Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2003 | 11:06 a.m.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, which sells Bureau of Land Management property in Clark County, funds the projects. Interior Secretary Gale Norton approved the list of projects and land purchases, including $274 million for the development of parks and trails, habitat conservation and capital improvement projects for the federal recreation and conservation areas in Clark County.
Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., co-sponsored the 1998 act as a member of the House with his Democratic counterpart Sen. Harry Reid. He said the law matches the need to open up land for development with the importance of environmental conservation.
"We wanted to make sure that development went forward while thinking about the quality of life," Ensign said. Blocking Las Vegas' ongoing population boom through a halt to the BLM sales would be a bad idea, Ensign added.
"If you stop growth in the Las Vegas Valley, you will have massive unemployment," he said. "We have a massive construction industry. You would just see an unbelievable unemployment rate if you just cut off growth.
"What we want to have is managed growth, where you will have a good quality of life," a goal he said is realized because the federal lands that are sold are nominated by local governments.
Ensign said the act, which last month received good marks in a review conducted by federal auditors, serves as a model for land sales in other parts of Nevada. He said legislation is being drafted that could open up sales in Lincoln County and later in other parts of the state.
So far, the 1998 act has led to 15 auctions of BLM land in Clark County, netting $567.3 million. Most of the money has gone to local environmental and recreational needs. Norton said Tuesday that 74 percent of the Round 4 funds would be used locally.
Norton's fourth-round approval includes:
Norton also approved $111 million for the purchase of environmentally sensitive land statewide, most of which will occur outside of Clark County. Of 89,211 acres to be purchased in the fourth round of spending funded by the 1998 act, only 25 acres are in Clark County.
However, Norton also approved another 1,250 acres in Clark County to be purchased for $8.9 million as a supplement to the third-round spending. That supplement includes 1,173 acres along the Muddy River northeast of the urban area.
Phil Guerrero, a spokesman for the BLM's office in Las Vegas, said the Round 3 supplemental purchases were requested by Ensign.
The land to be acquired in Clark County under the fourth-round acquisitions is a patchwork of private property on the west side of the Spring Mountains, the tree-covered range to the west of Las Vegas.
Jane Feldman, an activist with the local arm of the Sierra Club, an international environmental group, said the package approved Tuesday provides important funding for local conservation efforts.
"It's a big package," Feldman said. "I'm not happy with every single specific item but the overall program is great."
For Feldman, the most important part of the package is the funding that she hopes will mitigate the rapid urban growth in Southern Nevada. She said the $16 million for development of Clark County's habitat conservation program is sorely needed.
The program needs more funds to monitor the state of the more than 80 endangered animals and plants in Clark County, she said. Clark County has only five people to do the job, and more people are needed on the ground.
"This will give us the capability so we can do the things that need to be done," Feldman said. "If we're really worried about maintaining the desert and ecosystems around us, this is where we get the most benefit."
The habitat conservation program is dedicated to the survival of those species, some of which are or have been feared to be on the brink extinction. The program is mostly funded by a $550-per-acre fee that landowners pay when they develop what was once open desert.
The program is managed by the county with input from a citizens committee, on which Feldman serves. Work by the county has included fencing desert roads to keep tortoises and other animals away from speeding vehicles, buying up grazing allotments on federal lands to preserve as open desert, moving threatened animals out of dangerous areas and public education.
Feldman also credits the federal and local agencies for identifying the areas alongside streams -- called "riparian" in the parlance of environmental conservation -- in the Spring Mountains for purchase and protection.
"Those are riparian areas that we really need," she said.
Feldman said one of her concerns about the entire package, however, is that relatively little acreage in Clark County was nominated and approved for purchase by the federal government. A little more than 2 percent of the total lands approved for purchase as environmentally sensitive land was in Clark County, where the land sales have funded the program.
The lands targeted in the rest of the state are important, Feldman said, but so is land in Clark County.
"I'm always kind of jealous," she said. "I think there's an underappreciation of the biodiversity in the south."
Jo Simpson, BLM spokesman for the statewide office, said if more land needs to be included for purchase, it is up to the local government agencies, environmentalists and others to nominate the properties.
"Everything that was nominated in Clark County was approved," Simpson said.
Alan Pinkerton, Clark County Comprehensive Planning director, said the question is more complicated.
"Lands that are acquired under the environmentally sensitive category of the public lands management act can only be administered by a federal agency," Pinkerton said. "Unless the agency is willing to nominate those lands, Clark County can't use the money to purchase environmentally sensitive lands."
He said the county, despite the disparity in acquisitions, has not been shortchanged by the process. The $104 million for development of parks, trails and natural areas in the county goes straight to Clark County's local needs, he said.
The county and other local agencies will administer most of the properties purchased under that heading, Pinkerton said.
"It's kind of a Catch-22, but there's a good faith effort by everyone involved to identify and purchase environmentally sensitive lands no matter what the funding source is," he said.
John Hiatt, a member of the BLM Resource Advisory Council and conservation chairman of the Red Rock Audubon Society, said other factors complicate the picture of an acquisition disparity.
"It is a very difficult situation," he said. "First of all you have to have a willing seller. In Clark County, a lot of these people are not willing to sell for the appraised value, whereas in other parts of the state, there are more willing sellers."
The other problem is that the BLM, under federal rules, cannot pay more than the appraised value of land, Hiatt said. In many cases, owners believe they can ultimately sell or develop the land for more money.
"The real tragedy here is not what has been approved, but what has been nominated but we've been unable to purchase," Hiatt said.
On Mount Charleston, acres have been identified for years but the owner, in this case developer Jim Rhodes, has been unwilling to sell at the appraised value, he said. Some of the Muddy River parcels included under the round three supplemental approvals took years to negotiate, he said.
Hiatt said more probably could have been done in the past to protect the environment with the funding and provisions of the 1998 act.
"Hindsight is great," he said. "In hindsight more could be done, but it is a fairly complicated process. There is also a pretty sharp curve in the learning process going on. What we need probably is more public involvement in the process."
The conservationist, however, said he is generally happy with the work that has been done in the name of environmental protection under the act, and looks forward to the next round of sales and funding that will come back to the state and county.
Hiatt said the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to Clark County and Nevada through the land sales is needed to protect critical habitat, but he added a cautionary note.
"We've got this money and there is a sort of euphoria going on, but the money is not going to be here forever," Hiatt said. "We really need to be judicious in how we spend that money."
archive
