Resolution seeks to dissolve Wilderness Study Areas

ELKO — Release the lands. That is the message Elko County sends to Congress with the commissioners’ adoption of a resolution that encourages removing the designation of certain lands as wilderness study areas. Passed Jan. 17, the resolution asks Sen. Dean Heller to raise the issue to Congress. “Yesterday, the Elko County Commission unanimously passed a resolution supporting a legislative fix to this public lands issue, and I plan to work on legislation that would do just that,” Heller said. The resolution states that the Bureau of Land Management “arbitrarily designated” the lands “without appropriate public input or reasonable federal guidelines.” Nevada has 62 wilderness study areas totaling more than 2.55 million acres, including 10 sites covering 272,422 acres in Elko County, according to the BLM...more