Lincoln County Residents Outraged Over National Monument Proclamation

Residents and elected officials in Lincoln County were outraged last week as news came in that President Barack Obama had signed a proclamation designating a new 704,000-acre national monument right in their backyard. The new Basin and Range National Monument comprises 1,100 square miles of desert land straddling Lincoln County and Nye County in Nevada. It covers Garden Valley, Coal Valley, White River Valley as well as the Golden Gate Range, Mount Irish Range, Seaman Range and Worthington Mountains. The area has been targeted for a long time by environmental groups, and championed by Reid, because of its unspoiled landscape, habitat for sensitive plant and animal species and ancient petroglyphs. The President’s action infuriated Lincoln County residents who said that their input was never sought and their wishes never heeded in the proposal. In an interview on Friday, Lincoln County Commission Chairman Kevin Phillips said that no public comment sessions had ever been held in the communities of Lincoln County on the subject; and no presentations had ever been made to the Commission. Rather, consideration of the new monument seemed to have taken place largely in secret until a copy of a draft proclamation was leaked in May and was made public by Rep. Cresent Hardy (R-Nev.) who represents Lincoln County in the U.S. House of Representatives. “We asked Reid and his people whether they had talked to anybody local about this,” Phillips said. “We got word from one of their stool pigeon consultants in the project that they had consulted ‘the jerky lady.’ We asked, ‘Who is the jerky lady?’ It’s that lady who sells jerky at the junction of 318 and 93 above Hiko, they said. Great! They consulted the Alien Jerky lady. They may as well have consulted the aliens because they are all space cases in my mind! But apparently that was the extent of the consulting that was done in Lincoln County.” Phillips said that, in reality, they didn’t need to especially consult Lincoln County to find out what was wanted by the locals. He said that the Board of Commissioners had sent at least a dozen letters in recent months expressing opposition to federal designation of the area. “Our position against this matter has always been clear!” he said. “We are adamantly, completely and totally opposed to this. It is loathsome. We hate it! And we hate the dictator mentality of emperor Obama and his prime minister Reid. This is not right in America. We don’t have these kinds of positions where they can just mandate over the wishes of the people. We thought this country was about The People. But we don’t have a republic anymore. We have a bureaucratic administrative state.” Phillips said that the Commission had worked hard in opposition to an earlier Reid-Titus bill which was proposed in Congress. The bill would have designated the area through a Congressional action. “We were able to block that bill,” Phillips said. “So, of course, he (Reid) turns to the emperor (Obama) and the Antiquities Act to get it done. Talk about loathsome!” Phillips said that the new monument would have significant economic impacts on Lincoln County, a small rural jurisdiction that has traditionally struggled to make ends meet. The preserved area will be withdrawn from most economic activity including mining and energy leasing...more

 This will sound very familiar to the folks in New Mexico.  First, legislation is introduced which doesn't garner enough Congressional support to pass, and then the President swoops in at the urging of Democrat senators and uses his authority under the Antiquities Act to designate the area as a National Monument.  Democracy didn't give them what they wanted, so they circumvent Congress and accomplish their goal by executive fiat.

Livestock grazing in National Monuments is an issue covered extensively here, and its of primary concern to those affected in Nevada.  The article continues:

 Perhaps the biggest concern of Lincoln County officials is the effect that the designation will have on grazing. While some have described the designated area as just wide, empty space, there is actually a lot that has been going on there for generations, said Simkins who also serves as Secretary to the N4 State Grazing Board which covers 137 ranching families in Lincoln and White Pine Counties. “There are 24 valleys throughout that area with 20 different families who have been ranching there for generations,” Simkins said. “They have been taking care of that land and managing it for all that time. They have been paying their grazing fees as well as doing water improvements, piping springs to allow water access to cattle and wildlife, range improvements, corrals and more. It is true, that land is special. But it is only special today because of the work and efforts of those ranching families.  They are what have kept it special, not any federal designation.” The language in the proclamation states that current ranch uses on the land, as well as current water rights ownership and access, shall be allowed and preserved. But Simkins said that the ranchers have heard promises like that before. “I believe that Senator Reid might believe that those uses will be able to continue,” she said. “But I don’t believe it, myself. And that’s because of our past experience with federal land managers.” Simkins said that similar promises were made by Reid in the mid 1980s when proposals were being made to establish the Great Basin National Park. At that time, Simkins recalled that Reid had sat across the table from Dean Baker who was the last rancher running cattle in the area of Great Basin National Park. “He (Reid) promised Dean that he would be able to keep his cows there, and I think that he meant that promise,” Simkins said. “But within two years the Park Manager had made the regulations so strict that he was no longer able to do it. Yes, he was technically allowed to run his cows there. But he couldn’t keep up with the amount of time and money that it took to follow the interpretations of the federal land manager of the regulations over that park. They wanted him to move his cows from one canyon to another every few days. He couldn’t keep up with it. It was just one thing after another and he finally gave it up. That is where things always fall apart and it will happen again here.”


That pretty well covers it and we've been told the same thing by our two Senators. The ranchers in this Nevada national monument are lucky in one respect:  the language in their proclamation is much friendlier to livestock grazing than the language inserted by Senators Udall & Heinrich in our New Mexico monuments.  I'll have more on that later.

We have heard nothing but praises on how this designation will be great for tourism and will bring many economic benefits to the local area.  So I'll close with one more excerpt from the article:

In a statement to the Review Journal last week, Reid said that the benefits in eco-tourism that would come to the areas from the designation would far outweigh the losses being perceived by the counties and their residents. “What I say to the people in Nye and Lincoln counties is, don’t worry about this,” he said. “This is going to be great for you. This is going to be an attraction. It is going to be world famous. World famous!” That statement came as small comfort for Phillips. “World famous — in whose world?” Phillips said. “Maybe in Reid’s world, in his mind, it might be world famous. But it isn’t going to be anything of the kind. Heaven’s sakes, he has already given us seven or eight wilderness areas in Lincoln county where his eco-tourism should be thriving. That’s 800,000 acres and here comes another 700,000 acres. I honestly can’t think of one positive thing that this does.”