Public Lands and Community Involvement

This was a column I wrote for Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins District B Winter 2012 newsletter

Read the Entire newsletter here

The outdoor recreational opportunities available in rural Clark County are as vast as the country is open. As more people have become aware of these opportunities, and the uses diversify, the need for more involvement to care for our backcountry has increased.  

A growing number of residents in Commission District B are coming together to resolve the challenges that face public lands. We believe that public lands policy should be developed and implemented on a community level. Our focus is not on gaining a bureaucratic designation but instead providing local, on the ground solutions to the challenges that face our public lands.  

We are working to provide sustainable public lands management initiatives that are built on the framework of community involvement, conservation and responsible use. An actively involved community working together with the land managing agencies creates and provides the protection that our public lands need.  

Some of the projects we accomplished in 2011 include a roads monitoring project, providing dumpsters on high usage weekends, a community cleanup project and a historic documentation project.  

With the upcoming year we will be focusing on growing community stewardship of our public lands and encouraging people to get out and enjoy Clark County’s beautiful backcountry. For more information please visitwww.savegoldbutte.com.

The Year Mark

It has been a year since I started the Save Gold Butte website. We have covered a lot of ground 48 posts later. I have had the opportunity to be a part of and seen many people get involved, making calls, writing letters and going to meetings. I have spent my time doing this with the goal of working towards public lands stewardship at a community level. I initially got actively involved because the threat of legislative intervention was “imminent”. Well I cannot say what could have been or might have been, but through the hard work and dedication of many people, there has been no legislative intervention and our public lands are still open and being cared for at a local level.

I have met a lot of people, been to many meetings, been a part of some wonderful events and enjoyed many trips out to Gold Butte with politicians, congressional staffers, local citizens and my family. And that is what it is all about, getting out and enjoying our beautiful country. It is hard for people to dismiss the grandeur and beauty of this part of the country and not want to be a part of keeping it accessible for everyone.

Oddly enough I even found out that there are still some good people left at the BLM who believe in their multiple-use mission. One of my favorite events was the Public Lands Day activity held in September. For our project we started a site to be a repository for any and every piece of history that we could scrounge up about Gold Butte. One of our goals with the site is to raise awareness of every part of history tied to Gold Butte including our pioneer, cattle ranching and mining history which played a significant part in the development of southern Nevada and the west. The site is http://www.goldbuttehistory.blogspot.com/ we haven’t been as diligent as we could in getting our histories posted but it is a goal and we hope to continue with the effort. If you have anything that you could add please contact me.

If I could have a goal for the next year with Save Gold Butte it would be to raise awareness of the issues facing public lands, grow the local stewardship movement and encourage people to get out and enjoy this beautiful country. By getting out and soaking up this beautiful landscape you can’t help but want to be a part of keeping it open and accessible in a responsible manner. Protection with access is still my primary objective.

The flowers are blooming, the early spring grass is coming up and the weather is perfect for a Spring trip out to the Gold Butte country. Get out and enjoy it. I’ll see ya out there.

Conditioned Support

On May 4th the Clark County Commission passed a resolution, with an overwhelming majority, to support legislation for the designation of an NCA for the region that encompasses Gold Butte. Whether our personal ethics or principles allow us to support these types of designations or not I think we need to take a step back and survey the situation.

Washington has shown a strong interest in the issues concerning Gold Butte. They would not have sent out the Director of the BLM Robert Abbey to meet with a select group of people to answer questions had this not been on their radar. We would not have had the opportunity to meet with our Congressional Representatives’ staffers had our Washington politicians not been interested. After it was all said and done it was essentially left to the local political representatives to build a consensus among the residents and special interests that could then be delivered to Washington. In its most simplistic form this is what happened. I am not saying I agree with how it happened, or with all of the details surrounding it, but a resolution was passed.

There are most definitely some points in the resolution that I don’t agree with and I believe will require further negotiations however there are also some positive points included in the resolution.

In a post that I wrote on March 29, 2010 ‘Reaching Out to Our Political Representatives’ I stated that I was concerned about the roads and continued restriction to access at Gold Butte. The BLM Roads Management Plan was something that many in the community helped to build. Although the Roads Management Plan is not perfect it has become something that many of us felt like we could ‘live with.’ The second priority identified in the Clark County resolution is to incorporate the existing BLM road management plan.

I have worried the values that I regard as my way of life in regards to dispersed recreation  would be nothing more than a reminiscent dream. However the resolution makes reference to some of these core values. The second ‘WHEREAS’ in the county resolution recognizes Gold Butte as a destination for numerous recreation opportunities including camping, hiking, hunting, motorized recreation and sightseeing. The first bullet point in the list of priorities as outlined by the County Commission is to provide opportunities for camping and hunting. Are pieces of this resolution not what we were negotiating for?

One of the points in the resolution that I will, and should be, criticized is the astronomical amounts of wilderness that are proposed. In a previous post titled Appropriate Wilderness I outlined how I feel about new wilderness being proposed in the Gold Butte region. It is excessive and unjust that factions believe it is acceptable to go from 30,000 acres of wilderness to proposing over 220,000 acres of new wilderness in one unrestrained land grab. These are dangerous encroachments. Why is the protection that the National Conservation Area gives us not enough?

As I have stated several times in my writing on this blog it is my desire for a long term solution for Gold Butte that will provide us protection with access. It is for these reasons that I think we must try and make the NCA work for us. We need to work together to ensure that our Washington representatives stick to the resolution and uphold our values. Can we not give our conditioned support to a resolution that protects what so many of us consider our way of life?

There is no denying that there have been some misguided and unscrupulous public land management deals in the past. It is these previous actions that continue to plague and fester at the hearts of many of us who have vivid memories of enjoying public lands that are now closed to many types of outdoor recreation. However we can only allow that to taint our foresight to a certain degree before it inhibits progress on other fronts. If there is a workable solution that satisfies most of our needs and ends the long battle, which eventually ends is more restriction anyways, why not support it? We need to work with change not against it. We need to focus our efforts to ensure that our values and access to public lands are protected. 

If our political representatives are willing to legislate the roads upfront and reinforce our values how can we not give them our conditioned support?

A New Day for the NCA Designation

Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins has taken the lead on the issues pertaining to Gold Butte. A positive thing that Commissioner Collins has done is state that he will support an NCA designation that includes the current Roads Management Plan for the Gold Butte area. This will allow multiple use and road designations to be legislated as part of the NCA bill allowing them to become law. On implementation of this progressive plan it will allow us to enjoy the beauty of Gold Butte rather than continue the two decade long discussion over its use designation.

Through Commissioner Collin’s leadership he has facilitated the opportunity for those who care about the long term plan for Gold Butte region to meet with our legislative representatives. This will allow us to have a much more active role in this legislative process.

Although this is a new approach to NCA designation it allows all concerned parties the security to know that at the end of this process the designation agreed upon will be in perpetuity.

However you feel about this process please let County Commissioner Collins know

702-455-3500 or email