Private group heads sale of sensitive Nevada land

Friday, July 14, 2000 | 11:24 a.m.

A private, nonprofit group funded by Monsanto Co., various oil and gas companies and Coors Brewing Co. is negotiating the purchases of environmentally sensitive land in Nevada for the federal government.

The Arlington, Va.-based Conservation Fund is acting as an agent for the Interior Department in the first purchases to be made under the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act of 1998. The law allows proceeds of the sale of Bureau of Land Management land in the Las Vegas Valley to be used to buy private land within the state deemed valuable to endangered or threatened wildlife and water sources.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced the release of the first $33 million under the act last week, along with a list of properties various Interior Department agencies hope to acquire.

The list notes the owners as "willing sellers" and estimated values of the properties, but negotiations have just begun. Some parcels have not been appraised. Others may become part of a land exchange along with some of the cash in the public lands fund.

"These owners will receive fair market value, not $1 more," said Michael Ford, broker for the Conservation Fund.

The use of private groups to broker deals for the government is not unusual. Over the past 20 years the Nature Conservancy, the American Land Conservancy of San Francisco and Lands for the Public Trust have negotiated the swap of sensitive land in Nevada and across the nation for federal agencies.

This week the Nature Conservancy announced plans to purchase five miles of former ranch land and water rights along the Truckee River in Northern Nevada for $2.2 million to hold in trust for the federal government.

The conservancy's national board is trying to raise money for the deal, state director Graham Chisholm said. Eventually the most sensitive portion of the land will be granted to the federal government.

The Conservation Fund was brought in as negotiator in the current deals partly because of Ford's experience with the federal government in making land trades.

Such trades were harshly criticized in a General Accounting Office report released Wednesday. GAO investigators found that public parcels traded in such deals often were undervalued and private parcels were too expensive.

The involvement of a private trust like the Conservation Fund will prevent such abuses, Ford said.

The fund, bankrolled by corporations and foundations, can back up the deals it brokers, Ford said.

"That eliminates the need for the tin cup approach to willing private sellers," he said.

That means sellers can close a deal and get their money quickly after they agree on a price. They don't have to wait for the federal bureaucracy to release the money -- a process that can take months or years.

The lack of bureaucracy also gives the Conservation Fund more leverage to get a deal favorable for the public. In past land trades, the sellers have become frustrated with the appraisal process and walked away from deals, he said. The fund can work quickly with cash on the barrel.

"Once the land is in trust, it's locked in at an appraised value," Michael Dwyer, the public lands fund manager at the BLM, said.

The corporate sponsors do not have a say in the deals, Ford said. They get a tax write-off from the charitable donations and the right to claim they are community-minded. "Beyond that, it does not entitle them to any special treatment," Ford said.

"None of the corporate partners get anything in return," Ford said. "The assets or money given to the fund are considered charitable contributions. And we are the cheapest in the business."

"They want to show conservation and preservation to their contributors," Dwyer said.

Working out of his Las Vegas office, Ford is managing a mountain of paperwork on the first 11 picks of private holdings that could protect wetlands in the Las Vegas Wash and expand forests in the Spring Mountains.

" 'Why Las Vegas?" Ford said. "Because Las Vegas is an island of private lands surrounded by federal public lands."

There is plenty of land that needs to be protected in the Las Vegas Valley, Ford said.

The valley's explosive growth threatens to destroy watersheds as well as wildlife habitat. The Conservation Fund's corporate sponsors are interested in conserving and preserving those natural resources, he said.

Many of the owners Ford is negotiating with in this first round of purchases are as colorful as the Interior Department maps outlining the areas.

A parcel in the Spring Mountains has ties to late local real estate executive Ron Rudin, who put 260 acres into a trust that his fifth wife, Margaret, could not touch. Margaret Rudin is charged with murder in her husband's death and will be tried in October.

The 260-acre Rudin parcel, known as Tres Piedras, is today owned by the Rhodes Design and Development Corp. The property is listed as worth $6 million and is one of the last large, undeveloped properties in the Lee and Kyle canyon areas, according to U.S. Forest Service records.

Another parcel on the initial list is 160 acres on Mummy Mountain, also owned by Rhodes, that has an estimated worth of $1.2 million.

A third Spring Mountains parcel is a 29-acre piece of property straddling State Highway 156 less than four miles from the Mount Charleston summit. Known as Lady of the Snows, the property is managed by Joseph Mikulich, a longtime resident involved in transportation for Nevada Test Site workers.

On the other side of the valley, three parcels along the Virgin River are owned by the Good Old Boys Trust Agreement. With some of the property at the river's edge, the Bureau of Reclamation and the National Park Service wanted the land protected for the vanishing Southwest willow flycatcher bird.

Abe Fox, who arrived in Las Vegas in 1955 and operated the only deli in the city for years, bought a couple thousand acres along the river a few years after arriving in Nevada.

Richard Wilson discovered the property 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas shortly after arriving in Las Vegas in 1978. "I'm a hunter," he said. "All I wanted to do was find a place to hunt."

He teamed up with other hunters to buy the property from Fox parcel by parcel over the years.

Calling themselves the Duck Hunting Mothers, they dubbed their hunting ground the "DHM Ranch."

By the late 1970s up to 250 people, including friends and family, flocked to the remote site for barbecues and picnics. Ironically, the wild game fled the area. "In three years of improving the property, once the bulldozers came, all the game was gone," Wilson said.

The group swelled to 55 members, bought another 120 acres along the river and changed its name to the Good Old Boys Trust. But annual dues jumped from $500 a year to $5,000 annually, so members scattered, Wilson said.

When the DHM Ranch by the river reverts to the Bureau of Reclamation and the National Park Service, wild birds are expected to return. "The property will have come full circle," Wilson said.

And Ford, who has been meeting with the Good Old Boys, said the price tag will be "significantly less" than the estimated value of $288,000.

The largest purchase on the list is $7 million for the Rolling A Ranch in Northern Nevada's Lyon County. The property includes 1,161 acre-feet of ground water rights that feed into the Carson River, Ford said.

Although the private properties on the list were chosen by the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Reclamation and the National Park Service, some critics say federal officials didn't invite the public into the meetings where they set priorities.

Environmentalist Jeff van Ee wondered why sensitive lands around the Red Rock National Conservation Area, Mount Potosi and the Black Beauty Mine, all in the Spring Mountains, didn't make the first cut.

Norma Cox, a longtime resident and a citizen who has fought to save the Las Vegas Wash for decades, said she is also concerned that decisions have been made behind closed doors.

The first go-round may not have had as much public involvement as some would have liked, Ford admitted. But all the lands listed are included in federal management plans, he said. Under the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, private parcels have to be part of a federal plan and a landowner has to be willing to sell.

"We don't go out and promote our own priorities," Ford said. The Conservation Fund listens to state agencies and local residents.

There will be two more federal land sales in the next year. Individuals and government agencies may nominate environmentally sensitive lands for the next purchase, Ford said.

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