Partnership for federal lands in works

Sunday, Oct. 24, 1999 | 10:05 a.m.

When it comes to taking a walk on the wild side, Las Vegas residents and visitors have it both ways.

Wild as in neon and nightlife or wild as in, well, wild.

Las Vegas is an island of opulent resort-casinos, subdivisions and overt capitalism encircled by public recreation and wilderness areas managed by four different federal agencies.

It is an unusual urban setting in an even more unusual situation. The four agencies, which typically compete for money and political clout, have been quietly working together to manage the problems created by their lands being so close to a large population.

And now they are joining forces with some of Nevada's most prominent residents and politicians -- many of whom are responsible for the area's economic boom -- to create a foundation that can bring in the financial and community support that government money simply can't buy.

"For federal land managers to enter into a cooperative agreement with each other is pretty much unprecedented," said Bill Dickinson, assistant manager at Lake Mead National Recreation Area and a longtime National Park Service employee.

"It's a unique partnership," he said. "We've put aside our differences to look at the broader good."

Working together may be the only way that broader good can span the 3.6 million acres of wild recreational land that surrounds the Las Vegas Valley's urban core. People can't head out of town in any direction without stumbling across some of it.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Desert National Wildlife Range lies to the north. The National Park Service's Lake Mead National Recreation Area is to the south and east.

The Bureau of Land Management's Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and the U.S. Forest Service's Spring Mountains National Recreation Area are on the west.

Diverse terrain

Few, if any, major U.S. cities boast the same diversity of terrain and ownership.

"You can go from the noisiest casino to one of the largest, most primitive areas in the country within an hour," said Dick Birger, manager of the desert range, which is the largest federal wildlife refuge outside of Alaska.

But even among the remote bristlecone pines of Mount Charleston, the canyons of Red Rock and the open spaces of the desert refuge and Lake Mead, there are signs that the growth pinching Las Vegas' land and resources is tapping the wilderness too.

Popularity shows in the wear and tear on federally owned campgrounds, restrooms and trail systems built 20 or more years ago. They are deteriorating faster than volunteers and government workers can repair them.

Visitors are cutting new, unauthorized trails though delicate areas faster than workers can cover them up again. Some weekends there isn't enough room for the number of people who want to visit.

Litter and vandalism happen everywhere.

"We're constantly chasing our tails on those kinds of things," Dickinson, of Lake Mead, said. "We need to educate our users so they will appreciate and treat those facilities with the love and respect equal to what they would do in their own homes."

The problems have gotten so widespread that land management officials say it just didn't make sense to work on them alone anymore, in spite of the fact that across most of the West their respective agencies historically haven't played well together.

"Our similarities are far greater than our differences," Dickinson said. "We're no longer focusing on things that are just inside our own boundaries."

The agencies have always existed for vastly different reasons: managing forests for the logging industry or managing grazing land for ranchers or preserving the land for wildlife or managing the throngs of people who want to explore a national park.

But the past 10 to 20 years have changed the way the public wants to use its public land. Residents don't care whose badge appears on the federal lands sign. They just want access to the outdoors.

"To the public, we're all just the government, and we thought we'd better start acting like that," Birger, of the desert wildlife refuge, said.

They all have recreational components and the problems those uses cause, said Mike Dwyer, the Las Vegas district supervisor for the Bureau of Land Management.

"We all are concerned with illegal dumping, law enforcement, fire fighting, wildlife habitat management, restoration activities and clean water," Dwyer said.

Dwyer and Alan O'Neill, Dickinson's boss at Lake Mead, began meeting for lunch about three years ago just to talk about problems they both faced. They realized talking over lunch indoors was silly when they worked at two of the nation's best outdoor playgrounds.

So began a series of monthly I'll-show-you-mine hikes and meetings. Pretty soon they also were meeting with those in charge of the desert wildlife range and the Spring Mountains recreation area.

In addition to trading information, the officials have pooled their resources and hired employees none could afford on their own. Talbott is one of those. So is a landscape architect who works for both the BLM and the forest service, Dwyer said.

They even join forces to fight real fires in addition to the bureaucratic ones.

"We'll send a National Park Service engine to a BLM fire. We review (locations of) all the engines at the time, and no matter what kind of sticker is on the side of the truck, we'll dispatch whoever is closest," Dwyer said.

Still, cooperation and commiseration can't pay for widespread education programs and cleanup crews, said Thalia Dondero, a Las Vegas businesswoman and member of Nevada's University and College Community System Board of Regents.

She is leading the private sector march to create a foundation that can help fill in the gaps. The baton, she said, was turned over during a jet-boat trip with O'Neill on Lake Mead.

"What do you do? Say 'yes' or jump overboard," Dondero joked last week.

The federal guys figured they know the land, and Dondero knows the community. She could find the private support the public properties need.

And she has. The foundation doesn't even have an official a name yet, but its supporters include Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt and representatives from the Howard Hughes Corp., Mandalay Bay hotel-casino, Mirage Resorts, Station Casinos, UNLV and its Desert Research Institute and Del Webb.

"People realize we have a real treasure here. This is really one of the only places in the country that has all four of these (federal) jurisdictions," she said.

When the foundation is incorporated later this year the valley will have a nonprofit organization committed to finding volunteers, public grants and private donations to restore and upgrade the facilities that help people enjoy the area's federal lands.

"It's something that's going to go down in history as one of a kind," Dondero said.

Over the past four months Dondero and Talbott have met with more than 50 prominent politicians and Las Vegas business people, from Gov. Kenny Guinn to Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.

Everybody is on board and nobody has jumped out of the boat yet, Talbott said.

Community support

"The support that's coming from the community has overwhelmed me. It continues to dispel every myth you've ever heard about Vegas," she said.

Dondero says the foundation's approach will be similar to a campaign that has successfully resurrected and promoted the little known Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The chain of parks and landmarks stretches 70 miles along the California coast from Marin County to the northern tip of the Silicon Valley.

A private organization called the Golden Gate National Parks Association decided the place needed an identity, a marketing campaign and a logo people could carry home on a T-shirt, baseball cap, calendar or coffee mug.

Sounds commercial, and part of it is. But since 1981 the group has raised about $30 million for new facilities and preservation programs and supports a 144-member staff that does everything from giving interpretive tours to performing maintenance and security duties in the various parks and historic sites.

Such a campaign could create a sense of community ownership for Las Vegas' open lands that in turn could help boost donations for upgrades while educating residents and visitors on how to act responsibly, supporters say.

"People do not value wildlife if they don't know about it," Birger said. "But as they become more aware of it, they value it more."

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