Nevada economy grounded — again

The Interior Department just provided Nevadans with a harsh reminder of why gaining local control of federal land is such a critical issue in the state.

The federal government controls about 85 percent of Nevada’s acreage — and does a pretty lousy job managing it all. The arbitrary land-use decisions and arrogance of the Bureau of Land Management, in particular, serve the interests of absentee environmentalists more than ranchers and others who actually live off rangelands.

Two conflicting movements in Nevada have been gaining momentum simultaneously. One would have Washington transfer vast amounts of land to the state and local governments, with the goal of eventually putting that acreage into private hands and onto property tax rolls. Without the ability to put much of that land to productive use, Nevada’s economy will be forever constrained. The other movement seeks sweeping protection for the sage grouse, a chicken-size, ground-dwelling bird that environmentalists want listed as a threatened or endangered species. The purpose of the listing has less to do with saving the bird and more to do with blocking profitable use of federal lands.

State leaders have worked for years to head off such a listing by developing their own plans to allow people, industry and wildlife to thrive. Local input and oversight of lands is most valuable in preventing wildfires, which wipe out sage grouse and its habitat; federal land policies, which are imposed by people who don’t live on affected lands and have no stake in the consequences of those decisions, actually make wildfires more likely and more damaging.

On Thursday, the Interior Department decided those plans weren’t worth a feather. It placed all-new restrictions on 17 million acres of land in rural Nevada and northeastern California in the name of protecting sage grouse habitat. That’s an area of land approaching the size of South Carolina. It covers part or all of 16 of Nevada’s 17 counties. (The sage grouse isn’t fond of Clark County.)

As reported last week by the Review-Journal’s Steve Tetreault, the decision puts new limits on all energy development — solar, geothermal, wind, oil and gas — and prohibits it in areas the agency deems most sensitive. Combined, those areas are bigger than Delaware.

Environmentalists hailed the action as the country’s most sweeping wildlife conservation plan ever. Which is to say it hammers the prospect of economic development across a state that desperately needs it.

“We have a responsibility to take action that ensures a bright future for wildlife and a thriving western economy,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in announcing the decision, while pretending that she was doing the public’s bidding. “We are laying important foundation to save the disappearing sagebrush landscape of the American West.”

Disappearing? If it’s disappearing, it’s because of federal incompetence. Washington types simply cannot get their brains around the idea that people who live on the land have the most powerful incentive to sustain the environment. Ranchers don’t stay in business if they let their livestock turn entire ranges into powder. Sustaining the environment means sustained opportunity.

Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., whose 2nd Congressional District covers much of the affected land, provided a more honest perspective on the action.

“Collaboration, I guess, is in the eyes of the beholder,” he said. “Really? They listened to the people of Nevada? This is the height of federal administrative arrogance. This is a kick in the ass to the people of Nevada who have the greatest stake in preserving their resources and also being responsible with respect to what they do with their land.”

“These restrictive plans may be well-intended, but they are coming from the wrong direction,” added Rep. Cresent Hardy, R-Nev. “Leave conservation efforts to local people who know and use the land best, not Washington bureaucrats who have no idea what it’s like to live and work with our state’s natural resources below ground and the magnificent species above ground.”

Unfortunately, that’s not the nature of the federal-state relationship today. Under the Obama administration, it’s more we-know-best pandering to progressive litigants. And Nevada is on the wrong side of it — again.

Free our land.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s senior editorial writer. Follow him on Twitter: @Glenn_CookNV.