§460uu–41 Management Plans

Summary

The Secretary must create and send two separate general management plans within three full fiscal years after the law is enacted. One plan is for the monument and one is for the conservation area. Both plans must say how the lands can be used and developed in ways that match the law’s purposes. The plans must include: ongoing public education and interpretation; proposals for visitor facilities (including a visitors center near Bandera Crater and a multiagency orientation center in or near Grants, New Mexico, next to Interstate 40); natural and cultural resource protection and long-term scientific use of archaeological sites, giving priority to enforcing the Archaeological Resources Protection Act and the National Historic Preservation Act and prepared with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office, and local Indian people and their cultural and religious authorities; and wildlife plans prepared with New Mexico state agencies and past studies. The conservation-area plan must review whether about 17,468 acres labeled “Wilderness Study Area” on the map should be preserved as wilderness. Until a decision is sent and unless Congress says otherwise, the Secretary, through the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, must manage those lands to keep them eligible for the National Wilderness Preservation System. The monument plan must review whether all roadless lands inside the monument (except lands marked as “potential development areas” on the map) should be preserved as wilderness. Until a decision is sent and unless Congress says otherwise, the Secretary, through the Director of the National Park Service, must manage those roadless lands to keep them eligible for the National Wilderness Preservation System, except the potential development areas.