Wilderness as a Trophy

Originally Printed in the Moapa Valley Progress August 24, 2011

I vividly remember my first deer hunt. I got a little forked horn, nothing spectacular in comparison but it was my first deer and so a great success in my rite of passage.

I remember sitting around the fire with my old man that night. The silhouette of my hanging deer drawn on the cedar trees by the flickering light of our camp fire on a cold autumn night told of the day’s earlier event.

I remember the twinge of disappointment I felt at not bringing home that trophy buck yet still proud at the day’s success.

As we crouched over the Dutch oven, eating the choice cuts out of the cast iron with our knives, I asked my father of his first hunt and if he was able to bring home a trophy buck. His answer and the simple lesson taught within have stuck with me over the years.

He said to me, “Ya know a lot of things have changed since then. It wasn’t the big commercialized enterprise that it is now. If we hunted then it was because we were hungry. We didn’t hunt so we could put a mount on the wall to showcase our trophy, we hunted because we needed meat on the table during the long winter months.”

He reflected that no, he didn’t specifically remember the first deer he brought down. But he remembered many cold fall mornings on back of a horse glassing the country side, knowing grandma was home waiting for him and depending on the days success.

I have thought about that night a lot over the years, listening to my father talk of how the simple act of bringing down a deer has evolved over the years, even within the short time from one generation to the next. However, the sport of trophy hunting isn’t exclusive to big game hunting. This progression, or regression depending on your stance, has also taken place in the hunt for Wilderness.

When the “Wilderness Act” was put forth and passed in 1964, I suppose that it was founded on a legitimate reason to protect some of those remaining places where man is visitor.

However much like my father’s story, the original intent has transformed throughout the years. It has evolved from protecting wilderness into manufacturing Wilderness. The objective for which Wilderness was created has fatefully deviated from its original course and intent.

The hunt for Wilderness has become more about the trophy than it has about the ideals for which it was created. People have made it their livelihood to become hired guns that hunt for Wilderness.

These people or groups have had their sights set on Gold Butte for many years. Whether it is for personal gain or for their own satisfaction and glorification, the trophy hunt for new Wilderness that has ravaged the west needs to stop.

No doubt Gold Butte is an amazing piece of our country but a bureaucratic label that has been demeaned and reinvented over the years to fit a narrow special interest agenda is not what will protect it for future generations. Special interest groups who pander to the emotions and simplify the debate down to ‘save it or destroy it’ degrade all interested parties and promote the partisan rancor that plagues our political system.

Wilderness will not save Gold Butte.

As William Cronon has written in his article The Trouble with Wilderness, “The time has come to rethink wilderness. We live in an urban-industrialized civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness. Wilderness is not quite what it seems.”

I am not advocating that there be no protection for Gold Butte and I point out that this is not the case. Gold Butte is currently protected as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern.

The continual solicitation to manufacture more Wilderness within the region of Gold Butte is nothing more than a special interest trophy hunt with their agenda at heart and not what is best for our public lands.

Building a Base

What a long strange trip it’s been, traveling the politically rutted road of public lands policy surrounding Gold Butte. However, along the way I have seen some great sights and have learned a few good lessons.

It was little more than a year ago, that I was meeting with our congressional delegation on a regular basis. It was in those meetings that I was told point blank that the Gold Butte NCA and Wilderness proposal was a done deal. It was only in May of 2010 that the Clark County Commission passed their naïve and disingenuous resolution, reworked at the eleventh hour, in support of this same plan. We met with candidates running for office at every level of government, we met with Washington bureaucrats, lobbyists, local mayors, county commissioners and all manner of elected officials. Through it all, in spite of the odds, we were able to hold out through the election cycle of 2010 and the resulting lame duck session and fight off yet another inept and heavy-handed proposal.

 

Why was it that these politically privileged plans never made it out of the dark recesses of the chambers of those political elite? It was because of you. It was because when phone calls needed to be made, when letters needed to be written and a show of hands at a meeting was needed, you were ready to rise up.  I have seen what a coalition of communities coming together, fighting for something they believe in, can accomplish politically. It is bigger, better and stronger than any halfhearted special interest group could hope to buy or manufacture. 

It is my goal with this blog to provide a place where like-minded people can find information on current events and have a place where ideas can be shared that help promote local stewardship for our public lands. I would hope that the efforts of this blog have helped build the base of community support for issues surrounding public lands at Gold Butte. However, I need your help, in building an even larger community base to support Gold Butte. I need help in sharing our message to the community that cares about Gold Butte. The time will come again that we will need to fend off yet another special interest proposal that is trying to cash in on hundreds of thousands of acres to add to their trophy chest.  We need to stand ready as a community to yet again block the next unreasonable proposal.

I am not asking for money, I won’t spam you with emails or Facebook posts, I am not even asking you to come to any meetings, but I do need your help. 

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Save-Gold-Butte/107781355916775

Please share the link to the Save Gold Butte Facebook page to your Facebook friends and invite them to “Like” this page. Share the link to Save Gold Butte to your blogger friends and suggest they follow the blog with their blogger account. Help me build the base of community support for Gold Butte and keep our public lands accessible for everyone to enjoy.

Learning the Hard Way

The recent discovery of vandalism at Red Rock National Conservation Area (NCA) at one of the rock art sites has been making the rounds on the news circuits. This kind of senseless and destructive vandalism is inexcusable and I hope that the vandals are caught. However, in trying to find the best of a bad situation, one thing that these recent actions have done is stir up the conversations around protection, education and enforcement of our public lands and cultural sites.

KNPR State of Nevada had Mark Boatwright, BLM Archeologist in Las Vegas, as a guest speaker on December 3^rd 2010. The conversation was centered on the vandalism at the rock art sites but the discussions also touched on some of the issues faced when managing cultural sites. In the interview Mark said, “The problems that we have with managing rock art sites is their accessibility. The closer that they are to the road, whether it’s an NCA or a monument; the more likely you are to see graffiti.  ”

In a post I wrote back in October, Defining Access, I worked to define that access is more than the simple definition of an open or closed road. I think that Mr. Boatwright complements this discussion with his quote about access, “The problems that we have with managing rock art sites is their accessibility.” I believe that access also encompasses the visibility or awareness of certain areas as well. Political designations are one tool that is used to raise awareness of specific areas to a much broader audience. These political designations include NCA, Wilderness, National Monument and the likes. To brand certain areas with distinct labels and highlight them on every map, publishing it on internet sites and printed media is making these areas more accessible by advertising their location. However, with this raised awareness there is also an associated risk that is being ignored.

While many are using the recent actions of vandalism at Red Rock as testimony to rush Gold Butte’s status as an NCA, I would counter that this is plain and clear evidence of why it should not be rushed. If an area like Red Rock that has been protected for many years, is much smaller geographically, and has more intense management and available resources than Gold Butte, and it is still getting vandalized, maybe pointing the spot light on Gold Butte is not in Gold Butte’s best interest. Now is not the time to earmark Gold Butte for the bureaucratic brand.

Now is the time, when Gold Butte is flying low on most people’s radar, to build a practical management plan. A management plan that focuses on education and enforcement objectives that can safeguard Gold Butte’s resources and accessibility for the general public. To label Gold Butte an NCA and highlight it on every map and print it on every national register is reckless and irresponsible. If everyone who believes they are as impassioned as they preach about what is best for Gold Butte, could focus their misguided energies on sustainable solutions for Gold Butte, positive achievements could be accomplished. However, if this agenda is pushed, it is being run at the risk of the irreparable consequences it carries to the physical sites and the general public.

It is time to foster new discussions instead of the same ol’ worn out rhetoric calling for the implementation of ineffective policies that do not work. It’s time to come up with sustainable solutions, instead of taking risks and putting our public lands in danger.

Legislative Integrity – Avoiding Another Omnibus

The phone calls have stopped, the road side signs are being taken down and the negative campaign ads that clogged the television and newspapers have stopped. Finally election season 2010 is over. However don’t let your guard down just yet. With the recent election we are left with a Lame Duck congress. This leaves our rejected representatives held accountable to no one yet still left with the privilege of casting votes that directly impact our lives.

The biggest threat to public lands over the next two months is the looming possibility of yet another unjust omnibus bill being introduced at the midnight hour. This covert and underhanded tactic denies the process of government its constitutional responsibility to adequately consider all legislation introduced. This circumvents the system, set forth by the founding fathers, to take its proper course which governs our nation.

Essentially what an omnibus bill does it take several, if not hundreds, of pieces of individual legislation and roll them all up into one bill. This makes it so our representatives cast an all or nothing vote for a large and diverse group of legislation. At face value this may seem like and efficient way to get things done, however in reality what it does is deny each individual piece of legislation the proper consideration that it deserves. The previous bill in 2009 included about 160 individual pieces of legislation affected nine western states, and eliminating over 2 million acres of public lands for motorized recreation. THIS IS A BIG DEAL.

I will admit that there are some good things that get done with this massive bill, that’s the key to getting it passed. You have a few shining stars that cast a positive light on this bill while in the shadows the favors to special interest are slipped in with the hopes they get lost in the confusion. Gold Butte is a likely candidate for one of those favors to special interest that would get slipped into this mammoth bill. Gold Butte and hundreds of other similar places like it, that deserve individual consideration, will be sacrificed at the hands of another omnibus bill.

The fact that we have situations like the Lame Duck session and allow loopholes like the omnibus bill use to really bother me. I use to question if the system, set forth by the founding fathers, was broke. As I sat down and tried to come up with a better solution to the current system a simple fact hit me like a ton of bricks, it’s not the system that is broke it’s the people we allow to manipulate it. The biggest threat to responsible government is those who are seeking to abuse it.

We can try and create a perfect system or craft the slickest piece of legislation however there will always be people who find loopholes. You cannot legislate integrity. Those principles have to be brought to Washington by those who we elect to public office and we must demand that they uphold those values. Don’t blame the system, blame those who abuse the system.

With the difficulties that our nation faces spending time and resources trying to pass an unscrupulous omnibus bill to further a misguided agenda pushed by special interest is not the best allocation of our representative’s time. Please take the time this week to contact your representatives and tell them that you do not support another omnibus lands bill. 

Congresswoman Titus
https://forms.house.gov/titus/contact-form.shtml

Senator Reid
http://reid.senate.gov/contact/

Senator Ensign
http://www.ensign.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.ContactForm

Defining Access

Access can be one of the most divisive issues when it comes to public lands. Many people equate or translate roads directly to access. This is a broad misconception. Roads are a part of access but they are only a piece of the puzzle. Access is not only the means by which we see the country but more importantly the experience and the perception that we get when we connect with a certain place. It is not enough to just see the landscape from a designated vantage point, it is our ability to be a part of, and connect with, the land in a variety of ways that makes a place accessible.


I can see Red Rock from my office window but does that mean I have access to it? If roads are only open to licensed, street legal vehicles, is that access? If the managing agencies quit maintaining the roads to be left to the natural forces of nature to close the road, which relieve them of direct accountability for the road closure, are they providing access to public lands? If hundreds of thousands of acres are manipulated into the idea of “Wilderness” does that allow my family and the public access to these places?

One person’s narrow definition of what access is, confines all of us to experience that place as they believe we should. One person’s political definition of what a landscape is does not change the physical characteristics or the history of that place. What it does, is force the rest of us to conform to their beliefs right, wrong or indifferent. It forces us to see and experience this place as they believe we should be allowed to. Regulation that manipulates the reality to conform to a group’s specific interpretation of a place limits access to individuals to see and experience a place. Creating authoritarian regulation that strips away the Sense of Place, which makes each individual landscape throughout our public lands so diverse, robs a community and future generations of that place.


Agencies that stop maintaining roads on public lands with the hopes that natural forces will close them off, is not responsible public land management. Temporary road closures with vague rationale, no timelines and no communication to the public is not responsible land management. These elusive tactics applied over a long period of time eventually lead to restricted access and erodes public trust in the managing agencies.

What happens to a “designated road” when it cuts through a “potential habitat” for an endangered species like the Arizona Bell Vireo, Banded Gecko, Banded Gila Monster, Blue Grosbeak, Desert Iguana, Desert Night Lizard, Desert Tortoise, Great Basin Collared Lizard, large Spotted Leopard Lizard, peregrine Falcon, Phainopepla, Southern Desert Horned Lizard, Southwester Willow Flycatcher, Summer Tanger, Vermillion Flycatcher, Western Burrowing Owl, Western Chickwalla, Western Red Tailed Skunk, Yellow Billed Cuckoo? You know what will happen, the road will be closed. It will probably be a “temporary closure” while it gets studied but nonetheless a closure. What about other external forces like fire and flood damage? We have already seen road closures due to the above listed items.

Access embodies a wide range of elements including the physical landscape, the complete history of the area, the roads, the means by which we travel the roads and the feelings that a person has about the place they are visiting. It is the overall experience that a person has while exploring the back country that makes it accessible. To rush into legislative action without fully understanding what Gold Butte is, restricts access to it. Labeling Gold Butte with an ambiguous political designation, to pacify special interests, compounds the issues surrounding public lands, it does not solve them. Trying to build a solution on a faulty foundation manufactured for politics, not better public lands management will not succeed in the long term. If we are going to build a sustainable solution that maintains the characteristics of Gold Butte, while preserving access to it, the solution will have to start from the ground up. This can only be accomplished with active involvement by the local communities and collaboration with the local land management agency.

Creating a Responsible Environment

I am sure that all of us, at one point or another, have been in a situation where we felt like we were destined to fail. Maybe it was at work with a new policy that was implemented or a supervisor that was trying to prove a point. Maybe you were involved in an extracurricular activity where the demands of the group exceeded the potential of the group’s ability to actually reach their goal. Or maybe a new law was put into practice that, when applied in the real world, was hopeless at best. Often while out with my family enjoying Gods Country I can’t help but feel that much of our current policy and management practices in regards to public lands is creating an environment for people to fail to recreate responsibly.

o Restrooms

People have claimed that there is a problem with visitors to Whitney Pockets inappropriately using the site as a restroom facility. I agree that this is disgusting however there is a relatively easy solution to this problem. Instead of making this a big deal and using it for leverage to push your group’s agenda, focus your energy on fixing the problem. Build a facility. Whitney Pockets is the end of the oil and the gateway to Gold Butte. Instead of squandering time and resources on such things as BLM corrals and closing trails we should work to create and environment for people to recreate responsibly. If we create a situation for people to fail they will. I propose we focus our energy in positive means and work to build Gold Butte as a place where people and families can responsibly enjoy our greatest asset, public lands.

o Camping

I have heard, from both the BLM and other groups, that they report people camping illegally. Again to reiterate what I proposed for the restroom issue; Instead of making this a big deal and using it for leverage to push your own agenda, focus your energy on fixing the problem. Clearly define the areas where you want them to camp, educate and share maps and information with them and the problem is fixed. If you build it they will come.

o Roads & Trails

Roads are the means by which our public lands are controlled. If there is one issue that you can count on to get people stirred up it is roads. Roads have been closed at Gold Butte. Some are categorize as “Temporary Closures” and others have just been closed and marked as “Restored”. I am sure that in some people’s minds the road closures make sense and under certain rules and regulation it is even legal. However the current practice, by which these closures are carried out in my opinion, is where much of the contention is created. This combined with the new mantra of, “if the road is not marked open then it’s closed”, is quickly eroding what is left of the public’s trust in the BLM.

The current practice of temporary closures to roads with little or no information disseminated to the public is criminal. If there is a legitimate reason for a closure then there needs to be a legitimate plan to bring that road back open. Share with the public in an easy and transparent manner the details surrounding the management process. If people or agencies believe there is a problem with people creating new trails and going off-road we need to educate the users of where and which roads are open. Disseminate maps, mark trails and educate the users. Create an environment where the users feel a part of the process rather than against it and progress will be made.

o Cultural Sites

There has been damage to cultural and historic sites. Has the damage been over stated for peoples own agenda? I don’t know. However I truly believe that the overwhelming majority of people who use our public lands have no intention of purposely damaging our cultural sites. What is the remedy? Despite the message that special interest and the environmental lobby take to Washington it is not closing our public lands to the public. The answer is education, community stewardship and fostering a positive relationship where collaboration from all sides can take place. 

The public has the potential to be the greatest asset that public lands, as well as the agencies who manage our public lands, could ever have. Instead of alienating what could be its most powerful partner, our agencies should work with those who truly love public lands to foster a working relationship and build a true stewardship for public lands. The agencies will be able to better direct their funding to keep our greatest asset accessible and open for the public to enjoy. We need to provide a setting where we can freely and openly take the problems and complaints that people raise and then create practical policy that will resolve the issue. We need to create public lands policy that creates an environment where people can recreate responsibly. 

Metrics to Management

Creating Practical Public Lands Policy

I am currently employed as a computer programmer. As a part of every application that I write I build a metrics component within the application. I track what functionality in the application gets used and how often. I do this because it allows me to make informed decisions about the applications that I manage. It allows me to take my metrics, things that I know, and translate that into a better management plan or process for the applications that I am tasked with maintaining. It is my opinion, that this same principle can be applied to managing our public lands.

While trying to sift and sort through all the claims and accusations about what is and what is not taking place at Gold Butte I have heard a lot of different claims from all sides. Working to come up with real world solutions, rather than hope a new political label will fix the “problem”, I thought I would try and gather what metrics I could on public lands at Gold Butte. How can we make management decisions based on abstracted hypothesis and unfounded assumptions?

If people, groups or management agencies have specific concerns about our public lands we have to sit down, list them out and come up with real world, practical solutions for each specific concern. The message that we sent to our representatives is something I truly believe; that we support a fair, transparent and open process to developing a management plan for our public lands. Collaboration and data create the opportunity to deliver results.

Increased Usage (Traffic Data and Visitor Count)
One of the biggest concerns that you hear and read over and over is about the increased usage of Gold Butte for a recreational destination. I won’t point out the obvious conflicting rationale of this claim coupled with, so we need to give Gold Butte more recognition. I will save that for a later post, but it’s something to think about.

In many peoples rational for whatever cause they champion you will hear the claim that there is increased traffic and usage out at Gold Butte. I am not disputing this claim however I wanted some actual numbers to in fact see what the increase in usage at Gold Butte is. I made contact with the BLM requesting this data along with other statistics relating to Gold Butte. Would you like to know what the actual increase of usage over time is? Me too! The BLM does not have any data, past or present, with regard to traffic or visitor counts for this region.

I am not disputing that the number of people that visit Gold Butte is growing. However, to use this rationale at face value with absolutely no numbers to back it up is foolish. People are making life altering management decisions for public lands, whether political or by the managing agency, with no actual data. The basis is nothing but elusive assumptions. How can you measure success unless your only goal is to restrict total access without baseline information and a clear and open objective?

Rangers
I have heard the argument that we need more rangers to patrol Gold Butte. I do not have a stance on this because I don’t know enough about policing public lands for me to say one way or the other. Some simple questions that I have asked, that would help me better understand, I have never got answered. How many rangers do we need? Is this number calculated off the sheer acreage of the particular region? Is it based off of incident reports and tickets from the field?

When I requested the traffic data for Gold Butte I also asked for data on incidents in the Gold Butte region, both policing and cataloged incidents for cultural sites. I was told that there is some data for the last few years however this information is not available to the public. For people to use this rationale for hopes of getting an NCA without the proper data is short sighted and detrimental to other public lands within the BLM’s purview. This would do nothing but pilfer resources from other public lands within the state. Stressing one place and stripping others of their recognition.

If we are going to find legitimate solutions to the problems that face our public lands we have to first be able to define the problem, have a goal or solution we want to reach, have base line data to gage our progress, and continue to track metrics until we can honestly claim success or failure. There has to be accountability on all sides of the table. We cannot continue to allow people, agencies or special interest the luxury to hide behind a cloud of vagaries due to the lack of accurate and freely available information.

Metrics create accountability and accountability is like disclosure….its nice when there is some.

The Misconception of Public Pressure

  

Remainder of the Forest  

By way of the crow it is roughly 4,274 miles from Art Coleman’s grave at Gold Butte Nevada to the Central Amazon Conservation Complex in Brazil. The physical geography of these two locations varies to the point of near absolute opposite. However despite these physical differences I believe that they do share some of the same land management challenges.

In an interesting book titled, “Break Through” the authors bring up an interesting point on conserving the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil. The line of reasoning that they point out applies to Gold Butte and more specifically the recent trend in public lands management in the US overall.

But even if the government, the tribes, and the mangers of extractive reserves manage over the next several years to keep 40 percent of the forest that have been saved intact, what then?  The tighter Brazil’s protections on the first 40 percent of the forest are, the greater the pressure will be on the remainder of the forest.

The pressures of public use are increasing. This is not a bad thing! Greenies, Enviro’s, conservatives, liberals, whatever titles or names you want to throw around it doesn’t matter. People connecting with the land is the first step in building a generation that respects and understands the environments role in everyday life. The objective to which all ambitions should be focused is to create and environment for responsible use AND ALLOW IT TO TAKE PLACE. Relish in the fact that it does take place.

As we continue down the path of restricted access to public lands it is forcing more and more people to concentrate on smaller and smaller tracts of public lands. A path of common sense logic will lead you to the simple fact that more people concentrated in smaller areas will lead to degradation.

Limiting access, closing roads, and denying our public lands the proper management and stewardship that they require will only deepen the divide between common sense conservationists and radical environmentalists and the federal government. We need to ensure that the public lands that make up Gold Butte remain a place where responsible use, recreation and western cultural heritage exploration can take place.

Protection with access for our public lands.