State hopes to develop plan to protect resources

Tuesday, July 18, 2000 | 10:50 a.m.

Over the next three years state agencies expect to develop a natural resources plan that will identify problems and propose solutions to deal with the effect the rising population has had on plants, animals and air and water quality.

Nevada's population has doubled since 1986 to just under 2 million people competing for scarce resources.

A series of workshops has been held around the state since April to find out how the public wants to protect the natural resources. The last one will be in Las Vegas on Tuesday night.

State officials intend in the plan to temporarily erase borders between state, federal and local land to come up with a strategy to protect all public lands such as parks, watersheds and open spaces where mining and grazing have damaged the desert.

"Initially, we are pretending as if there are no political boundaries," says Ed Skudlarek, a state natural resources planner.

He adds the hearings give residents and representatives from all levels of government a chance to tell the state about the area's critical needs.

Every two years the state's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has produced an in-house list of threatened resources, but no comprehensive plan has ever been written.

Boundaries between federal, state and local land have increased tensions between rural counties and the urban areas, especially since more than 80 percent of Nevada is owned by the federal government.