Gov. Guinn backs shovel protest against Forest Service policies

Scott Sonner

Friday, Jan. 28, 2000 | 4:59 a.m.

ELKO, Nev. - Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn gave his support to a protest against the Forest Service in Elko Saturday and applauded Idaho's lawsuit challenging the Clinton administration's latest forest protection plan.

"Since the vast majority of the public lands are in the West, perhaps the bureaucrats in Washington D.C. simply don't understand the impact their decisions have on our western way of life," said Guinn, a Republican.

"Sometimes the only way to get their attention is to stand up for our rights," he said in a letter Friday to State Assemblyman John Carpenter, R-Elko.

Carpenter is one of the organizers of a "Jarbidge Shovel Brigade Parade" planned down Elko's main street at noon on Saturday.

Ranchers, loggers, miners and small business owners across 20 states have donated thousands of shovels in support of efforts to rebuild a road in a national forest that the Forest Service says would harm the Jarbidge River's threatened bull trout.

"We just passed 9,000 shovels," Elko County Commissioner Mike Nannini said as the caravan made its way Friday through Twin Falls, Idaho, and Jackpot, Nev. The caravan of trucks was to overnight in Wells, Nev., before heading on to Elko Saturday morning.

Jim Hurst, a Montana saw mill owner, came up with the idea of collecting the shovels to show support for Elko activists who want to rebuild the road in the Humbodlt-Toiyabe National Forest that washed out in a flood in 1997.

The Elko County Commission claims the Forest Service has no jurisdiction over the South Canyon Road because it was there before the national forest was established in the early 1900s.

"If they start to shut one road down, then it will be another, then another," Carpenter said Friday as pickup trucks full of shovels began to show up at his real estate office in Elko.

"We've got shovels coming from everywhere," said Bob Secrist, who fears his firewood business in Elko is in jeopardy due to Forest Service policies.

Secrist was loading up shovels on his truck for the parade. They've been arriving via UPS from, among other places, the Moore Mill in Brandon, Ore.; Frank Taylor in Dallas, Texas; and Ken and Nancy Nebel in Duluth, Minn.

Guinn turned down an invitation to speak at the parade and rally Saturday. But in the letter, he told Carpenter he wanted to express his support for those gathering to "peacefully protest the persistent attempts of the federal government to close off access to more and more of the public lands."

He also praised Idaho Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne for filing suit in U.S. District Court in Boise challenging President Clinton's roadless initiative, aimed at protecting up to 50 million acres of national forests currently without roads.

"Closing off millions of acres of public lands without adequate input from local communities is a travesty, especially in light of the fact that more than 85 percent of Nevada's land is already controlled by the federal government," Guinn said.

Forest Service spokesman Bob Swinford said a draft environmental impact statement on Clinton's proposal isn't scheduled to be completed until the end of March, with a final decision on the plan expected at the end of the year.

"The roadless initiative hasn't closed anything yet," Swinford said Friday.

He said agency officials were taking note of the protest in Elko.

"It's obvious a lot of people have concerns, some of them with the Jarbidge situation but others about the president's roadless initiative and national forest access in general," he said.