Environmental assessment regarding the management of the Tsankawi Unit, Bandelier National Monument

Bandelier National Monument

INTRODUCTION The Tsankawi Unit is an approximately 320 ha (790 ac) detached section of Bandelier National Monument and is currently surrounded by Federal and tribal lands (Figures 1 and 2). See Appendix A for a detailed description of the environmental setting. The Monument was established in 1916 to protect cultural resources created by Ancestral Puebloans between circa A.D. 1150 and 1550. See Appendix B for a detailed description of the cultural history and current setting. The National Park Service (NPS) has administered the unit since 1932. See Appendix C for a detailed description of the current management setting. Throughout 95 years of federal administration, the Tsankawi Unit area has lacked a long-term preservation philosophy or vision (NPS 1995a). The primary purpose of this plan is to provide direction for the long-term preservation of the cultural resources of the unit apd for the natural matrix in which these resources are embedded. The people of the Pueblo of San Ildefonso consider theTsankawi Unit as one of their former homes, the one of the most recently occupied before tribal members migrated to their current location along the Rio Grande. This living cultural link to the land and its resources is vitally important to both the NPS and the people of the Pueblo of San Ildefonso. An essential goal ofthis plan and supporting environmental assessment process is to develop an understanding with affiliated tribes (particularly those that continue to use these lands) on how to manage the Tsankawi Unit consistent with NPS mandates and goals. The Tsankawi Unit is popular with organized tour groups and well known to local residents, primarily because of the prehistoric trails worn into the bedrock, a large, mostly unexcavated, pueblo, and approximately 300 cavates (rooms excavated into soft bedrock). Visitors also enjoy the unit's relatively undeveloped nature, their ability to experience a sense of relative tranquility in the modem world, and the unit's wide-ranging views. To test a potential solution to chronic funding shortfalls and many other visitor use and resource management problems, Congress authorized a Recreational Fee Demonstration Program in the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-134, 315, as amended by P.L. 104-108 and P.L. 105-18). This allows some parks to experimentally retain 80% of the fees they collect specifically to address visitor facility and resource protection deficiencies. Partial implementation of the proposals outlined in this document has been approved as a "fee demonstration project." One of the purposes of this document is to provide a framework and direction for the allocation of project dollars in the short term- current spending authority for approved fee demonstration projects expires in 2002.