WildEarth Guardians

Thursday, April 30, 2009
WildEarth Guardians Bid $50,000 to Graze 5 Cows on Valles Caldera National Preserve

Group Says Its Plan is Best for Environment and Government Budgets, but Long-term Solution is to Change the Preserve's Mission.
Contact: WildEarth Guardians

JEMEZ SPRINGS, N.M. - Today, WildEarth Guardians submitted a $50,000 bid for a livestock operation on the Valles Caldera National Preserve to graze 3-5 cows. The focus of the bid is recovery and restoration of the Preserve’s critical riparian habitats in the face of climate change. WildEarth Guardians has made impressive efforts over the past decade to bring back New Mexico’s once grand streamside forests.

By law, the Valles Caldera National Preserve was established to protect and preserve the area's scientific, scenic, geologic, watershed, fish, wildlife, historic, cultural, and recreational values. The Valles Caldera Trust was created to carry out the Preserve's mission and to turn a profit. The Santa-Fe based WildEarth Guardians’ bid could do just that: make money while protecting the Preserve. Guardians believes that the best return on the dollar for the federal government and taxpayers is to accept the $50,000 in return for the privilege to keep cows mostly out of the area and return the streamside habitats to their verdant nature. The group offers its expertise in river restoration to the Preserve in addition to the money.

This comes on the heels of Senate Joint Memorial 49, introduced by State Senator Tim Eichenberg (D-Bernalillo), in the recent legislative session. That memorial requests that “Congress be urged to hold hearings on a new management system for the Valles Caldera National Preserve."

“Dollar for dollar, our offer is the best taxpayers can ask for,” said Bryan Bird, WildEarth Guardians Public Lands Director. “Water and wildlife are the highest value the Preserve can offer and we want to protect those priceless resources for all New Mexicans. We’re willing to pay for that.”

According to nearly all the climate models, the Southwest has become, and will continue to become, a drier and warmer place. Grazing domestic livestock places additional stress on already strained hydrological systems, rivers and streams. The Nature Conservancy identified the Jemez Mountains as one of three sensitive species-rich watersheds in New Mexico that may be particularly vulnerable to ongoing climate change and noted that the Jemez in particular has already experienced climate change-linked ecological effects and significant declines in snowpack. In the face of this climate crisis, most scientists believe that ecosystem resilience is going to increase in importance.

“The Trust is in a bind,” said Bird. “On the one hand, it is required to reach financial self sufficiency, on the other it must protect the area’s natural resources and recreation opportunities. We hope our bid prompts the New Mexico congressional delegation to revisit the Preserve’s mission and mandate.”

WildEarth Guardians protects and restores the native wildlife and wildlands of the American West. The group seeks to be a proactive voice in the administration of our National Parks, and argues that the continued presence of livestock on public lands is fundamentally incompatible with restoring the balance of nature on many ecologically sensitive public lands in the West.

View the bid here.