Valles Caldera National Preserve is a national preserve in New Mexico located in northeastern Sandoval County and southern Rio Arriba County, just west of Los Alamos. It protects a large portion of the Valles Caldera, an area of significant geological, ecological and cultural interest. It has a land area of and until 2015 was administered by the Valles Caldera Trust with offices in Jemez Springs. In 2014 legislation attached to the National Defense Authorization Act authorized the transfer of the preserve to the National Park Service and termination of the Valles Caldera Trust. The transfer to NPS management took place on October 1, 2015.
Background
The Valles Caldera Preservation Act of 2000 signed by President Bill Clinton on July 25, 2000, created Valles Caldera National Preserve. The legislation provided for the federal purchase of the land, previously the privately-held Baca Ranch. The surface estate of and seven-eighths of the geothermalmineral estate were purchased by the federal government for $101 million. Funds for the purchase were obtained through the Land and Water Conservation Fund from federal government royalties received from offshore petroleum and natural gas drilling. Some areas of the Baca Ranch are of cultural significance to Native Americans. Accordingly, of the purchase were obtained by the Pueblo of Santa Clara, which borders the property to the northeast. These include the headwaters of Santa Clara Creek, considered sacred by the Pueblo. On the southwest corner of the land were to be ceded to Bandelier National Monument. The Baca Ranch, also known as Baca Location No. 1, had possessed a mixed range of tree species and significant biodiversity. At the time of the purchase, the ranch was home to of "pristine" trout streams, of conifer forest, 17 endangered plant and animal species and of grassland grazed by 8,000 elk, New Mexico's largest herd. The preserve is encircled by federal lands, including the Santa Fe National Forest, the Jemez National Recreation Area and Bandelier National Monument. The Valles Caldera Preservation Act of 2000 also created the Valles Caldera Trust, an experimental management organization consisting of nine board members including seven appointed by the President of the United States. The Trust combined private-sector practices with federal land management protocol. Under the terms of the Valles Caldera Preservation Act, the preserve was to become financially self-sustaining by 2015. The experiment was controversial. In 2010 the Trust admitted that it would be unable to achieve financial self-sustainability, having raised only about $850,000 of the $3 million needed to manage the property each year. Environmentalists had lobbied for the more inclusive protections of National Park status instead of the Trust model, but then-Senator Pete Domenici insisted on the experimental approach as a condition for his support for public purchase. Beginning in 2010, US Senator Jeff Bingaman introduced legislation that would transfer the property to the National Park Service as a National Preserve. The 2011 bill was officially supported by the VCNP trustees and a majority of New Mexico's Congressional delegation. On December 19, 2014, President Barack Obama signed the Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, which transferred administrative jurisdiction of the preserve from the Valles Caldera Trust to the National Park Service. After a brief transition period, the National Park Service assumed day-to-day management on October 1, 2015. On October 10, the preserve held an official dedication with dignitaries including U.S. Secretary of the InteriorSally Jewell, U.S. Senator Tom Udall, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, former-U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman, National Park Service Intermountain Region Director Sue Masica, and the first National Park Service Superintendent of Valles Caldera National Preserve, Jorge Silva-Bañuelos.
