Park Service: One week for operators, animals of Claude Moore Colonial Farm to leave

WTOP has learned the National Park Service told the non-profit group that has operated Claude Moore Colonial Farm since 1981 that they have one week to leave the premises — and to take their farm animals with them. Friends of Claude Moore Farm operates the popular tourist attraction, which realistically depicts life on a 1771 farm, as part of a cooperative agreement with the Park Service. The agreement expired in 2006, but it was extended each year, with a final extension through Dec. 21, 2018. The Friends group declined to sign a new agreement, and said the Park Service is requiring onerous, administrative-based changes that would make it impossible to operate the farm — maintaining animals, buildings, crops and employees — on its yearly budget of $400,000. Friday, in a letter to the executive director of the Friends group, the Park Service said time is up. “You are required to remove all temporary, movable improvements and personal property, including livestock, porta-potties, and property in the pavilion area,” wrote Blanca Alvarez Stransky, acting superintendent of the National Park Service. “Any property not removed by December 22, 2018, will be considered abandoned property.” Elliott Curzon, director of the colonial park told WTOP he is not optimistic. “Hope springs eternal, but the harvest of goodwill toward the Farm is meager,” Curzon said. “That little drummer boy you hear this time of year is pounding out a funeral cadence for the Farm.”...MORE

Let's not forget Senator Heinrich's role in transferring the Valles Caldera to the National Park Service so there would be more "public access."

See  Park Service rounds up and pens NM cattle and this post which contains info on what the Park Service did to a Carlsbad nonprofit.

And here are two of my comments from three years ago. In February of 2015 I wrote:
 

It also contains the Heinrich-Udall language to transfer the Valles Caldera Preserve from a multiple-use trust to the sole jurisdiction of the National Park Service.  In a joint statement Senators Heinrich and Udall say the transfer is “to increase public access.”  In a floor statement Senator Heinrich says current management has resulted in “drastically limited public access with relatively high entrance and permit fees” and the new management will result in “expanded public access.”  A more realistic assessment comes from the Washington Post:

The Park Service is taking on Valles Caldera and numerous other properties at a time when the agency is struggling with more than $11 billion in deferred maintenance at existing parks and monuments and is looking to boost entrance fees at parks across the nation to generate more revenue in advance of the agency’s centennial. Can the agency afford what amounts to its largest expansion in nearly four decades?

The transfer does include grazing language, but it has long been National Park Service policy to discontinue grazing on its lands, so we shall see.

There is, however, some welcome grazing language in the natural resources title of the bill.  For years the Forest Service and the BLM have been behind on thousands of NEPA analysis documents on the renewal or transfer of grazing permits.  I know, it is ridiculous to do a NEPA analysis on a permit that allows something to continue as is, but that’s what the DC Deep Thinkers have brought us.  The problem has received a band-aid fix each year, but this new language gives us a permanent fix.  It reads, in part, “The terms and conditions in a grazing permit or lease that has expired, or was terminated due to a grazing preference transfer, shall be continued under a new permit or lease until the date on which the Secretary concerned completes any environmental analysis and documentation for the permit or lease required under the National Environmental Policy Act.”  Also included is language which says the issuance of a new grazing permit may be categorically excluded from NEPA if certain conditions are met.   The final version of the grazing provision did not contain the language Senator Heinrich had pushed in the Senate which would have allowed for the permanent retiring of grazing permits in New Mexico.

Both New Mexico Senators were supportive of the natural resource package.  “Protecting these special and important places will increase tourism and create jobs in the surrounding communities while ensuring New Mexicans can enjoy them for generations to come", said Senator Udall.  Senator Heinrich remarked, “This is a historic moment and absolutely critical for jobs across the western United States and particularly in New Mexico. The public lands package will help grow our economy in the energy, tourism, sporting and recreation sectors.”

It’s sad to report that neither Senator mentioned livestock grazing.  In fact, Senator Heinrich gave a floor speech containing 1,379 words and never mentioned livestock grazing once.  Therein he stated, “New Mexico's critical public land based economic engine will continue to grow in the energy, tourism, sporting and recreation sectors.”  He even specifically mentioned his efforts in the bill “to streamline the oil and gas drilling permit process”, but nothing about the livestock grazing permit process.  I guess it’s hard to include livestock grazing in his “public land based economic engine” while at the same time trying to arrange for its permanent retirement.

 In July of 2015 I wrote:

Recall that Senator Heinrich got these 89,000 acres transferred from the Santa Fe National Forest to the Park Service as part of a political deal in last year’s National Defense Authorization Act. 

The Park Service is now holding public hearings on management of the area, and we are beginning to see what the native folks and traditional users are up against –  limited access in general and a slow phasing out of most hunting and grazing.  Yes, I know the legislation says there "shall" be grazing, but it also says,"at levels and locations determined by the Secretary to be appropriate."  Read Park Service policy on its website and you'll find this:  "The Service will phase out the commercial grazing of livestock whenever possible and manage recreational and administrative uses of livestock to prevent those uses from unacceptably impacting park resources."  Apply the general policy to the legislative language, and if you are seeking "commercial" livestock grazing, forget it.  The whole thing is being set up to allow grazing for the "interpretation of the ranching history of the Preserve", and that will probably mean Park Service cows managed by Park Service employees. Similar limitations are placed upon hunting and trapping.

Does anyone consider the NPS to be pro-hunting?  Pro-grazing?  Not exactly.

Members of the group Caldera Action have spent years advocating for National Park Service management because, their spokesmen says, the Park Service will police “wayward cattle”, they didn’t want it “treated like a piece of multiple-use land where you have…cows and litter”, but that “hiking and cross-country skiing” are less destructive.

A huge preserve has been set aside for the elite to camp, hike and convene with nature.  The traditional uses made by the folks native to the area will be eliminated over time.  That, I'm afraid, will be the final outcome of this Udall/Heinrich legislation.

I know some of this is repetitive, but I will continue to point out what Little Tommy YouDull and Marty Hiney have done to the people of northern New Mexico and to taxpayers everywhere.