Congressman wants emergency hearing in dispute over threatened bull trout

Scott Sonner

Thursday, Oct. 21, 1999 | 11:43 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - Rep. Jim Gibbons is trying to bring a House subcommittee to Nevada for an emergency hearing on an increasingly volatile dispute between the Forest Service and private property activists over protection of a threatened fish.

"There is a climate of distrust between the U.S. government and the citizens of Elko County that has a potential to further escalate," Gibbons, R-Nev., said Thursday in a letter to Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho.

Chenoweth-Hage is the chairman of the House Resources subcommittee on forests and forest health.

Gibbons said he's hopeful she will bring her panel to Elko before a federal judge holds a hearing at the end of next month on whether to extend a court order prohibiting Elko County citizens from rebuilding a road at the center of the dispute in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest.

The road in a remote mountain canyon south of Jarbidge near the Idaho border washed out in a flood in 1995. Forest Service scientists say reconstruction of the road would accelerate erosion and jeopardize survival of the only surviving population of threatened bull trout in Nevada - the southernmost population of the fish known to exist in the United States.

Local citizens led by a state assemblyman planned to defy the agency and rebuild the road by hand two weekends ago before U.S. District Judge David Hagen issued a temporary restraining order to keep them away.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., and Nevada Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa were among those who expressed concern the citizen work project could turn violent if locals were confronted by government agents.

Gibbons blames the Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to work with Elko County toward a compromise.

"I want to get away from the intransigent resistance of the administration and the reactionary efforts that some people have in mind that aren't going to get us to a solution," Gibbons said Thursday in a telephone interview from Washington.

"We have to get away from this bickering and the battle lines that the government has drawn up there," he said.

Chenoweth-Hage, a conservative viewed by national environmental organizations as an enemy, was not immediately available for comment. Aides on her subcommittee did not immediately return telephone messages.

Gibbons was unsuccessful in an earlier attempt this year to bring a panel hearing to Nevada on the topic.

But he said today that the situation has grown worse since the Justice Department threatened to sue Elko County over damage to the Jarbidge River the government says was caused by a county road crew that tried to repair the road in the summer of 1998.

"Now we find the U.S. government bringing the full force of its weight against a small county," Gibbons said.

"The sense of frustration for a number of county residents has led to an announcement for citizens to travel to Jarbidge to use 'people power' to restore part of the road," he said in the letter to Chenoweth-Hage.

"We should not allow this to go any further without a clear explanation to Congress of the entire course of events leading up to this potential lawsuit and risk of individual citizens being charged with violations," he said.