Rancher, activist takes agency post

CARSON CITY -- Tony Lesperance, a rancher who had a role in an anti-federal government crusade in eastern Nevada a decade ago, took over Monday as head of the state Agriculture Department.

Lesperance said he will work with federal agencies but remains committed to representing "the state's interests to the best of my abilities."

"Yes, I can work with federal agencies, and obviously with the federal government owning nearly 90 percent of the state of Nevada, I don't have any choice but to work with them," the Paradise Valley rancher and former Elko County commissioner said.

Lesperance takes over the state post, paying a little more than $101,000 a year, from Donna Rise, who resigned last month after nine months on the job. She returned to Montana to resume a job as a bureau chief for that state's agriculture agency.

Gov. Jim Gibbons urged Lesperance to take the state post. Gibbons had encouraged him to apply for it before naming Rise last year, but Lesperance said he rejected that offer.

Lesperance, 72, said he decided to take the job for up to 18 months to see the agriculture agency through the state's budget crisis and through the 2009 legislative session.

In the mid-1990s, Lesperance was a critic of what he termed arbitrary land management decisions by federal agencies. He labeled them a conspiracy between environmental groups and the federal agencies to rid public lands of livestock.

When a fight developed over a washed-out road that Elko County wanted to rebuild on federal land despite Forest Service opposition based on environmental concerns, Lesperance, as chairman of the Elko County Commission in 1999, vowed to rebuild the road "come hell or high water."