Bull trout hearing postponed until at least Nov. 29

Scott Sonner

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 9:51 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Property rights activists in Elko County have been granted another month to line up witnesses and try to persuade a federal judge to lift an order blocking reconstruction of a road the government says would harm a threatened fish.

A hearing scheduled for Friday has been postponed at least until Nov. 29. At the hearing, a judge will decide whether to extend a temporary restraining order and issue a permanent injunction prohibiting rebuilding of the road in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

"They needed more time," Acting U.S. Attorney Kurt Schulke said from Las Vegas on Wednesday. The delay was requested by leaders of the effort to rebuild the South Canyon Road, which washed out in a flood in 1995 south of Jarbidge near the Idaho border.

The 1.5-mile section of dirt road is the latest focal point of a struggle between the federal government and local residents for control of land.

The county was going to rebuild the road in 1998, but work was halted for environmental reasons, including to protect the endangered bull trout.

U.S. District Judge David Hagen granted a temporary restraining order two weeks ago prohibiting a volunteer work party from rebuilding the dirt road with shovels, pick axes and horse-drawn equipment.

Republican State Assemblyman John Carpenter, one of three defendants named in the temporary restraining order, said they needed time to get expert witnesses to refute the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's determination that the bull trout is threatened.

"They keep saying the road may harm the trout but they have no proof. They are trying to shove something down somebody's throat without any science," Carpenter said Wednesday.

The county is trying to prove they have jurisdiction over the road because they owned it before the national forest was established in the 1900s.

"There were cowboys and sheep herders and miners up and down that canyon in the late 1800s. There is no question it was a road long before the Forest Service was established up there. I think the county's documentation will prove that," Carpenter said.

Carpenter said they are also trying to get the judge to move the hearing to Elko. Townspeople want Hagen to "go up there and view it on the ground so he really understands it.

"It is a lot easier for him to come up and hold a hearing than it is for a lot of people to travel to Reno," Carpenter said.