Protecting Volunteer Firefighters and Emergency Responders Act of 2014 -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, as I start my comments on the land title legislation before us, I would be remiss if I did not mention the incredible work our chair Mary Landrieu has done on this legislation. As we just heard from the tribute to her service over the last few minutes, as the Presiding Officer said in his comments, if you Google ``bipartisan,'' there will be a picture of Mary Landrieu. I think this title sort of embodies that. We owe great gratitude to Chairman Landrieu and to Ranking Member Murkowski for the incredible negotiation and work they have put into this package.

We stand on the cusp of passing one of the most significant pieces of public land legislation since the omnibus bill of 2009. I stand here to speak on behalf of this well-balanced package which is absolutely critical for jobs across the Western United States and particularly from the perspective of my home State of New Mexico.

I want to say that absolutely none of this would be possible were it not for the years of effort and support from the local communities that helped to craft this legislation. Thanks to their work, New Mexico's critical public land-based economic engine will continue to grow and the energy, tourism, and sporting and recreation sectors. New wilderness and National Park Service units will continue to make New Mexico an unmatched destination for world travelers as well as to the local families who have known for centuries that New Mexico truly is the land of enchantment.

I wish to start by talking a little bit about a place that is located in the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico.

This is a picture of Lobo Peak, which is part of this area called Columbine Hondo. Lobo Peak is 12,000 feet and change. It is quite a spectacular view--the kind of view most people associate with Montana or Colorado or Wyoming. The Sangre de Cristo mountains in northern New Mexico are unmatched or could match any of those mountain ranges in States found farther north in the Rockies.

Columbine Hondo has been managed as a wilderness study area since 1980. It is an area that is cherished by all who know it and is a key attraction for the local tourism and outdoor recreation economy.

When I was a young outfitter guide and the executive director of the Cottonwood Gulch Foundation, Columbine Hondo was one of the spectacular destinations where our students backpacked and slept under the stars and learned to navigate in the backcountry. This area has some of the best elk, mule deer, and bighorn sheep habitat in New Mexico. People come from across the Nation to experience a true wilderness elk hunt in its aspen and fir forests.

Fishermen will tell you that it is home to some of the last, best habitat for our native Rio Grande cutthroat trout, which is, coincidentally, New Mexico's State fish as well.

Columbine Hondo is home to the headwaters of the Red River and the Rio Hondo. There is nothing more precious in a State such as New Mexico than our water. Those are major tributaries of the Rio Grande. The snowmelt from Lobo Peak, seen here, and from Gold Hill provide critical irrigation water to local acequia associations that carry on centuries-old agricultural traditions.

For millennia now, these mountains, rivers, and wildlife have supported New Mexico's traditional communities. The first evidence of human habitation here stretches back 11,000 years. Nearby Taos Pueblo has been continuously inhabited for more than 1,000 years. Spanish settlers first came to the area in the 16th century. Hispanic families have relied on these mountains and their bounty for their way of life ever since.

Today Columbine Hondo is a central attraction to visitors to Taos County, where outdoor recreation and tourism drive the local economy and contribute to a 68,000-job-strong public land recreation industry in our State.

In addition to finally designating Columbine Hondo as a full-fledged wilderness area, this package would also expand the Wheeler Peak Wilderness by approximately 650 additional acres while modifying a boundary in order to create a loop trail accessible by mountain bikes along the Lost Lake Trail from Taos Ski Valley, to the East Fork Trail, to Red River.

This proposal has broad community support, including Taos Pueblo, many local government leaders, hunters, fishermen, business owners, land grant heirs, ranchers, acequia parcientes, conservationists, mountain bikers, veterans, and literally the list could go on and on.

In October, on my birthday--I could not have asked for a better birthday gift--I was able to join the Columbine Hondo Wilderness Coalition as well as regional stakeholders and local elected officials for a hike into the area to highlight the conservation and water initiatives they support. Local residents discussed why they support permanently protecting Columbine Hondo and what the area means to them and their livelihoods and their lives.

Esther Garcia, an acequia commissioner and the former mayor of Questa, expressed her support well when she said:

Columbine Hondo is very important to all of us. To preserve this beautiful wilderness area, we preserve our hunting, our pinon picking, our herb gathering.

I thank all of the residents of Taos County who have worked hard for decades--literally decades--to make this wilderness area a reality.

Also included in this public land package is a provision to transition the Valles Caldera National Preserve in New Mexico to new management to increase public access. This proposal was developed after extensive input from local residents, sportsmen, business owners, elected officials, and is supported by a number of local chambers of commerce. Together they decided that a national preserve, managed by the Park Service, with a mandate for hunting and fishing to remain central to the management of the area, was the best way to ensure expanded public access while preserving the incredible landscape for future generations.

As you can see from this photo, Valles Caldera is often called New Mexico's Yellowstone for a reason. It is literally an area that was created as a collapsed supervolcano, where cinder cones rise up out of the high-elevation grassland and where the cinder cones and the mountains that encircle this collapsed crater are covered in Douglas-fir and fir and aspen forests. It is a spectacular landscape. The Caldera is home to crystal-clear trout streams and some of the best elk habitat in the country.

Since this area was transitioned to public ownership, the preserve has been managed by a board of trustees charged with generating enough revenue from user fees and other sources to make the preserve financially self-sustaining--literally the same model used for the Presidio in San Francisco, but, as you can see, this is not San Francisco. This management regime has led to drastically limited public access, with relatively high entrance and permit fees, blocking many New Mexicans and other Americans out of this public land. By shifting to Park Service management, we can open the Valles Caldera to the public while conserving the incredible, really one-of-a-kind unique resources that are found here.

As someone who has been lucky enough to draw an elk tag in the Caldera, expanding hunting opportunities for the public is one of the primary reasons I am supporting this proposal. The preserve model ensures that hunting and fishing remain a central activity for the public to enjoy. National Park Service management will help balance expanded public access with conserving both the natural and the incredible cultural resources that are found in this area.

Park Service management will also help bring more visitors and will raise the national profile of the preserve for visitors from outside New Mexico. The increase in visitors at the preserve is expected to bring more than 200 jobs and $8 million in wages to the local communities in the region. That is great news for places such as Los Alamos, Espanola, and Jemez Springs.

We have seen elsewhere how protecting public lands spurs economic development. According to Headwaters Economics, rural counties with protected Federal lands such as national parks and preserves saw a 345-percent increase in jobs over the last four decades, whereas rural counties without commensurate protected public lands saw job increases of only 83 percent in the same period.

I thank the local communities and all the elected officials who have worked so hard for decades to make this proposal possible. I thank Senator Tom Udall and former Senator Jeff Bingaman for their leadership on this issue.

We all literally stand on the shoulders of giants in this community effort, as it was Senator Clinton P. Anderson of New Mexico who helped pass the Wilderness Act and who first proposed National Park Service management of the Valles Caldera in the early 1960s.

Additionally, as the son of a Navy sailor who literally saw the last of the aboveground atom bomb explosions and the first of the hydrogen bomb explosions firsthand, I am especially pleased to see that the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Act, which was introduced by Senator Maria Cantwell, is also included in this title. It will establish three different educational sites--one in Los Alamos, NM, one at Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and one at Hanford in Washington. Los Alamos, NM, has made incredible contributions to our Nation's nuclear history. These parks will conserve historic sites and artifacts that played a key role in the dawn of the nuclear era, while telling the story of the creation of the world's first atomic bomb and exploring its consequences for our society and our world.

Finally, I would like to mention the provision in this package that will benefit New Mexico's energy economy. It is one that I know Senator Landrieu was very supportive and excited about. It is a bill that I cosponsored, but it was authored by my colleague Senator Tom Udall, who championed this effort to ensure that the Bureau of Land Management has the staff it needs to streamline the oil and gas drilling permit process, while at the same time strengthening the review system that helps them meet important environmental and safety standards.

Thousands of jobs and a sizable portion of our State's economy are supported in New Mexico by the oil and gas industry. Increasing cooperation among Federal agencies and business is an important way to boost job creation, while at the same time expanding domestic energy production.

Like other Americans who value our shared lands as assets to be utilized, to be enjoyed, and to be passed along to future generations, these are all things worth fighting for.

I am committed to carry on my State's rich conservation history, and this legislation makes an enormous contribution to that ever-evolving story.

I yield the floor to my colleague the Senator from Montana.

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