Draft GMP Released For Valles Caldera National Preserve

Campgrounds, front- and backcountry trails, concessions, and operational facilities are envisioned for Valles Caldera National Preserve under a draft general management (GMP) open for comment through the end of August.

The 114-page plan for the preserve located in New Mexico also proposes visitor capacities, allows for hunting, and would have some trails open for mountain biking and e-bikes.

“Through the recent infrastructure improvements, we’ve made great strides in bringing Valles Caldera up to what people expect from a national park unit,” said Superintendent Jorge Silva-Bañuelos. “With the general management plan, we’re taking a critical step in making the full national park experience a reality by allowing the park to make needed long-term improvements and protect the values that make this landscape unique and inspiring.”

Many details remain to be worked out, such as front country and backcountry camping opportunities, snow grooming for cross-country skiing, types of facilities to be included, backcountry cabins, fishing platforms, and additional trails.

"This plan provides conceptual guidance to NPS managers but does not specify how particular programs or projects will be carried out. Future implementation plans, consistent with the approved general management plan and Valle Grande District development concept plan, will offer more extensive details and analysis," the plan narrative notes.

The GMP breaks the preserve into three primary zones: Backcountry , self-guided, and visitor engagement. The Visitor Engagement Zone is largely in the southeastern corner of the preserve where there's an existing visitor contact station and a collection of historic cabins.

Proposed visitor capacities in the Visitor Engagement Zone would cap daily numbers to 2,900. For the Backcountry Zone the draft says travelers would encounter no more than "five hiking parties per day 85 percent of the time per trail."

Under the section on cultural resources, the draft calls for "[C]ollaborate with Tribal Nations on interpretive media and programming to incorporate tribal perspectives in educational materials related to their history, culture, and homeland." It also pointed to working with tribes to identify "best management practices and future planning needs for ethnographic landscapes and sacred sites..."

The plan has been slow in arriving for the preserve, which was turned over from the U.S. Forest Service to the National Park Service in 2014.

Valles Caldera is a mountainous, forested landscape broken by sweeps of grasslands and which in places rises more than 11,000 feet in northern New Mexico. It is also, figuratively, a not quite 90,000-acre blank canvas upon which the Park Service is working to create what it envisions will be a masterpiece.

The preserve boasts towering ponderosa pines, rich archaeological and cultural history, and even a gurgling and fuming landscape in the southwestern corner that speaks to the landscape's volcanic underpinning.

Nearly 200 bird species have been spotted in the preserve, which the National Audubon Society has labeled an Important Bird Area. New Mexico's largest elk herd calls the preserve home, as do mountain lions, black bears, and mule deer. The meandering East Fork of the Jemez River and San Antonio Creek harbor Rio Grande cutthroat trout, the preserve holds critical habitat for the endangered Jemez salamander, and the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse, also endangered, is another resident.

The Park Service's slow progress towards adopting a general management plan has not gone unnoticed by advocacy groups. Two years ago staff at both Caldera Action, a nonprofit organization focused on the public lands of the Jemez Mountains, with a special emphasis on Valles Caldera and Bandelier National Monument next door, and the National Parks Conservation Association voiced some concerns with the slow pace towards adopted a GMP.

Overlapping the work on the GMP have been studies into whether parts of the preserve should be considered for official wilderness protection or wild and scenic river designation.

The plan and environmental assessment are available on the project website, where you can leave your comments.