Wildlife and Livestock
Throughout the caldera the grass valleys appear groomed: there are few saplings and mature trees lack lower branches. This is due to heavy browsing by elk and cattle and because of frequent grass fires of human and natural origin which kill the lower branches on the Engelmann spruce, Douglas-fir and Ponderosa pine that populate the uplands around the grasslands dominating the bottoms of the calderas. Extreme cold in winter prevents tree growth in the bottoms of the calderas. The grasslands were native perennial bunch grass maintained by frequent fire before sheep and cattle grazing. Although the grass appears abundant, it is a limited resource. Its growing season is short, it feeds hundreds of cattle in the summer through the VCNP's limited grazing program and more thousands of elk in the warm seasons and in drought winters, and during most of the year its nutritional value is low.
In July 2011 the Las Conchas Fire, started by a power line on nearby private land, burned 30,000 acres of the Valles Caldera National Preserve and 158,000 acres of the Jemez Mountains in total, including most of neighboring Bandelier National Monument.
Read more about this topic: Valles Caldera
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