Monday, July 19, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

ANCIENT ETCHINGS: Site loses protection

Some fear loss of wilderness designation will endanger rock art

Nevada Wilderness Project Director John Wallin walks July 8 near a boulder adorned with ancient etchings of bighorn sheep in the Shooting Gallery near Alamo in Lincoln County. Photo by Clint Karlsen. More etchings. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Hermi Hiatt snaps a photograph July 8 of petroglyphs at the Shooting Gallery in Lincoln County. Photo by Clint Karlsen. Click image for enlargement.

ALAMO -- Just a half-hour drive down a bumpy, dirt road and a short hike through a pristine part of the Pahranagat Range sits a focal point of Lincoln County's American Indian heritage.

The Shooting Gallery, as it's known in rock art circles, has endured summer heat, snowy winters and flash foods for more than 1,000 years. There are 575 rock art panels in a two-mile stretch of the range, with some 5,000 images in all.

But within the past few years, all-terrain vehicle tracks lead to where looters have left their mark while digging for artifacts beneath prehistoric etchings that depict raindrops, reptiles, waterfalls, bighorn sheep and ancient hunters.

Conservation advocates now say the gallery's days could be numbered because the site and others like it were dropped from long-lasting wilderness protection under a lands bill that Congress will discuss this week.

Members of the congressional staffs who crafted the bill note, however, that this high valley flanked by Badger Mountain and rimmed by sunbaked boulders remains in public ownership.

The Bureau of Land Management, they say, affords it the same protection as other public lands. Markers at the site remind visitors that it is covered by the American Antiquities Act of 1906, which prohibits destruction of such prehistoric sites.

Conservationists are not convinced that level of protection is adequate. They fear that over the long term without wilderness status, the BLM's administrative oversight of the land could change and protective measures in place now would fail.

On a visit this month to the Shooting Gallery, 80 miles north of the Las Vegas Valley, members of the Nevada Wilderness Coalition said though the arrangement looks good on paper, they fear without bona fide wilderness status to prohibit motorized travel, the many panels of petroglyphs -- images from an ancient lifestyle etched on rhyolite walls -- might fall victim to vandals.

"If we don't protect it now, we're going to lose these resources and these are one-of-a-kind resources," said John Hiatt, conservation chairman of the Red Rock Audubon Society and a member of the coalition. Wilderness status would also provide for public education and monitoring programs to enhance a volunteer monitoring effort recently set up by the BLM for the Shooting Gallery and other sites.

Coalition member John Wallin, director of the Nevada Wilderness Project, noted the difference between policy mandates and on-the-ground protection of cultural resources.

"It's important to place cultural resources in context of the landscape. You can put up a sign to protect it on paper but that doesn't mean it will be," he said.

According to BLM archaeologist Mark Henderson, the site's name stems from its setting with dozens of stone cairns -- pillars of stacked rocks -- that top ridges to the north and south high above the main concentration of rock art.

That is where he said American Indians centuries ago flew streamers of shredded bark and leaves to intimidate bighorn sheep and drive them to the "shooting gallery" below. There, hunters hid in blinds and slew them using atlatls: wooden stakes designed to launch narrow spears.

Wilderness advocates said they wonder why this place wasn't given the same wilderness designation as another Lincoln County site with impressive petroglyphs near Mount Irish.

According to Wallin, while he's pleased that many rock art panels in the Reed Spring area of Mount Irish received protection, long-term management decisions on that site and the Shooting Gallery are flawed by an outdated inventory conducted by the BLM in 1980.

He said both sites qualify for wilderness because they offer a rugged, remote wildlife habitat with unparalleled cultural resources.

"To say that (the Shooting Gallery) is no wilderness, is just plain wrong," Wallin said. "They both qualify as wilderness and the delegation has arbitrarily decided to leave one unprotected."

Although both sites are in remote areas, the 1980 document recommended none of the Reed Spring site for wilderness study and only 16,200 acres out of more than 150,000 acres of the Pahranagat Range. The Shooting Gallery was not among the 16,200 acres chosen for wilderness study and none of that acreage was ever made a wilderness study area.

The document also makes no mention of petroglyphs at the Shooting Gallery site.

Wallin wonders if the BLM in 1980 ever got out to the area on foot.

According to Wallin, the Shooting Gallery area affords a great expanse for visitors to enjoy camping, backpacking, hiking and hunting.

As the Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act of 2004 winds its way through Congress, the various wilderness groups intend to make a case for inserting the Shooting Gallery in the legislation. Their first chance will be Tuesday when the House Resources Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands is scheduled to discuss the bill.

Among other things, the bill would facilitate a master-planned community in the county at Coyote Springs, north of the Clark County line. If built, Lincoln County's population would swell to roughly 14 times its size, from 3,700 to at least 54,000.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., is a primary sponsor of the bill along with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Their staffs laud the bill because, as Gibbons' spokeswoman Amy Spanbauer said, it sets aside an unprecedented 769,611 acres of wilderness.

"The act as it's written right now has support of the entire delegation," Spanbauer said last week. "If you open the bill up to add more land or take away land, you're jeopardizing the compromise that was struck."

Spanbauer said the Shooting Gallery land already has a level of federal protection and can't be developed. She doubts that any future population growth in the county will threaten the site.

Reid, in a telephone interview, noted that the bill calls for 220,000 more acres of wilderness than the 550,000 acres recommended by the BLM.

"That's a rarity," Reid said, adding that he doesn't see eye to eye with his Republican colleagues on all lands issues. "It was hard to get what we got. This was a compromise."

Nevertheless, he said, "I'm sure before this passes I can work something out with Ensign and Gibbons. But it's give and take."

Reid said he can't make any guarantees that the Shooting Gallery will be inserted.

Wilderness advocates contend the bill, by releasing 245,000 acres of wilderness study areas, doesn't go far enough for conservation.

Said Wallin: "We wouldn't give up anything. I already believe strongly it's heavily skewed against conservation."

Brian O'Donnell, The Wilderness Society's Nevada representative, said there shouldn't be some artificial cap on wilderness acres that's not based on science.

"The delegation has set aside some pretty incredible places here in Lincoln County, but if we're going to address wilderness, let's do it right," O'Donnell said. "What we protect today is management to protect it for the next hundreds of years."