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 The
White Pine County Public Conservation, Recreation, and Economic
Development Act of 2006 passed in the last few hours of the 109th
Congress after being attached to a larger Tax Bill, HR. 6111. The bill
protects over 558,133 acres of Eastern Nevada. This bill was a tough
compromise between many different stake holders throughout the
State. NWP and the rest of the Nevada Wilderness Coalition will
continue to advocate for the two areas that receive wilderness
designation, Blue Mass/Kern Mtns and the Antelope Range.
We applaud Senators Reid and Ensign for the service
and dedication to Nevada and her wild places. We are thrilled with the
Senators' decision to keep the South Egan Range in tact and look
forward to continuing to work will all interested parties in protecting
Nevada's most important wild lands as wilderness. Please take the time
to thank them for all their work on behalf of wilderness by writing
them a quick note and thanking them for wilderness in White Pine
County.
Background: Since 2001, the Nevada Wilderness Project and our partners in the Nevada Wilderness Coalition
have been working to protect wilderness-quality public lands in Eastern
Nevada as wilderness. In 2003, after exhaustive research and
fieldwork, our coalition produced a proposal to protect over 3.1
million acres of public lands in Eastern Nevada as wilderness. Though
our organizations strongly believe that public lands legislation should
follow ecological rather than county boundaries, Nevada Senators Harry
Reid and John Ensign have adopted a county-by-county approach to
addressing public lands legislation. In 2003, it became clear that
Congress would focus on a Lincoln County lands bill, and in 2004, the
Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation, and Development Act was passed
by Congress.
The Lincoln County bill contained significant
wilderness designations for 768,000 acres of lands contained in our
Eastern Nevada Proposal. Some of these areas, like Big Rocks and Mt.
Irish, were citizen-proposed BLM lands that Congress formally approved
for wilderness designation. However, many worthy lands were left out
of the legislation in neighboring White Pine and Nye Counties.
Since 2004, the Nevada Congressional delegation has
been working to craft an omnibus public lands bill for White Pine
County. Our coalition once again responded to the Congressional
delegation's county focus by proposing 730,000 acres of wilderness on Forest Service and BLM lands within the county.
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