Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Valles Caldera preserve to ask for more funding
The Valles Caldera National Preserve decided this week to ask Congress for more federal funding to manage operations for another five years.
The preserve’s board of trustees voted at its quarterly meeting Wednesday to submit a recommendation for extending federal appropriations through 2020. There are inherent government functions that will likely require aid on the federal level, Valles Caldera Trust Board chairman Kent Salazar said. Those functions include compliance with historic-preservation and environmental laws, forest restoration and infrastructure repairs. More than 60 percent of the preserve was affected by recent wildfires and post-fire flooding, officials said.
The 90,000-acre preserve in the Jemez Mountains was a private ranch with grazing and logging operations before the federal government bought it in 2000.
If the trust is not financially self-sufficient by the end of this fiscal year, the board can request Congress for more funding under the Valles Caldera Preservation Act. Under the act, the trust can also be dissolved and the preserve would be transferred to the U.S. Forest Service, the Albuquerque Journal reported (http://bit.ly/YsiLza ). Members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation have also proposed legislation giving control of Valles Caldera to the National Park Service.
The nine-member board will send a formal letter to Congress sometime in the next few weeks...more
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The management of the Valle Grande has been a dismal failure for a bunch of desk-bound greenies who thought they had all of the answers to wildlands management, even though not a one of them had ever managed any land in their lifetimes.
Give the land to the Jemez Pueblo or some other Pueblo on the Rio Grande. They have been around for thousands of years without a cent of government money and the land is still there as they found it.
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