Nevada wilderness bills get House panel OK

The Reno Gazette Journal
By Erin Kelly Gannett
January 28, 2014

WASHINGTON — A key House panel on Tuesday approved new wilderness areas in Humboldt and Lyon counties as part of a collection of bills that supporters said could also offer important economic opportunities for Nevada.

One bill designates 26,000 acres as protected wilderness in northwest Nevada’s Pine Forest Range. A second creates the 48,000-acre Wovocka Wilderness area in Lyon County, at the same time allowing the city of Yerington to partner with Nevada Copper to develop about 12,500 acres of land in a project expected to create 800 mining and 500 construction jobs.

The two bills were combined Tuesday with five other Northern Nevada land-use bills into the Northern Nevada Land Conservation and Economic Development Act.

The combined legislation would create a total of more than 70,000 acres of protected wilderness in the region while designating a little more than 20,000 acres for multiple use. Land that is designated for multiple use can be used for a wide variety of things, including recreation, mining, grazing, logging, farming, gas and oil extraction, watershed conservation and wildlife habitat.

“We’re happy today, and we’re now laying the groundwork for this to get a vote on the House floor,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Carson City, who sponsored the Pine Forest Range Recreation Enhancement Act.

Amodei said he has spoken to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., about getting the bill to the floor quickly now that it has been approved by the House Natural Resources Committee.

U.S. Rep. Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, lauded progress of the Lyon County Economic Development and Conservation Act, which he said could produce some major benefits for the area’s economy.

“This much-needed jobs bill is moving forward,” Horsford, who represents part of Northern Nevada, said in a statement. “This is a commonsense piece of bipartisan legislation that will put Nevadans back to work, and we are now one step closer to providing an economic jolt to Lyon County.”

The wilderness designation is supported by a broad coalition of ranchers, sportsmen, environmentalists, outdoor enthusiasts and Humboldt County elected officials along with Nevada’s entire congressional delegation. But some of those supporters objected Tuesday to what they called “poison pill” changes made to the bill by committee Republicans before the legislation was approved.

Those changes would block natural resource protection on lands near the wilderness area, prohibit private landowners from selling land near the wilderness area to the federal government and allow some logging in the wilderness area as part of wildfire prevention efforts, said a spokesman from the Wilderness Society.

“Adding these last-minute poison pills is clearly an attempt to advance ideological agendas that undercut local communities,” said Jeremy Garncarz, Wilderness Society senior director of wildlands designations.

But Amodei said critics don’t understand Nevada or they wouldn’t be denouncing those provisions.

“When 85 percent of your land is owned by the federal government, it makes sense to people in Nevada that you don’t want any more of that land to be sold to the federal government and taken off the local tax rolls,” Amodei said.

Anglers and sportsmen say the proposed wilderness area would protect some of the best hunting and fishing sites in the state. The area is home to mule deer, pronghorn antelope, California bighorn sheep, sage grouse, partridge and quail.