• overview of Long House

    Bandelier

    National Monument New Mexico

  • Access to Frijoles Canyon Will Be Limited

    Starting June 1, 2012 all access to the most visited part of the park, Frijoles Canyon, will be via a shuttle bus from the nearby community of White Rock. This is to alleviate a parking shortage created by the Las Conchas Fire. More details to follow.

Elk and their Environment

elk exclosure

NPS image

Elk exclosures demonstrate how vegetation in an area would grow if elk impacts were eliminated.

An important project at Bandelier aims to examine how elk are changing forest structure and composition through browsing. One very visible aspect of elk browsing is on aspen clones. Elk browse on the new shoots of aspen trees produced by the clones’s root system. When large aspen trees are killed by old age, fire, or disease, heavy browsing can destroy the clone. This is significant as aspen do not reproduce by seed in the Intermountain West. In 1998, enclosures constructed to exclude elk demonstrated the extent of browsing impacts on aspen and many other plant species.

Did You Know?

Scorpionweed blooms

Scorpionweed gets its name from the shape of the flowers, which unfold like a scorpion's tail as they prepare to bloom.