Public eager to review closure

In the weeks since I first wrote about the off-highway travel closure that the Bureau of Land Management is enforcing on the outskirts of the Las Vegas Valley, much discussion has been stirred about the subject and its impact on outdoor recreation opportunities.

Some of that discussion has been in the editorial pages of the Review-Journal, and discussion probably has been considerable between members of various land-user groups and on Internet blogs. But the discussion also has reached the official public forum.

Juan Palma, field manager for the BLM's Las Vegas office, accepted an invitation from the Nevada State Board of Wildlife Commissioners to address the topic at its September meeting in Las Vegas. Palma began his presentation with an assurance that "the closure does not apply to administrative functions of the BLM, the county or NDOW (Nevada Department of Wildlife) staff."

This basically means employees of those agencies -- and probably others with similar responsibilities -- are exempt from the effects of the closure while on duty.

While his statement probably was intended to assuage what he thought were the commission's primary concerns, Palma was off target. Commission chairman Clint Bentley said exempting government agencies and their employees from the closure creates the appearance of an elitist situation in which the public is excluded in favor of the few. Other members of the commission nodded in agreement.

After acknowledging he was serving elsewhere when the closure was established in 1998, Palma gave the commission a history lesson on it. That lesson focused on air quality and concerns that the Las Vegas Valley was not meeting the requirements that the Environmental Protection Agency established. Naturally, the answer to that issue was to create the travel closure.

Given the thousands of acres of desert that have been plowed for development in the valley over the past two decades, that argument is thin. By the way, anyone who has worked in the construction arena knows a little water sprinkled on a Nevada construction site will control dust only until it dries up a few minutes later.

Sean Garrison, a Henderson native, thought it ironic that within a few minutes of traveling down Pipeline Road, two BLM rangers in separate vehicles pulled him over. Garrison said he couldn't understand how the dust their patrol vehicles created was any less significant than the dust he created by traveling in one. His transgression netted him a citation into federal court and a $125 fine.

Garrison was given the option of sending the fine to a processing center in Texas or fighting the charges. To do that, however, he would have to hold payment and wait 45 days. At that time, he would receive a summons into court, but a warrant also would be issued for his arrest due to nonpayment. Talk about stacking the deck.

Bentley told Palma the commission's constituents were concerned that two conflicting documents were governing off-high highway travel in the Las Vegas area. One was created by the Las Vegas Resource Management Plan, which permits off-highway travel on existing roads, trails and dry washes, and the second is the off-highway travel closure, which prohibits all such travel on any unpaved road within the same geographical area. Both were created in 1998.

Even though the two documents conflict, Palma said both are valid because they each were posted in the Federal Register, but he also stated the closure was being enforced. Bentley said that creates a problem because hunters and others always have thought they were operating under the RMP.

That wouldn't be because the RMP was done openly and in the public eye where all had input into the process, would it?

Palma and Lewis Wallenmeyer, director of the Clark County Department of Air Quality and Environmental Management who was on hand to bolster the dust control argument, told the commission that perhaps the time is right to review the closure.

"The good news is that there is a plan on what we can do in 2007," Palma said. "We need to have a conversation with the players. We can take a look at this closure. It's fortunate that this has been brought to the forefront.

"This is not solely a BLM issue. We have to look at what's reasonable to the public. We need to address it, and we will."

A lot of people are eager to do just that. Perhaps we should follow the guidelines in the RMP -- the document the public signed off on in 1998 -- and scrap the not-so-widely publicized closure along with its $125 citations.

Doug Nielsen is an award-winning freelance writer and a conservation educator for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. His column is published Thursday. He can be reached at doug@takinitoutside.com.