Management budget by 33% and the US Fish and Wildlife Service budget by 25%, following on similar cuts in 2025.
