In exchange for the "protection," a bill that would designate nearly 550,000 acres of new "wilderness" in the Nevada desert would also open up for development 45,000 new acres in rural White Pine County.

The bill, drafted by Nevada Sens. John Ensign and Harry Reid, is one of four similar land-use exchange bills currently under consideration in Washington -- the other three dealing with lands in Idaho and Utah.

Needless to say, a coalition of 80 conservation groups opposes the measure, charging the plan trades away the 45,000 acres for private development "like currency."

Oh! That stings.

Members of the Seattle-based Western Lands Project; the Olympia, Wash.-based Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility; the Haily, Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project; and Salt Lake City's Glen Canyon Institute have presumably long since moved past exchanging things "like currency," instead drawing their sustenance from the replicators conveniently located in the mess hall and crew's quarters of the Starship Enterprise.

"All of them have this quid pro quo strategy of giving away public land in one place for protection in another place," complains Janine Blaeloch, director of the Western Lands Project. "If wilderness is going to be protected, it should not happen at the cost of losing the rest of our public lands."

This despite the fact that, "With the land sales involved in the legislation, the only lands that are allowed to be sold are those that the Bureau of Land Management has already identified as being suitable for sale," according to Reid spokesman Jon Summers.

A somewhat more moderate gang of greens, the Wilderness Society (a national group that's a member of the Nevada Wilderness Coalition) is supporting three of the four bills, including the Reid-Ensign bill. The one exception is a bill affecting Washington County, Utah, near St. George. That bill would sell at least 24,300 acres of federal land, while designating 93,000 acres as wilderness.

"These bills are not perfect," explains Jeremy Garncarz of the Wilderness Society. "No one is saying they are, but there are some good things here." Together, the Nevada and Idaho bills would designate an astonishing 1.4 million acres of new "wilderness," Mr. Garncarz points out. "That is substantial. We're still working with the delegations and other stakeholders to make these bills better."

Certainly Nevada's counties are forced into dire financial straights by having 90 percent -- or more -- of their land area controlled by Washington bureaucrats, rather than owned and developed by tax-paying citizens who could contribute so much to these struggling communities.

Sens. Ensign and Reid are to be applauded for orchestrating the release of 45,000 acres to private ownership and development in White Pine County -- though Mr. Garncarz is certainly right when he says "These bills are not perfect."

The ideal plan would be to privatize these lands without blocking off another single acre somewhere else.