Scenic Pine Forest Range could be Nevada’s next designated wilderness

On approach from the desert, the Pine Forest Range looks much like any other arid stretch of tumbled mountains in northwestern Nevada. It’s anything but. Just north of the Black Rock Desert, Pine Forest offers a diverse landscape of rolling slopes of sagebrush, dense stands of aspen and otherworldly clusters of rock formations. Scenic lakes and reservoirs offer world-class trout fisheries. From the ranchers who make their livelihood on grazing allotments to environmentalists intent on preserving a rugged landscape, anyone familiar with the place agrees it’s special. “The water, the vegetation, the geological formations, the place is just incredible,” Reno resident Pat Bruce told the Reno Gazette-Journal. “It’s like another planet.” It’s something else as well. Pine Forest, the focus of deliberations by local and regional interests concerned with its future, could become Nevada’s next new wilderness area. Legislation declaring it so died amid the political gridlock of the 112th Congress. A new proposal, backed by Nevada’s congressional delegation and Gov. Brian Sandoval, is pending before the 113th Congress. Will it pass this time around? “I suspect it will move this year, assuming that Congress functions at any level,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Carson City, who is sponsoring the legislation along with U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The range includes two wilderness study areas established by the government in 1980. They were among 110 such areas encompassing more than 5 million acres across Nevada that were targeted as potential wilderness areas...more