Sustainability

Highlights

Valles Caldera National Preserve celebrates its recent successes toward becoming carbon neutral, restoring native ecosystems, reducing operational costs, and modeling sustainability across the National Park Service. These include:

• The transition of our fleet to electric vehicles is now complete - that's 17 EVs used by park staff for daily operations and travel! As a result of the change-over to EVs, gasoline consumption was reduced by nearly 2,249 gallons in 2023.
• The solar arrays that power the park’s Entrance Station and headquarters generated 11 MW and 39 MW in 2023, respectively.
• Resource managers conducted invasive species treatments on 13.6 acres of mullein, ox-eye daisy, cheatgrass, musk thistle, bull thistle, Canada thistle, and white horehound last year. They also reclaimed 4 miles of a decommissioned gas pipeline road and finished removing 77 miles of old livestock fencing that was impacting wildlife corridors.
• Visitor & resource protection staff, with help from partners and volunteers, oversaw a 35% reduction of trespass cattle from 2022 to 2023, with a 7-day average removal time from initial detection.
• New park publications like the Junior Ranger booklet were printed on recycled paper with environmentally friendly inks.
• The park continues to divert the majority of disposed material from the landfill with 75% by weight sent to recycling.

EV Fleet

In 2024, the park finished migrating its fleet to electric vehicles in an effort to become carbon neutral, lead by example, and reduce the overall cost of the fleet program. As a result of the change-over to EVs, gasoline consumption has been reduced by nearly 2,249 gallons. To support the EV fleet, the park used base funding to purchase and install four Level 2 charging stations at park headquarters and three Level 2 chargers within the park.

In addition, the park secured $175,000 from the Inflation Reduction Act to install additional EV chargers. The park recently purchased and installed two Beam EV charging stations. These solar-powered stations are portable, off-grid, and provide the ability for public charging stations in the park. The park is also piloting a police-package EV to see whether EVs will work for NPS law enforcement programs.

Recycling

The park continues to divert the majority of disposed material from the landfill with 75% by weight sent to recycling. Of that amount, 90% was steel (some 49,640 pounds), which generated revenue for the park’s recycling program. A further 9% was mixed recycling (cardboard and plastic). The final 1% was glass.

The park has recycling bins at the Entrance Station and Cabin District to promote visitor participation. To improve collection and transportation of recycling, the park has a dedicated recycling trailer. In addition, the park encourages employees who do not have recycling at home to make deposits in the park’s bins.