Conservation efforts to be led by Lake Mead boss

Jace Radke

Tuesday, July 18, 2000 | 11:07 a.m.

Ever since watching a naturalist campfire program at Yellowstone National Park at age 7, Alan O'Neill knew he wanted to devote his life to conservation.

O'Neill reached that goal, spending 34 years working for the National Park Service, and the last 13 years at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area where he is superintendent.

Now O'Neill has taken up the challenge of promoting and planning conservation efforts for all of Clark County's federally protected lands as the head of the Outside Las Vegas Foundation, a nonprofit organization that will assist in the areas' stewardship.

"My work over the last 34 years has taken me all over this country and to some international locations," O'Neill said in a statement. "It just seemed to me that it was time to come back home.

"I wanted a chance to focus my energy on improving the quality of life for those of us that live in this wonderful city. To me, the newly formed Outside Las Vegas Foundation is perhaps the most exciting conservation initiative anywhere in the country."

O'Neill often compares Las Vegas to a doughnut, with the city in the middle surrounded by nationally significant public lands. The foundation will serve as a point of contact and coordination for the four agencies that supervise the four areas as designated by Congress that surround Las Vegas, interagency partnership liaison Rebecca Talbott said.

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

Talbott credits O'Neill as one of the visionaries that made the foundation possible.

"He was part of a group thinking about starting an organization to help at Lake Mead, but then he thought about the bigger picture," Talbott said at Monday's foundation meeting. "His coming on board full time with the foundation puts us five years ahead.

"It's amazing that he has so much personal conviction about conservation that he's willing to leave the Park Service and come over to the foundation."

The foundation has a budget of $250,000 a year for the next three years and already has plans for cleanup, education and research projects.

O'Neill will stay on as superintendent at Lake Mead until late September or early October, but he will be missed when he leaves, Lake Mead Assistant Superintendent Bill Dickinson said.

"We were all a little surprised by the decision, but protecting public lands is something he's always put his heart and soul into," Dickinson said. "It's a perfect link for him because it affords him the opportunity to not only help Lake Mead, but all the public lands surrounding Las Vegas."