Columnist Susan Snyder: Proposal protects ‘garden’

Monday, June 21, 2004 | 9:15 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Nancy Hall's garden is safe.

For now.

The proposed Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act, introduced Wednesday by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., protects as wilderness most of the Mormon Mountains area the Mesquite waitress holds dear.

"I'm pleased. I've been going around singing, 'Nanny, nanny boo-boo. I got the most,' " Hall said Thursday afternoon.

The "most" she referred to was the wilderness designation in the Lincoln County bill that sets aside 769,611 acres for wilderness. The measure also releases another 245,516 acres from wilderness study area status. That means the land no longer is protected under the 1964 federal wilderness act.

The bill is modeled after the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, which allows federally held land to be auctioned to the public. The money raised pays for environmental protection and recreation improvements in the areas in which the lands are sold.

The Lincoln bill doesn't set aside the 2.5 million acres that members of the Friends of Nevada Wilderness had hoped to have designated, but "it's a great start," Shaaron Netherton, the group's executive director, said.

"There's definitely room for improvement, and we'll be working to get some of it back in," Netherton said Thursday in a telephone conversation from her Reno office. "But Nancy's garden is safe."

Hall, who serves coffee at the Virgin River Casino buffet in Mesquite, spends at least as much time on her feet stumping across -- or on behalf of -- the wild lands that straddle the Clark and Lincoln county lines an hour's drive from her home.

In March she took me on a daylong tour of the Mormon Range. The ebullient Friends of Nevada Wilderness volunteer carries a highly contagious passion for the rolling expanse of open land that rolls to the purple peaks on the horizon.

"Welcome to my garden," she said that day, spreading her arms wide and standing like a speck in the center of a vast painting.

Her hope was that all of the wilderness study land in the Mormons and then some would be included in the Lincoln bill. As it stands, 153,939 acres have been saved, while 16,875 acres have been released.

Still, it's more of a victory than a defeat, Netherton said. The group was hoping for protection of what they call "the big four" wilderness regions -- the Mormon, Delamar, Clover and Meadow Valley ranges.

And most of those areas are included in wilderness status, with the exception of the 16,800 acres released from the Mormon range and about 61,000 acres just east of the Meadow Valley region, Netherton said.

"We are thrilled with the protection of 'the big four,' " she said. "Those four areas really provide a fabulous ecological block."

The biggest loss was the Pahranagat Range, none of which was protected, Netherton said. Advocates fear many archaeological sites are now open to vandalism. They now will work to have it included.

Meanwhile, Hall hopes people take the opportunity to see what has been set aside.

"It represents different ecosystems. There's the pinon and and juniper, the low desert, the high desert, the great basin and grasslands," she said. "It's awesome."