Protection Plan for Nevada Desert Pits Old Versus New West

Flying 10,000 feet over one of the West’s wildest deserts, Kevin Mack and his companions are overwhelmed by the spectacle below.

Sprawling desert playas, snowcapped mountains and sheer-walled canyons can be seen for as many as 100 miles in all directions. Scarcely a sign of man exists over a remote region the size of Delaware.

It’s easy to see why a 1962 National Park Service report hailed the Black Rock Desert 120 miles north of Reno as “one of the great sights of Western America.”

On that, everyone agrees.

“Once you see the area you can’t say it’s not nationally significant,” said Mack, a coordinator with the Nevada Wilderness Project. “You may have to go to Alaska to find something as spectacular.”

His conservation group is taking reporters on flyovers of the desert to generate support for legislation by Sen. Richard H. Bryan (D-Nev.) that would protect it.

Mack acknowledges that supporters face an uphill battle because of a hostile Congress and stiff opposition by a coalition of ranchers, four-wheel-drive enthusiasts, hunters and others.

Bryan’s proposal would protect more than 600,000 acres of the region as a National Conservation Area and as much as 1 million acres more in 11 adjoining wilderness study areas.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said Bryan’s plan has no chance of passing this year because of limited time left in the session. Bryan disagrees.

If Reid is correct, it would mark only the latest failure in a nearly 40-year effort to protect a region little changed since pioneers crossed it on the Applegate-Lassen Trail during the California Gold Rush.

The effort began in 1962 when a National Park Service study urged national historical landmark status for two notable emigrant landmarks: Black Rock Point and High Rock Canyon. No action was taken.

In the 1970s, the first large-scale protection plan--a 750,000-acre Emigrant Trail National Historical Monument--surfaced but went nowhere.

At least two later efforts to protect the desert and historic trail as a National Conservation Area--the last time in 1993--failed when conservationists and miners clashed.

Now a coalition of various public land users is leading the charge against the legislation. All but one of Nevada’s 17 counties also have weighed in against it.

Citing a precedent established at eight existing conservation areas, opponents complain Bryan’s plan would lead to restrictions and effectively close the region to them.

“Bryan can say whatever he wants to, but the bottom line with the other NCAs is, out went grazing, out went off-road vehicles and out went multiple use,” said John Estill, whose Soldier Meadow guest ranch could become surrounded by the conservation area.

Conservationists disagree, saying a check with federal land managers found there has been little or no change in grazing levels at other National Conservation Areas.

Bryan’s measure specifically states that new mining and geothermal activity would be prohibited, and grazing and hunting would be allowed, they note. The vast majority of roads would remain open, they insist.

“What you have is a few people who are trying to get others stirred up by exaggerating, distorting and relying on fear,” said Brian O’Donnell of the Wilderness Society.

“The [anti-environmental] Wise Use movement is behind it. They just don’t like the feds telling them what to do.”

Such anti-federal suspicion is nothing new in a state where 87% of the land is managed by the federal government.

In the late 1970s, Nevada miners and ranchers spawned the Sagebrush Rebellion, an effort to shift control of public land from the federal government to the states.

Last year, a group of rebels calling themselves the Shovel Brigade threatened to defy the U.S. Forest Service by rebuilding a dirt road to a wilderness boundary near Jarbidge.

Conservationists say it won’t be easy to overcome such entrenched attitudes, but they’re encouraged by their own polls that show 75% of Nevadans support Bryan’s bill.

They say the lion’s share of about 200 local and state initiatives to preserve open space was approved by U.S. voters in 1998, showing the public has become alarmed over vanishing natural areas.

Nevada is out of step with the times because it has the least amount of federally designated wilderness in the West--only 1% of the state--and no Bureau of Land Management wilderness areas, they say.

Bryan’s plan would generate as much as $8 million a year in tourism while protecting the desert from soaring visitation, they add.

“They [opponents] are living in a time vacuum,” Mack said. “The West isn’t what it was 10 years ago because of growing urbanization.

“More and more people appreciate the stark beauty and incomparable open space and history of the Black Rock Desert.”

But Estill said more and more people also are depending on ranchers, farmers and miners for increased production because of rapid population growth.

He cites a study that shows production in agricultural areas must increase by 132% per acre by 2050 to meet projected population demands.

“What do you want? Food and metals or unspoiled land?” he asked. “Where will we get our food and power and metal for cars if we keep locking up land?”

He also disputes supporters’ claims that a National Conservation Area would boost the region’s tourism.

“Give me a damn break,” he said. “Ranching and hunting accounts for far more than the NCA would ever bring in.”

But some Reno casino executives back Bryan’s bill, saying it would help lure tourists at a time when casinos on Indian reservations in California are threatening Nevada’s livelihood.