Local BLM manager moving to new position

Thursday, Nov. 4, 1999 | 9:42 a.m.

The top official for the Bureau of Land Management's Las Vegas field office said Wednesday he is moving on to a new job within the agency Monday and that a replacement from Colorado already has been chosen.

Mike Dwyer, who joined the BLM's Las Vegas office five years ago, is officially finished as its manager Friday. But he will continue as acting field manager until replacement Mark Morse takes over Dec. 5.

Dwyer is taking a job as manager of the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act project office, based in Las Vegas. It's a lateral move in pay and management level but offers new challenges that include BLM land sales and acquisition plans statewide and management of the project's fund.

"It's cool," Dwyer said Wednesday. "I'm really happy and really excited."

The project was created under a 1998 federal act. It calls for selling Nevada's federal lands at open auction rather than through the often controversial swap process.

Dwyer will oversee the fund that holds the profits from those sales. The law calls for 85 percent of that money to be used to buy other environmentally sensitive land in Nevada and to pay for improvements to public lands. The Southern Nevada Water Authority will receive 10 percent, and the remaining 5 percent goes to the state education system.

Longtime BLM employee Mike Ford managed the program until taking an early retirement about five months ago, Dwyer said.

Dwyer described his five-year tenure as Las Vegas' district manager as rewarding, yet sometimes tumultuous. Most recently, agency officials have been trying to come up with a first-ever overall management plan for Red Rock National Conservation Area. The process pitted trail users against each other in some instances and united them against the BLM in others.

"With natural resource management, it's the nature of the beast," Dwyer said. "People feel strongly on all sides of the issues."

But not all of the conflicts were external. There was a fair amount of internal bickering among members of the 100-plus member staff, he said. Internal teamwork and better customer service are issues Dwyer said he wishes he could have resolved before leaving.

And annual federal budget cuts of about 10 percent a year didn't make working for the BLM easy on anyone either, he added.

"It's been a real challenge to meet all the demands with these falling budgets," Dwyer said.

Morse, who arrived in Las Vegas Wednesday for a house-hunting expedition, is a 33-year veteran of the BLM whose most recent duties involved being manager of a district based in Grand Junction, Colo.

He says he expects to confront a huge "learning curve" in his new post come December.

"The sheer size of the program and the magnitude of what is going on here is intriguing," Morse said. "I am extremely impressed. With a million visitors a year (at Red Rock Canyon), it's hard to manage."

Last month, Morse met with members of the Las Vegas staff he will oversee. He said he considers them hard-working but wants to bring a little levity to the atmosphere and improve the agency's image.

"They do a good job, but I don't think they have enough fun doing it," Morse said. "I want to enhance how the employees feel about the agency and how they feel about themselves. I don't think the successes coming out of Las Vegas are being exported to the bureau."

Jane Feldman, conservation co-chairwoman for the local Sierra Club chapter, said she has "mixed feelings" about Dwyer's reassignment.

It's good that Dwyer is a local manager who understands the issues surrounding preservation of the Las Vegas Valley's public lands, Feldman said, but the bureau has never placed as high a priority on conservation as she would like to see. She hopes Dwyer will include some kind of public comment process in determining how the public land act's money is spent.

"We're hoping for more of a voice in the process," Feldman said Wednesday evening.

Feldman said she wasn't sure Dwyer has good listening skills when it comes to dealing with the public.

"I think he thinks he does," she said. "He is approachable, but we didn't get our way in some of the areas where we thought we should have."

Dwyer said there is no way to balance all interests in a way that makes everyone happy every time, but he is pleased with how well the agency accomplished most of what it set out to do.

"The goal was always to do what was right and optimal," Dwyer said. "I went home and could sleep at night."