Road closed … and Elko County wants to fight

Those rabble-rousers up in Elko are at it again, causing more headaches for federal land managers.

There’s long been an undercurrent of contention between rural Nevada residents and the agencies that oversee the U.S. government’s vast Silver State land holdings. Recall that Nevada was ground zero of the Sagebrush Rebellion — a controversial movement involving public land use in the West — during the 1970s and 1980s.

Then Elko County officials made headlines in the 1990s when they went head to head with the U.S. Forest Service over a washed-out road near remote Jarbidge on the Idaho border. Elko County claimed it owned the road and wanted to rebuild it. But the Forest Service argued the road was part of a wilderness area and reconstructing it might harm the bullhead trout, a protected species in the area.

Today, the issue isn’t one road, it’s many.

Forest Service officials are set to impose their “travel management” plan for the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Elko County. What is a “travel management” plan? In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Forest Service published a new regulation in the Federal Register giving “each national forest or ranger district” the power to “designate those roads, trails and areas open to motor vehicles.”

Not surprisingly, the Forest Service seeks to close more miles of road to vehicle traffic in Elko County and to ban virtually all “cross country” travel off designated roads. Not surprisingly, the locals don’t like it.

“We object to the decision and what will be in it,” Demar Dahl, chairman of the Elko County Commission, told the Elko Daily Free Press. Mr. Dahl said the commission had been attempting to come to a compromise with federal officials for months, but to no avail.

With the Forest Service prepared to issue the new restrictions as soon as November, Mr. Dahl has taken the step of asking a House committee to hold hearings on the matter in Elko as soon as possible. The commission made the request to Rep. Rob Bishop, the Utah Republican who heads the House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. It appears to have fallen on favorable ears.

A spokeswoman for the congressman said he would try to work with new Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei to schedule such a hearing. Rep. Bishop “is extremely sympathetic to the concerns of Elko County commissioners, and remains very concerned the travel management rule is being exploited by the Forest Service to close thousands of miles of routes that have been used for decades,” she said.

In fact, a public hearing is wonderful idea. Let’s see how heavy handed federal land managers intend to be on those who have lived off and nurtured this region for generations.

The directive bestowing this power on the Forest Service states that “designation decisions will be made locally, with public input and in coordination with state, local and tribal government.” But how much “coordination” with the locals has actually taken place when the Forest Service ignores virtually all their concerns?