Conservationists, company rally to protect Gold Butte

Two monuments down, one to go.

That was the message from conservationists Thursday during a rally at the downtown headquarters of Zappos meant to spur momentum for the protection of Gold Butte in northeastern Clark County.

The roughly 350,000-acre area two hours northeast of Las Vegas is home to ancient rock art galleries, sweeping desert vistas and twisted fields of pastel-colored sandstone hemmed in by Lake Mead and the Grand Canyon.

Longtime local environmental advocate John Hiatt said it's the sort of place that would already be a national park if it existed in almost any other state. "The petroglyphs in that area outshine anywhere else in Southern Nevada," he said.

The conservation community has been pushing for national recognition of Gold Butte for more than a decade. What they got instead was a pair of new monuments elsewhere in Nevada.

In December, bipartisan legislation led to the creation of Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument at the northern edge of Las Vegas. Then on July 10, President Barack Obama used his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate Basin and Range National Monument on 704,000 acres of remote Lincoln and Nye counties over the objections of rural officials and Nevada Republicans in Congress.

Now conservationists want to shift attention back to Gold Butte, and this time their push has some corporate oomph behind it.

Thursday's event was part of a new campaign called "Live Monumental" by Oregon-based KEEN Footwear. It was the first stop on a cross-country road trip the shoe company is sponsoring to drum up support and gather petition signatures for Gold Butte and four other places it considers monument-caliber: Boulder-White Clouds, Idaho; Owyhee Canyonlands, Ore.; Mojave Trails, Calif.; and Birthplace of Rivers, W.Va.

Kirsten Blackburn from KEEN said the company picked Gold Butte for its campaign after consulting with the Conservation Lands Foundation and other national preservation groups.

But the effort faces opposition from Republican lawmakers and one other major obstacle: The area is also home to several hundred cattle left to roam on federal land by a certain well-known Clark County rancher.

"Gold Butte is an incredibly complicated situation now. It's always been difficult, but with the Cliven Bundy situation, it's even more difficult," Hiatt said.

In 2014, the Bureau of Land Management moved to round up Bundy's livestock, but the operation was hastily canceled and the cattle released after an armed standoff between federal authorities and Bundy supporters.

Since then, BLM scarcely patrols the area, which has opened the door for an increase in litter, fence cutting and damage from off-road vehicles, said Jaina Moan, executive director of the nonprofit group Friends of Gold Butte.

"I think the need for protection is increasing and enhanced," she said.

In January, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., introduced a bill to create Gold Butte National Conservation Area on almost 350,000 acres. The area would be administered, as it is now, by the BLM, and roughly a third of it would be designated as wilderness.

Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., introduced a House version in February. Neither bill has advanced out of committee.

Nevada's congressional delegation remains deeply divided over the idea.

Republican U.S. Sen. Dean Heller has publicly warned Obama against unilateral action on Gold Butte, "a region of our state where tensions are already presently high."

And Rep. Cresent Hardy, R-Nev., has promised to "fight tooth and nail" against the proposed wilderness designations or any other new restrictions in an area he thinks is just fine the way it is.

With opposition like that, Hiatt said, "there's no possible way" Gold Butte will win congressional approval, so it's likely to take more cajoling from Reid and another executive action by Obama to make it a national monument.

"He just did a big one in Nevada. Will he be willing to do another? I don't think anybody knows," Hiatt said. "Senator Reid has been able to pull a rabbit out of the hat on more than one occasion."

But outdoor activist Terri Robertson, a founding member of the Friends of Gold Butte, hasn't given up on Congress just yet.

She said a lot of time and effort went into crafting the current bills, which would not only designate Gold Butte as a national conservation area but also preserve some 500 miles of existing roads and many of the current uses in the area.

Roberston said opponents like Hardy and Heller should consider getting behind the legislation or risk ending up with a presidential decree they might find even more disagreeable.

Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Find him on Twitter: @RefriedBrean.