Editorial: Faltering federal protect plan

Saturday, Oct. 8, 2005 | 9:32 a.m.

Ten years ago a flood washed out a remote dirt road in the Ruby Mountains north of Elko, igniting a passionate, yearslong rebellion against federal officials who refused to rebuild it. The government hoped to protect endangered bull trout by preventing silt from slipping into the adjacent Jarbidge River.

The bickering has continued inside the courtroom and out on the streets of Elko, where U.S. Forest Service officials have been shunned, ridiculed and threatened by locals who wanted to rebuild the 1 1/2-mile road that dead-ends in a wilderness area.

Activists paraded, demonstrated and tried to rebuild it themselves. The supervisor of the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest resigned her post in 1999, citing the community's "hostility and distrust." In July 2000, members of the "Shovel Brigade" -- so called because they collected shovels from anti-government activists across the country -- removed a boulder with which Forest Service officials had blocked the roadbed.

The legal battle over whether the federal government or Elko County owns South Canyon Road continues. But last month, the Associated Press reports, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service dropped the Jarbidge River from its list of critical habitats for the bull trout. The agency's Sept. 23 report cites concerns that the designation "may negatively affect cooperative relationships between federal and local officials and discourage voluntary, cooperative conservation."

Cooperative, indeed. There has been little cooperation from the Shovel Brigaders and their political supporters. Forest Service workers assigned to Elko in 1999 told the Las Vegas Sun of having to avoid wearing their uniforms to the grocery store and of their children being ridiculed in school and church.

What's worse, the tactics worked. A federal agency charged with protecting endangered fish has buckled to backwoods political pressure. What happened in Jarbidge is a snapshot of how the Endandgered Species Act could be dismantled from the inside out by the Bush administration's preference for voluntary state and local conservation efforts over those required by the federal government. Without tough, federal protection of critical habitat, endangered animals and plants cannot recover.

It remains unclear how losing the river's habitat status will affect the feud over ownership of South Canyon Road. But it is abundantly clear that the endangered species struggling to survive on our open lands have lost the fight either way.