In the spring of 2001, Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign announced their intention to begin a process toward an omnibus public lands bill for Clark County. For over a decade Las Vegas had experienced the highest growth rates in the country. This growth has created tremendous infrastructure, recreation, and conservation challenges for southern Nevada. As part of this process, the Project and its partners in the Nevada Wilderness Coalition worked to accomplish two things. The first thing was to ensure that Wilderness protection figured prominently as part of any public lands plan. The second effort was to ensure that any public lands vision of southern Nevada was based on biological, and not political, boundaries.
On behalf of the Nevada Wilderness Coalition, the Project extensively inventoried millions of acres of southern Nevada over a six month period from the fall of 2000 to the late spring of 2001. Our coalition then presented to the public a 4.1 million acre Wilderness proposal that encompassed all qualified wildlands in the Nevada portion of the Mojave Desert. Then we organized! We gave slide shows, tabled at events, talked to elected officials, homeowner associations, ranchers, tribal groups, developers, hiking groups, and even gave very brief consideration to organizing Nevada's 36 brothels! The aggressive timeline of the process (Senators Reid and Ensign wanted to pass a bill before the end of the 2002 session) created a frenzy of activity in the community to ensure that information was available, needs were met, and conflicts worked out. Prominent leaders in the hunting, academia, and business communities editorialized in Nevadaís papers, and over 100 businesses locally and 80 scientists nationally sent press release supporting the Citizens' Wilderness Proposal for Southern Nevada's Mojave Desert. In March of 2002, the Coalition hosted a Wilderness Forum with community leaders that saw over 110 people attend and fifty people give testimony on the importance of protecting Wilderness. This was the largest pro-Wilderness outpouring in Nevada in years, and demonstrated that Wilderness was a major quality of life indicator for southern Nevadans. As in the Black Rock campaign, much of the resistance we encountered was based on misinformation about what one can and cannot do in Wilderness. Off-road vehicle racers insisted that protecting the land was not necessary (though anyone who has seen the sprawl of Las Vegas realizes that does not survive the laugh test!). Hunters claimed that Wilderness was bad for wildlife! Anti-federal Nevadans went so far as to claim that Nevada is a sovereign nation not subject to federal law! Our coalition met with everybody, and we learned that common ground wasnít that hard to find, after all. That is, as long as folks at the table could agree that Nevada isnít a separate country. On behalf of the Nevada Wilderness Coalition, John Wallin, Director of the Nevada Wilderness Project, testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. In his testimony, Wallin noted the positive working relationship among stakeholders fostered by Senators Harry Reid and John Ensign: We are most grateful to Senators Reid and Ensign for their leadership, for the extensive and dedicated work of their excellent staff, and for the cooperation and straightforward good will of all the parties to this compromise. We must stress that this bill is a bottom-line compromise, not a Wilderness bill.
On the night of October 17, 2002, Senator Reid ushered the bill to passage in the last act of the Senate before the November election. The day after the election, President Bush signed the Clark County Conservation of Public Lands and Natural Resources Act of 2002 into law. Among the many provisions in this omnibus bill were 452,000 acres of Wilderness added to the National Wilderness Preservation System. Though the Coalition failed in its effort to broaden Wilderness protection beyond the political boundaries of Clark County, the legislation effectively multiplied by a factor of ten the amount of Wilderness in southern Nevada. Areas in Clark County that were left unprotected, and deserve to be designated Wilderness are Gold Butte, Highland Range, Spring Mountains. We will continue our efforts to protect these magnificent Wilderness quality areas. |
