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BLM and Wilderness Characteristics

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YOU ARE HERE: HOME / FRONT PAGE / BLM PLAN TAKES INVENTORY OF LANDS WITH "WILDERNESS CHARACTERISTICS"
BLM Plan Takes Inventory Of Lands With "Wilderness Characteristics"
JANUARY 7, 2015 BY VROBISON LEAVE A COMMENT

The Bureau of Land Management is currently revising the Las Vegas Resource Management Plan. The plan will provide management direction for 3.1 million acres of public land in southern Nevada managed by the BLM for the next 15-20 years. This is the third in a series of articles which looks into some of the specifics of the plan as it could especially impact residents in the Moapa Valley communities.

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

There are few topics, dealing with public lands management in southern Nevada, that are as emotionally charged as the subject of wilderness. So it comes as no surprise that this subject has figured as a hot topic in the recently proposed Draft Resource Management Plan (RMP) which is currently open for public comment.

Federal wilderness is a concept established by Congress in the Wilderness Act of 1964. The Act defines Wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man is a visitor who does not remain."

There are currently more than 131,000 acres, in northeastern Clark County alone, designated as Wilderness or as Wilderness Instant Study Area, a preparatory designation which bears similar restrictions.

In recent years, environmental activist groups have pushed for more. For example, the numerous proposals to make the Gold Butte region a National Conservation Area have all included the designation of an additional 200,000 some-odd acres as Wilderness.

Many local residents with ancestral ties to those lands have viewed these efforts as attempts to restrict the public from accessing the areas where they have traditionally gone. Many have fought hard against these environmentalist proposals. They have advocated instead for a more local approach to conservation of those lands; rather than a top-down approach coming from Washington.

Language in the new RMP has many of these local advocates concerned. The document categorizes hundreds of thousands of acres, across various northeast Clark County locations, as having "Wilderness Characteristics." This puts the wilderness concept as a priority value in the day-to-day management of these lands.

BLM officials who have been involved in developing the RMP are quick to point out that Land with Wilderness Characteristics is not an official designation, nor is it a new restriction per-se. Rather it is just a category established in a broad inventory of public land resources.

"What we are doing there is following the Federal Land Management Policy Act which directs the BLM to maintain and update an inventory of all resources on public lands," said Chris Linehan, Outdoor Recreation Planner for the BLM. "The administration has determined that wilderness characteristics are a resource; and so that is why we are looking at them."

Merely listing an area as having Wilderness Characteristics doesn't bring the same restrictions as a federal wilderness designation, said BLM Planning and Environmental Coordinator Lee Kirk.
"Once the BLM does its inventory, they can say yes this area meets the criteria for having wilderness characteristics," Kirk said.

"Then it is just managing to try to protect those criteria. These are not designations, but just resources that are identified and you try to protect them as best as you can. They may have some tighter restrictions on them. But you'd still allow stuff that you'd never allow in Wilderness, like designating a road for motorized vehicles and that type of thing. You are just trying to protect the resource that is there. They are still kind of untouched, untrammeled; and you are just doing what you can to preserve that."

But that shift in management focus is just what worries local advocates.
"Once those areas are categorized as wilderness characteristics in the RMP, the focus shifts and it is now managed for that," said

Moapa resident Elise McAllister, who is the Administrator for Partners in Conservation (PIC), a local group advocating for community-based conservation of public lands. "Decisions are now going to be made with wilderness characteristics in mind. If there are management problems that arise, 'wilderness' is the guide for dealing with them."
McAllister contends that nothing has changed on the ground in those vast areas since the last inventory was done more than 20 years ago.

"The fact is that Congress told them back in 1990 to inventory everything and that is where all these Wilderness Study Areas came from that we have now," McAllister said. "They did that clear back then. So if the areas weren't listed then, why all of a sudden now? Nothing has changed. I'm more than positive that it has to do with environmental groups who are pushing in Washington to ask for another wilderness inventory."

McAllister said that the reason these areas had not been set aside as wilderness in the past was because they did not meet the necessary criteria for the designation.

As an example she points to a large area just north of the Arrow Canyon Wilderness Area. It is being proposed for the category of "Wilderness Characteristics" in the preferred alternative of the RMP. The area is located west of the Warm Springs area with its northern boundary fronting right up against State Highway 168.

"Back in 2002, they wanted all of that to be wilderness," McAllister said. "But we strongly stated that we have enjoyed that area and we use it all the time. It is right in our back yard; and it does not qualify for Wilderness."

McAllister said that there are old rock structures in the area that were built and used, in the past, by human settlers. There are also water developments, an old well and several primitive roadways through the area, according to the RMP document.
"That's not really wilderness, is it?" McAllister said.

Another example proposed in the RMP's preferred alternative are several areas surrounding an existing Lime Canyon wilderness area, McAllister said. These are located on the western edge of the Gold Butte Complex, roughly across Lake Mead from the Echo Bay area.

These areas had once been included in a former Lime Canyon Wilderness Study Area. But in 2002 they were removed from that designation by Congress. Evidence of man in these areas include water developments, old fence lines, livestock corrals, abandoned mining sites and several documented primitive routes, according to the RMP document.
"These areas haven't been managed for wilderness qualities for 12 years now; and for good reason," McAllister said. "Now to try and kick them right back into it: it is lazy management is what it really is."

McAllister comments on the fact that both of these examples are directly adjacent to existing wilderness areas. To her, this looks a lot like creating buffer zones for the wilderness areas.

But McAllister points out that the Wilderness Act of 2002 expressly forbids the creation of such buffer zones. Indeed, Section 204 of the Act states that "Congress does not intend for the designation of wilderness….to lead to the creation of protective perimeters or buffer zones around any such wilderness area."

But these categories were not intended to be buffer zones by the BLM, Lee Kirk said. There is no official designation being made on the land. That would require an act of Congress. Rather the areas are only being given a resource category, he said.
"The plan doesn't recommend or establish wilderness in these areas at all," Kirk said. "It just gives an inventory of resources on the land."
That provides a direction to the BLM's management of the area, he said.

But McAllister is unconvinced.
"We are talking about managing an undesignated area for its wilderness characteristics," she said. "And that area is directly bordering on a designated wilderness area. That seems like the very definition of a buffer zone to me. I honestly don't know what else a buffer could be."

The Draft RMP, including maps and all supporting material, can be found online at http://tinyurl.com/qzvaht7. Printed copies also are available to read at the BLM's Las Vegas field office, 4701 N. Torrey Pines Drive and at the local libraries in Overton, Moapa and Mesquite.

Written comments can be submitted online at http://tinyurl.com/qzvaht7, emailed to sndo_rmp_revision@blm.gov, faxed to 702-515-5023, or mailed to RMP Project Manager, Bureau of Land Management, 4701 N. Torrey Pines Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89130. The public comment period has been extended to February 6, 2015.

To read previous articles published in this series click below:

Public Lands Around M.V. Could Be Tagged For Protection By BLM Plan

BLM Plan Set To Remove Disposal Option From Lands Surrounding Moapa
 
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