Ex-federal land official continues to push her agenda

Monday, Feb. 28, 2000 | 11:29 a.m.

Gloria Flora has no regrets about focusing national attention on the atmosphere of harassment and intimidation some federal workers endure in Nevada.

Three months have passed since Flora's high-profile resignation from her post as supervisor of Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Nevada. Her move sent shock waves through the agency and spurred a federal investigation of her allegations.

Her scathing two-page resignation letter to Forest Service employees called Nevadans' attitude toward federal employees and federal laws "pitiful." It described several occasions in which Forest Service employees were threatened, ostracized or verbally abused by residents.

She said a primary cause for her frustration was an ongoing spat between Elko County residents and Forest Service officials over a closed, 1.5-mile stretch of road in the Jarbidge Wilderness. And those groups are still trying to figure out how they can sit in the same room and resolve their differences with civility.

While Flora is no longer part of that battle, she says she still frets over the one question that should nag every public land manager. It's the question she has posed in speeches to civic groups and land managers all over the West these past months.

"What are we leaving for the future?" Flora said in a telephone interview from her Reno home. "That is so critical about why we make these decisions. We really are the voices for the unborn.

"It's frustrating as hell, but it's so rich," she said. "I am going to continue working on this issue."

Flora resigned in November citing an atmosphere of overt threats and criticism directed at federal employees by Nevada residents.

Earlier this year the Forest Service sent a five-member fact-finding team to Nevada to investigate Flora's allegations. Their report released in early February showed that foresters in northeast Nevada have endured the threats, fear and community exclusion Flora cited when she resigned.

Flora said the findings brought no joy and certainly no surprise.

"I never felt a need for vindication. It's not like it's anything new," she said. "But that report was very clear."

What is also clear, Flora said, is that residents all over the West -- not just in Nevada -- need to work hard to find more constructive ways to resolve the heated land-use issues facing them.

"With all the growth, we have tremendous challenges now," Flora said. "We need to solve these issues now, because it's only going to become more difficult later." Flora doesn't throw stones at the northeast Nevada community where many utter her name as an epithet.

And don't bother asking her about the 10,000 shovels Elko County officials have collected as a symbol they will rebuild the Jarbidge Road. She won't reveal her thoughts about those or the 30-foot-tall shovel monument officials have erected on the county's courthouse lawn.

Heckling doesn't accomplish anything, Flora said, and the fears behind such antics are very real. Some people are truly afraid of losing the only lifestyle they've ever known or wanted.

"I understand how fearful they are about the changes in these social issues," Flora said. "But they need to understand they are not in the majority."

She cited a recent study that shows 76 percent of Americans support President Clinton's efforts to protect the nation's forests through his so-called "roadless initiative."

Some of those who opposed Flora in Elko County, including Republican state Rep. John Carpenter, have said they will continue fighting the Forest Service on all fronts until Clinton's roadless plan is off the map. For them, the issues reach further than the Jarbidge Road.

Flora agrees with that. Although the situation in northeast Nevada reached an extreme, the sentiment behind it is shared by many longtime Westerners.

Yet the nation's public lands need protecting now more than ever, Flora said. Residents of the West need to show they are competent and open-minded enough to work through the inevitable changes with the government officials who manage the public's land.

"We need to show we have the capability to protect the resources," Flora said. "If we do want to maintain the rural lifestyle in the West, we're going to have to do it in a manner that the rest of the (public land) owners feel comfortable with."

Flora said she is pretty much living day-to-day right now. She has given speeches in Montana, New Mexico and Colorado and travels back to Montana this weekend to help with a seminar on wilderness issues.

She has entertained several job offers from other federal agencies but has no plans to take anything just yet, Flora said. She and her husband are trying to move back to Montana, where they have lived off and on for about a decade, and she wants to do some writing.

Flora said she has no regrets about resigning from the Forest Service. It was better to make the public aware of the situation than to let it ride until something happened to one of her employees.

"My career is nothing in comparison to my personal responsibility to protect my employees and to protect the public's land," she said.

Jobs will come and go, she said, but protecting the land is something from which she will never retire.

"I firmly believe our public lands hold our national treasure chest," she said. "That's the future because no one is making any more land."

Susan Snyder is a staff writer for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4082 or by e-mail at snyder@lasvegassun.com.