BY SETH GAYNOR
White Rock
For over a decade, Valles Caldera National Preserve has been managed less like a crown jewel of America’s public lands and more like a private, gated estate.
As the National Park Service prepares to finalize its new General Management Plan (GMP), local recreationists, hunters, anglers, and families are sounding the alarm on a system designed to maximize administrative control while minimizing public access.
The park leadership frequently boasts about high visitor numbers at the front-country Volcano Discovery Center to prove its success. But this is a classic case of manufactured data. The public doesn’t flock to Valles Caldera just to stand in a gift shop—they are forced there. By locking the main gate until 9:00 AM, management creates a dangerous traffic bottleneck on the shoulder of NM-4, forces visitors into a staging lot, and requires a mandatory hike to the visitor center just to obtain a keypad code for the inner gates.
Worse yet, the draft GMP seeks to permanently codify a microscopic vehicle quota: allowing just 35 to 40 vehicles a day into the 89,000-acre backcountry.
This extreme restriction flies directly in the face of the federal EXPLORE Act, a bipartisan law designed to expand public land access, reduce front-country congestion, and spread visitors out into underutilized spaces. While Congress demands open doors, Valles Caldera management is building a high-tech velvet rope.
This isn’t just a violation of congressional intent; it is a direct contradiction of executive policy. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum issued Secretary’s Order 3435, which mandates that the National Park Service maximize the impact of the EXPLORE Act by aggressively expanding resident access and eliminating unnecessary restrictions. Furthermore, recent Department directives explicitly dictate that individual park units cannot reduce visitor services, hours, or trail access without direct approval from the NPS Director. Yet, right here in New Mexico, Valles Caldera management is actively trying to bypass these orders by locking down 89,000 acres behind a 40-vehicle daily quota.
Why has this hyper-restrictive management style been allowed to persist for so long without oversight? The answer lies in political insulation. Superintendent Jorge Silva-Bañuelos—a former Senate staffer who helped write the legislation transferring the Caldera to the NPS—has enjoyed the staunch political backing of Senator Martin Heinrich for over ten years. This political shield has allowed the preserve to operate in a vacuum, ignoring community pushback and federal recreation priorities alike.
Our public lands belong to the American people, not the bureaucrats assigned to manage them. It is time for transparency, an end to the artificial 9:00 Am bottlenecks, and a management plan that aligns with the spirit of the EXPLORE Act.