The group charged with managing the Valles Caldera National Preserve is five years behind schedule and suffers from weak planning, a new federal report says.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which released its latest review of the preserve on Oct. 30, notes the Valles Caldera Trust has fallen short in its efforts to meet mandates Congress set for the Jemez Mountains property. Most problems stem from a mandate that the preserve pay for itself and be free of federal financial help by 2015.

The findings likely will bolster a push by a Santa Fe-based group, Caldera Action, to dismantle the trust and place the preserve under National Park Service control.

"Our thoughts on the report is that it confirms what the earlier report shows and that they really haven't made any progress," Tom Jervis, a Caldera Action board member, said. "They say they can run the place like a business, but they can't."

In a sense, the trust's executive director, Gary Bratcher, agrees. Bratcher, a longtime agri-businessman who was hired in January, believes the trust can't be financially independent under the mandates set by the federal law that authorized it.

"The act's goals and objectives are conflicting," Bratcher wrote in an Oct. 19 letter to Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M. "The requirement that the Trust be financially self-sustaining is impossible to achieve and along with other dysfunctional elements of the act should be removed or modified."

The Valles Caldera National Preserve is the 89,000-acre former Baca Ranch near Los Alamos, for which Congress enacted a set of unique goals when the federal government purchased the property in 2000. Congress established the independent Valles Caldera Trust with a presidentially appointed board to manage the preserve. The trust was to open the property to recreation, maintain it as a working ranch and protect natural resources, all while finding a way to become financially independent by 2015, a requirement pushed by former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico.

"The self-sustainability argument has always been kind of bogus to me," Jervis said. "No one expected it to happen. For Pete Dominici to put that in there was silly. It doomed it from the start."

Controversy has dogged the experiment in land management. Ranchers said local livestock growers should be able to graze their herds on the preserve. Environmentalists hated the idea of cows on the preserve. People who wanted to bike, hike, fish and horseback ride across the vast valleys of the ancient collapsed volcano have complained for the last nine years about lack of access.

The GAO's review found the trust had made progress in meeting the goals set by Congress. More than 17,000 people visited the preserve in 2008, generating $700,000 in revenue. The trust "has rehabilitated roads, buildings, fences, and other infrastructure; created a science program; experimented with a variety of grazing options; taken steps to manage its forests; expanded recreational opportunities; and taken its first steps toward becoming financially self-sustaining," the GAO report found. "Nevertheless, it is at least 5 years behind the schedule it set for itself in 2004."

The trust has suffered from administrative turnover and lacks a performance plan, among other problems, the GAO found in analyzing financial records, documents and staff interviews.

"Through fiscal year 2009, the Trust had yet to develop and put in place several key elements of an effective management control program for a government corporation," the report found. "Specifically, the Trust lacked a strategic plan and annual performance plans, and it had not systematically monitored or reported on its progress — elements called for by the Government Performance and Results Act and recommended by GAO in its first report in 2005."

Jervis and others believe the preserve could be run more efficiently by the National Park Service. Since 2000, the trust has received $31 million to operate the preserve. Caldera Action has researched the other 18 National Park Service preserves and believes the model would work well for the Valles Caldera.

He said it makes sense for the preserve to fall under management by the adjacent Bandelier National Monument, which already has staff and administrative facilities.

Jervis said Caldera Action wants to see hunting continue at the preserve if it did become a national park. "You can't manage the elk herds up there without hunters," he said.

In addition, Caldera Action would support letting cows still graze a portion of the preserve, if there was a good plan in place and livestock are kept out of riparian areas.

Caldera Action has already proposed legislation to have the preserve turned over to the National Park Service. Jervis said about 1,500 people have signed a petition in support of disbanding the Trust and the idea is supported by the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Audubon, Sierra Club and the Wilderness Alliance.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.


Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the Government Accountability Office. The correction was posted 10:40 a.m., Nov. 6, 2009.