JEMEZ SPRINGS — The chief scientist at Valles Caldera National Preserve says the three main ways the preserve was expected to make money when it was founded in 2000 are not viable.

Bob Parmenter, preserve chief scientist, told people attending a public meeting on the preserve in Jemez Springs that the founding legislation assumed the property could pay for itself with cattle grazing, timber harvesting and hunting and fishing.

But, he said, the 9,000 head of cattle that those who wrote the founding documents initially had in mind were too many for the preserve, which had been overgrazed.

Two thousand head of cattle grazed on the preserve last summer and brought in some revenue.

Parmenter said the forests were so over logged in the 1970s that they are liabilities.

"We have to thin them at our own expense just to keep them from burning up," he said.

And then the elk herd, which is the main hunting resource at Valles Caldera, is out of the preserve's control, since it falls under the jurisdiction of the state Game and Fish Department.

"So the three main things they had in mind for income vaporized," Parmenter said. "So now we're left with recreation, and we have to get some other programs to generate funds."

The newly elected chairman of the Valles Caldera Trust, Stephen Henry, said the Baca Ranch property only hosted 200 to 300 people a year in the early 2000s, but that number went up to 15,000 people last year.

To bring in more people, the preserve needs a full-scale public access and use plan, which is in the works, the preserve's new executive director, Gary Bratcher, said.

That plan will provide a rationale for infrastructure needs, like a visitor's center, and funding, he said.

But, Bratcher said the Alpine climate and the seasons are a limiting factor for recreation.

"People may think we have 12 months of August," he said. "Other places are operating 12 months out of the year. We only have five or six."




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