Staff Report
A UNM administrator will soon advise President Bush.
John Garcia, chief economic development officer, was appointed last week by the president to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
"The goal is try to see the best use of public lands in terms of preservation but also promotion when appropriate," Garcia said. "Ultimately, our mission is to be stewards of public lands in a responsible matter."
Garcia is a former secretary of the New Mexico Tourism Department and the New Mexico Economic Development Department.
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Garcia will travel to Washington, D.C. six times a year for meetings. He will be introduced to the council in November.
It's rare for someone from UNM to be appointed by the president, said Karen Wentworth, spokeswoman for the University.
The council oversees all public land in the country and reports to the president and Congress, Garcia said.
He said he was appointed because of his background with tourism and
economic development in New Mexico.
Garcia said he worked on tourism projects in New Mexico to benefit cities, such as the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident.
"We were able to turn nothing into something in Roswell," he said.
The advisory council has to achieve a balance between preservation of historical sites and development for the public's benefit, including tourism and extracting resources for energy, he said.
Significant battlegrounds or burial sites have to be addressed differently than a place like Chaco Canyon, Garcia said.
"We would want to be responsible to keep and maintain the integrity of that type of site," he said. "Whereas there may be other sites where we would want to balance between the ecology of the site with the possibility of a development."
Garcia said some places, like Niagara Falls, are negatively impacted by too much tourism.
"You can get crazy," he said. "The Valles Caldera is a pristine treasure, and although I'd like to keep promoting it and do it responsibly, we surely don't want buses and cars coming through there."
