Over the past six years, Nevada\u2019s U.S. senators, Harry Reid and John Ensign, have successfully pushed public lands bills which facilitated the sale of tens of thousands of acres formerly managed by the federal government in Clark, Lincoln and White Pine counties — basically, southeastern Nevada.<\/p>\n
Although the federal government could show no title for those lands — no bill of sale approved by the state Legislature as required under Article I Section 8 — they have successfully been sold back onto the private tax rolls, allowing additional room for growth in Southern Nevada.<\/p>\n
So far so good.<\/p>\n
On the down side, the bills also designated more than 1.7 million new, additional Nevada acres as federally \u201cprotected\u201d wilderness, stymieing the objective of a net reduction in the 90 percent of Nevada still controlled from afar by the bureaucrats of the Potomac.<\/p>\n
Now, similar plans are afoot in northwestern Nevada, where environmentalists are pushing a proposal to newly label as \u201cwilderness\u201d nearly 700,000 acres in Lyon, Mineral and Esmeralda counties.<\/p>\n
But this time, northern Nevadans appear to have seen them coming.<\/p>\n
Meeting halls were packed with opponents during several public discussions in March and April. More than 700 people crowded into Smith Valley High School in Lyon County — most to oppose any new wilderness. County commissions in all three counties have OK\u2019d resolutions opposing any new wilderness designations.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, the commission has said we don\u2019t want wilderness, we don\u2019t need wilderness,\u201d explains Mineral County Commissioner Jerrie Tipton, adding that she and others are worried changes could affect mining, outdoor recreation and military training, all important to the local economies.<\/p>\n
Lyon County Commissioner Phyllis Hunewill called the latest proposal a \u201cslap in the face\u201d after efforts to agree on designation of a much smaller new \u201cwilderness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a fear here over what government is going to do to us and not for us,\u201d Jim Sanford, a 50-year resident of Yerington and the former publisher of the Mason Valley News, explained to the Reno Gazette-Journal. \u201cThe feeling here is we don\u2019t trust them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a March letter to Reid, four state legislators noted opposition to the new wilderness area is overwhelming. \u201cWith this we urge you, our congressional representative, to either have the proposal scaled backed or eliminated,\u201d read the letter, signed by Republican Assemblymen James Settelmeyer of Gardnerville and three others.<\/p>\n
Mr. Settelmeyer, a rancher who has had grazing permits near wilderness areas, said he has significant concerns about problems with new ones, including the ability to successfully access the posted land to fight wildfires.<\/p>\n
\u201cI respectfully request you do not move forward with legislation until such time as Mineral and Lyon counties choose to support the effort,\u201d wrote Gov. Jim Gibbons in a March 12 letter to Reid, Ensign and U.S. Rep. Dean Heller.<\/p>\n
The targeted land is composed of beautiful slices of rural Nevada that provide critical habitat for wildlife, justifying \u201cspecial protection,\u201d supporters say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat wilderness does is keep a part of Nevada\u2019s wild heritage there,\u201d explains Shaaron Netherton, executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness. \u201cIt\u2019s a place for wildlife to go, it\u2019s a place for people to get away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Actually, while the solitude of the whistling wind can have its charms, Ms. Netherton sounds like she\u2019s preparing to sell someone a stuffed jackalope. Much of these tracts are stinking desert, jackrabbit habitat for which the prime economic uses have always been — likely always will be — mining and grazing. And few people can \u201cget away\u201d into an arid designated wilderness without risking the fate of the Donner Party, because motor vehicle access is blocked, as is the ability to hunt for food.<\/p>\n
\u201cWilderness\u201d rangers don\u2019t blaze new roads and hiking trails — they block off the old ones.<\/p>\n
John Wallin, director of the Nevada Wilderness Project, laments that the opposition is premature, unnecessary and \u201cfear-based.\u201d He said critics have misrepresented the level of government control on activities such as grazing and mining that can occur within a wilderness.<\/p>\n
Really? We\u2019re supposed to believe gun-toting government rangers and the eco-theocrats they serve are going to say, \u201cOh, you think you\u2019ve found a chromium deposit on this newly sequestered wilderness land? Some mercury, some manganese, some uranium? Well, get in there with your bulldozers and do some digging, good buddy, and let us know what you find\u201d? That they\u2019re so anxious to see the cattle industry and the ranching way of life sustained that they\u2019re going to issue new low-cost permits to allow cattle to graze away the fire-hazard dried brush and grasses from additional millions of acres here in the West?<\/p>\n
Where, Mr. Wallin? Where have you and your buddies arranged for new allotments to be leased for grazing in the past 20 years? The one-way street has all been the other way, hasn\u2019t it, shutting cattle and ranchers off more and more of the public land, which far from blooming in their absence turns back into a sterile cleaned-out wilderness without ranchers to thin the predators and maintain the ponds and springs, without large grazing animals to churn the seeds into the soil and create a fertile habitat for riparian birds — doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
The residents of the northern counties are smart to raise a ruckus now, loud and long, rather than being lulled into complacency by assurances that \u201cThis is all tentative, nothing has been decided yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because if they wait till the day before the signs go up, what will they be told, then? \u201cAfraid you\u2019re a bit too late. This was all decided years ago. If you had objections you should have shown up at that \u2018public hearing\u2019 we held at our offices in Maryland way back in 2008; we posted notices all over Georgetown and Chevy Chase — don\u2019t know how you could have missed \u2019em.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI reject what the Nevada Wilderness Project has put before us,\u201d explains Rep. Heller, who contends he will not back any lands bill that lacks local support.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not going to force a lands bill down the throats of any county,\u201d vows Sen. Ensign. \u201cIf they don\u2019t want a lands bill, we won\u2019t do a lands bill.\u201d<\/p>\n
Good.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll get them on board, or we won\u2019t do it,\u201d says Sen. Reid, apparently in agreement.<\/p>\n
Based on past performance, however, the advocates of the \u201cKeep Out\u201d signs will now try to divide and conquer — taking aside first the ranchers, then the hunters, then the rockhounds, promising something to each, insisting some new, \u201ccompromise\u201d wilderness designation won\u2019t really bar their access to the lands.<\/p>\n
Later, try taking that to the bank. All the bureaucrats who made those evaporating promises will be happily retired. By then, those promises and fifteen bucks might buy you a decent cup of coffee. But they sure won\u2019t get you into any new \u201cwilderness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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