Taking it outside: Organization fights to preserve ecologically sensitive areas

Monday, April 2, 2001 | 10 a.m.

They call it the hole in the doughnut a burgeoning city surrounded by 7 million acres of public land.

The panoramic views, the peaks, ridges, desert wildlife and scenery surrounding Las Vegas exemplifies to many a picturesque, ideal West.

Topping it off are federally designated recreational areas providing year-round golden opportunities for hikers, bikers, off-roaders, campers, canoers, horseback riders, rock climbers and boaters.

The Spring Mountains and Lake Mead national recreation areas, Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area and the Desert National Wildlife Range combined draw 16 million visitors annually.

On any given weekend Red Rock Canyon is jammed with cars vying for space on the scenic loop. In the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, Mount Charleston is clogged with visitors.

But with the masses come empty beer bottles, dirty diapers, soda cans, toilet tissues and candy wrappers. The litter, thrown from car windows or left behind by weekend swarms, piles up in washes and gullies by the garbage bagfuls, left for others to clean up.

Sofas, tires, Sheetrock and abandoned automobiles dumped off roadsides add an unwanted dimension to the landscape. Macho four-wheel trucks ripping over the topsoil create environmental disturbances that can last for decades.

To manage the growth and educate the community, Outside Las Vegas, comprised of prominent Nevadans, local businesses, conservation organizations and federal agencies, began to take shape three years ago. The group is working to preserve and protect Southern Nevada's resources. It has mapped out an extensive anti-litter campaign, educational programs and other efforts to educate the community about desert wildlife. The goal is to improve the quality of life in Southern Nevada.

Outside Las Vegas works in conjunction with the forest service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, and combines the efforts of individual organizations already taking on similar projects.

"Outside Las Vegas is about bringing the community up to speed so they know what's expected of them before they leave town," said Alan Pinkerton, manager of the Clark County Comprehensive Planning division's environment planning division, who is also on Outside Las Vegas' partnership advisory council.

Clark County has 5.1 million acres of land, 90 percent of which is public land open for recreational activities, Pinkerton said

Yet "any kind of impact has a lasting effect because the desert climate is so slow in responding to or repairing the damage or impact of what occurred."

Thinly spread

One of the bigger challenges facing Outside Las Vegas is convincing Las Vegans of the delicate, valuable resources they have in their own back yards, Alan O'Neill, executive director of Outside Las Vegas, said.

The No. 1 reason for the problems in the designated recreation areas is simply that people often mistake the desert landscape for a wasteland, he said.

"(People's) perception is that nothing is out there. If they grew up around a bunch of trees, (the desert) is a wasteland," O'Neill said. There are so many people who have moved here in the last decades. There are so many newcomers who don't understand the intricacies and delicacies of the desert."

O'Neill recently retired from a 13-year position as superintendent of Lake Mead National Recreation Area. "Federal managers looked around and said, 'This community has grown so fast, we're not going to be able to hold the line on available resources,' " he said.

Between the four federal agencies, there is staff of only 320 employees, O'Neill said. "That's smaller than a culinary staff at a medium-sized hotel, to put it in perspective."

The Desert National Wildlife Refuge Complex, north of Las Vegas, has more than 1.5 million acres and is the largest national wildlife refuge south of Alaska -- and just three people are managing it.

Volunteer groups, such as Friends of Red Rock Canyon, a group that attends to maintenance, graffiti and litter removal and environmental education in the conservation area, contribute to the recreation areas.

But because of the growth and the amount of land available for recreation, Bill Dickinson, superintendent for Lake Mead National Recreation Area, said that managing the areas is "a job that's bigger than any individual agency, individual organization or individual person.

"Just about everything imaginable is left behind -- beer bottles, Coke cans, food wrappers, hygiene products, dirty diapers," said Dickinson, who is also on Outside Las Vegas's partnership advisory council.

Last month 450 bags worth of garbage were collected and hauled away from Lake Mead's Government Wash by local scouts, students and organizations groups.

The grand plan

Outside Las Vegas is modeled after a similar public/ private partnership operating at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in Northern California, where O'Neill's twin brother is the superintendent.

O'Neill said Outside Las Vegas is the only such organization in the nation that works with four federal organizations.

Outside Las Vegas received a $300,000 start-up grant from the Hewlett Foundation in San Francisco. The grant is to be matched locally through donations and fund-raising efforts -- so far $55,000 has been raised, O'Neill said.

Once the projects are operational, O'Neill said he anticipates the annual budget for Outside Las Vegas to be about between $3 million and $4 million, with a staff of 20 to 30 people.

In addition to financial contributions and partnerships, the group plans to raise funds through sales of branded merchandise, such as T-shirts and calendars with images of the recreation areas, to be sold at visitor centers and and retail areas.

The money will be spent on projects, such as an environmental education field school that the group is trying to establish at Oliver Ranch in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

The school will provide overnight trips for local students to learn about issues such as solar energy and recycling, and hopefully to create environmental awareness among younger generations, O'Neill said.

Site stewardship programs that would provide intense docent training on monitoring, observing and reporting activities in the area are also being looked at, as well as a floating environmental education lab at Lake Mead, and ideas for shuttle systems at the recreation areas to reduce the number of vehicles going into the areas.

Ten million people visit Lake Mead annually (the third-most visited unit in the national park system). Meanwhile only 55,000 people visited the Desert National Wildlife Refuge Complex last year.

The Desert National Wildlife Refuge, created in 1936 for bighorn sheep, consists of four separate wildlife refuges, including Ash Meadows.

"We consider ourselves one of the best kept secrets in the Las Vegas Valley," Dick Birger, project leader for the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. "It's twice the size of Rhode Island, six times the Washington, D.C., area and an additional 16,000 football fields."

Outside Las Vegas will provide the visibility the area needs to help increase funding for the area, Birger said.

While it needs visitors and public awareness, there are concerns over people trashing the area. Similar to its neighbors, the refuge already serves as a dumping ground for stolen cars, construction waste and tires.

"They make the claim that they didn't know where they were, and I kind of have to believe they didn't know they were on a refuge or where the refuge is," Birger said. "We want people to know what this land is and what it's for."

Plants and wildlife

"People don't really know what's going on or what they have in their own backyards," environmental activist Jeff Van Ee said. "Some of the treasures we took for granted years ago are disappearing. A lot of people don't know that."

Nevada ranks 10th in the nation for high bio-diversity and rare species, said Dr. Teri Knight, director of conservation science for the Nature Conservancy of Nevada, said

In the entire state there are nearly 3,700 plant species, she said, and nearly 200 endemic plant and animal species.

The more than two dozen plants and animals living in Ash Meadows don't occur anywhere else on Earth, Knight said.

The Devil's Hole Pupfish lives in an area that is 6-by-8 feet, she said. "It's the most restricted habitat for a species that we know of on Earth."

Also, the Spring Mountains' 26 endemic plant and animal species cannot be found elsewhere, Knight said.

"Most people think this happens only in Africa or the Amazon River, but we're sitting in a place where 30 minutes away you can see things you don't see anywhere else on Earth," she said. "We have a cultural landscape that's rich in history, but people aren't really connected to it."

Because of the little rainfall Southern Nevada receives, soil destruction caused by off-road vehicles has a slow recovery rate, taking as much as 100 to 150 years, she said. Similar to litter, erosion begets erosion and bike trails lead to larger vehicle trails, she said.

"It starts a cycle that quickly becomes complicated," Knight said.

Visiting the conservation areas and the desert is "a different experience now than it used to be," Van Ee said.

"But having said that, we still have all this federal land surrounding Las Vegas. You can still get away."

archive