Congressional Record, Volume 134, Number 109, July 27, 1988

United States of America Congressional Record PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE 100th CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION Vol. 134_WASHINGTON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1988 No. 109 Senate NEVADA FEDERAL WILDERNESS ACT Mr. HECHT. Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill to designate a reasonable amount of Federal wilderness in the State of Nevada. I do so after considerable analysis and reflection. This bill is the product of a series of five official Senate hearings which I held in Nevada early in 1986, and seven unofficial public meetings which I recently conducted all around my State this spring. "Wilderness" is one of those words that conjures up all sorts of romantic and inspiring images: Alpine lakes, rugged mountains, clear blue skies, gurgling trout streams, a herd of elk brousing in the twilight. That's the way wilderness is portrayed in glossy magazines. The beautiful photos that appear in the pages of these magazines seem to portray wilderness, but they are not Federal wilderness as defined by Federal law and Federal regulations. Today I am speaking not of beautiful photos, but of enacting a Federal statute, which brings with it a whole raft of Federal regulations, agency manuals, and bureaucratic policies and procedures. So I think it is essential for all Nevadans to distinguish between the warm photographic image of wild lands, and the dense Federal lawbooks that define and govern what Congress calls wilderness. For instance, in the scene I just described, the legal definition of Federal wilderness means you couldn't put a boat on that lake because there would be no practical way to get it there since motorized vehicles are forbidden in wilderness, you wouldn't be allowed to drive a snowmobile into those rugged mountains during the winter because motorized vehicles aren't allowed in Federal wilderness, you wouldn't be allowed to catch fish from that stream unless that species of fish was native to the area and not introduced by man, and, if those elk depended on habitat manipulation by State or Federal biologists, you better forget about the elk staying around very long because habitat manipulation is unnatural and therefore forbid- den inside Federal wilderness. And what about the hunter or fisherman who would lose access roads to favorite hunting and fishing areas because four-wheel drive rigs are banned in Federal wilderness. Even those clear blue skies might be endangered, Mr. President, because if there happens to be a forest fire, you're supposed to sit back and watch it burn up the wilderness, and the trees and animals that live in the wilderness, because fire is part of a natural system, and, as ought to be clear by now, fooling with Mother Nature is forbidden in Federal wilderness. The problem is that mother nature has a mind of her own, and her actions are frequently unpredictable and sometimes quite threatening to us humans. We learned to use fire, clothe ourselves, domesticate plants and animals, and invented medicine. We are at the same time part of nature, and yet able to protect ourselves somewhat from her wilder moods. A blizzard or a grizzly bear may be thrilling in the pages of a magazine, it's a bit more ominous when you face it out in the mountains. Now, I believe that Nevada needs natural wilderness areas, and I want Nevada to have wild lands. I also believe that there is enough land in Nevada so that some areas can be set aside as Federal wilderness. I believe Nevada needs wild areas; places where nature can act more or less independently of the influence of man, so that our citizens can always have a place to observe how nature works when she is pretty much on her own, so that our people can always have a place to go to experience solitude and reenter, if only briefly, that closer communion with nature and God's works that was commonplace in the West around the turn of the century, but is not so commonly experienced now, with most westerners concentrated in large cities that are more similar to what is found in the East than they are to "God's country". Finally, Nevadans need wild lands where we can test our physical abilities and mental skills in many of the same ways that nature has used for more than a century to teach the westerner strength, endurance, self-re-liance, flexibility, and the skill to coexist with nature through understanding natural forces and processes. It is important to distinguish, however, between wild lands and Federal wilderness areas. We can have wild areas without the regulatory burden associated with Federal wilderness designation. The issue, then, is how much officially designated Federal wilderness do we need, for whom, where shall it be, why should certain areas be selected and not others, and who gets to decide? After spending a great deal of time listening to the opinions of thousands of Nevadans, I have attempted, through this legislation, to answer these questions forthrightly and directly, without playing politics with the issue, and without staking out an artificial negotiating position from which to bargain with the democratic leadership of the House of Representatives that seems to be so interested in dictating to Nevadans how we should live in our own State. We Nevadans need to look out for our own. During my recent series of meetings throughout Nevada, many sportsmen expressed great concern about the loss of hunting and fishing opportunities, and fish and wildlife management improvements, that would result from roads being closed down inside Federal wilderness. I met with many disabled individuals during my recent wilderness meetings in Nevada. These very courageous people enjoy the recreational opportunities of the great outdoors. They fish, hunt, camp, and just simply like getting out into Nevada's rugged and beautiful wild lands. And, yet, these people will be excluded from Federal wilderness. Surely, this is not the intention of Congress, but it will happen if we don't act with leadership and foresight to protect the rights of the handicapped. My bill requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to submit a report to Congress which analyzes the impact of Federal wilderness designation on the handicapped, disabled, and the elderly. This report will examine the loss of recreational opportunities, and the possibility of discrimination, resulting from restrictions on access to Federal wilderness areas. Mr. President, the founder of a well known spinal chord injury organization in Las Vegas put it best. She said, "Please do not discriminate against these kids in wheelchairs and senior citizens or anybody else that needs motorized vehicles to go see the beautiful sites that we have in this State." Mr. President, my bill creates something which all Nevadans can enjoy: Nevada's second national recreation area. The new 26,000-acre Mount Rose national recreation area created by my bill will include 18,000 acres of wilderness, so residents and visitors to northwestern Nevada will have readily accessible wild land recreational opportunities, and so this beautiful and popular area will be protected from urban sprawl as the nearby cities continue their rapid growth. Federal wilderness has some advantages, but it also has serious disadvantages. I have tried to draw the boundaries, and write the language of my bill so that Nevadans can enjoy the advantages of a reasonable amount of Federal wilderness, and escape as many of the disadvantages as possible. Mr. President, I readily admit that there are exceptions to some of the rather ironic and bizarre aspects of the legal definition of Federal wilderness which I just related. If a winter camper broke a leg inside a Federal wilderness, you might be able to get him out with a sheriff's search and rescue jeep posse, if you could convince three or four levels of bureaucrats that it was unreasonable to expect him to limp out or ride out on a horse. Of course, by the time you got the necessary clearances, he might have a pretty unpleasant case of gangrene. If those nonnative fish in the stream had been stocked there for a century, then stocking could probably continue, but you better forget about introducing a new species of fish, no matter how beneficial it might be. If that Federal wilderness forest fire were clearly about to endanger human life or property, it could be fought with motorized equipment. The bureaucrats are not going to pull out the mechanized equipment to save animal life from fire in Federal wilderness, so Smokey the Bear would not want to live in a Federal wilderness area. The rangers would stand off to the side and watch him try to find his own way out of the blaze. The key thing to bear in mind about forest fires is that while they tend to start small, they can rapidly explode over thousands of acres. Timing is everything in firefighting. By the time the bureaucrats decide the firefighting crews could trade in their hand axes and shovels for chain saws and bulldozers, you might have lost the opportunity to prevent the fire burning up not only the entire Federal wilderness area, but also half a county of nearby nonwilderness. The point is, Mr. President, that there is more to the Federal wilderness debate than what meets the eyes on television nature shows. In this context, my job is to do my best to help my constituents understand what congressionally designated wilderness is really all about, to give them the opportunity to express their wishes on this issue, and then to use my best judgment, in consultation with the affected local governments, to develop a bill which best serves the needs of Nevada. As I stated earlier, over the last 2 years I have conducted a total of 12 meetings in Nevada on Federal wilderness. 1 would like to share with my colleagues some of the ideas that were expressed during these meetings. First, let me discuss some of the points that were made by the people who testified in favor of Federal wilderness. The most common argument was that Federal wilderness designation is necessary to preserve land unspoiled for future generations, so that there will always be natural places that man can retreat to, away from the daily pressures of civilization. Another major point was that Nevada needs to do something to improve the State's image across the country, and that if large amounts of the State were to be designated as Federal wilderness, then people from other States would not think of Nevada as a wasteland, and would not be as eager to make Nevada the national dumping ground for high level nuclear waste and other less than desirable programs. There was also the argument that Nevada currently has a smaller fraction of its total land in Federal wilderness than any other Western State, with the implication that we need to catch up. Finally, there is the perception the Federal wilderness designation is beneficial for fish and wildlife protection, and that animals need Federal wilderness areas if they are to survive man's depredations. People who oppose Federal wilderness, or who would prefer a very modest amount of land to be officially designated as wilderness, typically offer the following arguments. They need their roads, or "ways," for access to hunting and fishing areas. Federal wilderness, they say, threatens the economy and the culture of rural communities that are often very closely tied to the land. Nevada is 87 percent federally owned, and many of our rural counties are well in excess of 90 percent federally owned. So, if rural communities are to survive, their citizens need access to Federal lands to mine, graze cattle, make water-related improvements, and drive in to hunt or fish. I have heard horror stories from individuals who have personal experience with Federal wilderness management resulting in the loss of grazing opportunities, forfeiture of mining claims, road closures, loss of watershed improvements, destruction of historic structures and cabins, and other injuries, all performed by Federal bureaucrats who say they are just trying to do their best to conform to what they think to be Congress' view of the definition of wilderness. Federal wilderness, it is said, is intrinsically discriminatory. The elderly, the disabled veteran, the handicapped, young children, the less than physically vigorous of all ages, and people whose jobs prevent them from taking extended periods off from work, simply can't get into Federal wilderness to enjoy it because there is no motorized access. Opponents of Federal wilderness point out that the reason the Federal wilderness study areas meet the man-made criteria for official wilderness designation is that they are either so inaccessible that there is no threat to them under any conceivable set of circumstances or, if they are accessible, the local people and Federal agencies have done such a good job of protecting them over the years that their wilderness qualities have been preserved, and are likely to be preserved in the future. Either way, opponents of Federal wilderness argue, there are no advantages, and there are significant disadvantages, to Congress designating these lands as official wilderness. Where there have been abuses, and land has been degraded, the appropriate response is not Federal wilderness designation, but more vigorous enforcement of the entirely adequate laws and regulations that are already on the books. From a quantitative viewpoint, about three-quarters of the people who testified at my recent meetings, or who filled out opinion ballots which 1 distributed at those meetings, favored no more national forest wilderness in Nevada beyond the 132,000 acres in Congress woman Vucanovich's bill, H.R. 708. This is a distinct shift from the official hearings I conducted 2 years ago, when the testimony was basically split right down the middle, with a very small majority favoring the approach that Senator Laxalt, Congresswoman Vucanovich, and I were proposing at that time. Quite a few people submitted written comments this year, and there were also a number of petitiors and postcard campaigns on both sides of the issue. Perhaps the most striking aspect of my recent meetings was the fact that the rural communities are overwhelmingly against Federal wilderness, for many of the reasons I have related earlier. The metropolitan area in northwestern Nevada, on the other hand, is very supportive of Federal wilderness, particularly of Federal wilderness designation for the Mount Rose area outside Reno. The residents of Clark County, Nevada's major metropolitan area, seem split on the issue, with a majority in favor of less Federal wilderness. Two questions on the opinion ballot that I distributed at the recent public meetings dealt with the issue of Federal reserved water rights in Federal wilderness, and whether or not the delegation should wait for the Bureau of Land Management to complete its own wilderness evaluation process, and then proceed to designate all Federal wilderness for Nevada in one omnibus bill for all four Federal land management agencies that are active in Nevada: the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service. An identical 69 percent of those answering each question wanted the issue of water rights resolved before the delegation proceeded with Federal wilderness legislation, and wanted wilderness for all four Federal agencies to be resolved at the same time. Now, there are a number of things that are very clear to me from my several years of gathering information and public input on the subject of Federal wilderness. First, there is a lot of confusion on both sides of the issue with respect to the meaning of Federal wilderness and the motivations of proponents and opponents. Let me try and clear up some of this confusion. Federal wilderness is not a national park. Different rules apply in Federal wilderness. You can't drive into Federal wilderness, sit down at a picnic table, buy ice cream from a concessionaire, and camp overnight in a trailer park. You have to stop your vehicle at the edge of Federal wilderness, and pack in everything you plan to use while you're inside the Federal wilderness area. There are not supposed to be amenities of any kind. Federal wilderness is supposed to be designated only in a roadless area, but it turns out that the word "road" means different things to different people. For purposes of Federal wilderness designation, a road is something that is mechanically improved and maintained; anything else is a "way". Well it turns out that there are an awful lot of "ways" inside roadless areas in Nevada, and people have been driving motorized vehicles on these "ways" for a very, very long period of time. As far as these people are concerned, a road is Somewhere you can drive a vehicle, so anyone who wants to close off a "way" inside a Federal wilderness area is actually closing off a road. So when advocates of Federal wilderness say there are no roads inside wilderness areas, they may be legally correct, but they are also incorrect from the common sense perspective that is the only perspective that matters to the people who are used to driving on these roads. Another misconception concerning Federal wilderness involves the issue of grazing. Grazing is allowed in Federal wilderness areas, and wilderness supporters get exasperated when ranchers complain that Federal wilderness will put them out of business. The problem here is that what Congress can give with one hand, it has allowed Federal agencies to take away with the other. Grazing can be eliminated from Federal wilderness areas without being explicitly banned. Let me explain how. In the year 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall, in his opinion on the case of McCulloch versus Maryland, said "that the power to tax involves the power to destroy." If he had written that opinion in the 1980's; he would have added that the power to regulate also involves the power to destroy. Ranching is already heavily regulated. The modern West bears little relation to the John Wayne movies full of cattle barons. Nobody gets into ranching to get rich nowadays. Ranching, at least in Nevada, is not a terribly lucrative activity. Most Nevada ranches are owned by people whose families have been in the business for generations, and do it because of tradition, because it is personally rewarding to work on the land rather than in an office, and because it gives them a sense of pleasure to be a productive part of a close-knit, rural community. Federal wilderness imposes new regulations on ranchers. It makes it more expensive and time-consuming to run cattle in Federal wilderness areas. During the meetings I held in Nevada on the issue of Federal wilderness, I uncovered many examples of Federal wilderness regulations causing problems for ranchers. These added regulations can turn a barely profitable ranching operation into a money-losing venture. You can't afford to lose money year-in and year-out for too many years, and still expect to put your children through college, or even make the payments on your mortgage or other loans. Ultimately, the rancher is forced to sell out, and Congress and the bureaucrats have eliminated grazing from Federal wilderness just as certainly and just as effectively as if there were a statutory ban in the law itself. Ranchers have seen this sort of thing happen to friends in other States, and so they are afraid it is going to happen to them in Nevada. Supporters of wilderness argue frequently that Federal wilderness designation is necessary to protect the land. They claim that greedy private corporations, usually identified as mining companies, have raped and destroyed the land in the past and are bound to do it again if we don't designate land as official wilderness. While it is certainly true that there is a lot of mining going on in Nevada, and that each mine does, tear up the 100 or 200 acres surrounding it, but advocates of Federal wilderness seem to imply that anybody can just drive 10 or 20 bulldozers up to any mountain of his choice and start tearing the mountain down. Well, maybe that's the way things worked in the 1890's, but we have learned a lot since then. This is the age of the environmental impact statement, the 404 dredge and fill permit, the section 7 endangered species consultation, and dozens of other laws and regulations that require Federal agencies to carefully review and monitor whatever any mining company proposes to do. The plain fact is that no mining company is going to be able to bulldoze any mountain until it has jumped through a lot of regulatory loops which allow plenty of opportunity for public involvement and participation. I might add that this same process allows plenty of opportunity for senatorial intervention, as well. Let me assure my colleagues, as well as Nevada's Sierra Clubbers, that regardless of my reservations about the advantages of official wilderness designation, if anyone were to come up with some sort of scheme to bulldoze the Ruby Mountains or put a resort condominium development up in Arc Dome, this Senator would be leading the charge to prevent it. Now, I know the Forest Service is doing a good job keeping tabs on Nevada's miners and ranchers and preventing the land from being degraded, because I regularly get complaints from ranchers and miners about what they consider to be the unreasonable demands of over zealous forest rangers. Sometimes the bureaucrats do ask a bit more than is reasonable, but at least the steady stream of complaints shows that the Forest Service is taking pains to protect the land. I therefore reject the idea that Nevada's lands will face some sort of environmental catastrophe if they aren't designated Federal wilderness. This simply won't happen. Not designating an area official wilderness will not result in destruction of the area. The Forest Service will conduct business as usual, and the land will continue to be protected under multiple use. If the Forest Serv- ice is not doing a good enough job to protect the land, then the answer is to make it easier for the agency to achieve better management under multiple use, not to exclude people from the land through Federal wilderness designation. It is so often said that Federal wilderness is good for fish and wildlife. The facts suggest that this doesn't necessarily follow. If we humans consider it preferable to have relatively large numbers of some species, and therefore, necessarily fewer numbers of other species, then Federal wilderness designation can actually be harmful. Nature is always changing, and that means that the sorts of plants and animals that inhabit a given area also change over time. If we want to preserve one particular plant and animal community over a prolonged period of time, that almost certainly is going to mean taking aggressive management measures to prevent natural ecosystem changes. That means putting in water improvements when the watershed is going through a dry phase. That means removing plants that do not make good forage for animals humans tend to favor like deer and elk, and artificially manipulating habitat so preferred plant foods stay in abundance. If we wish to maintain certain types of trees in our forests, then we must be willing to wage war against insects that periodically invade those forests in vast hordes and would destroy them. For me, the final proof that Federal wilderness is not necessarily a good thing for fish and wildlife, or at least those fish and wildlife that humans seem to prefer, is the fact that the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies has expressed concern about the impact of Federal wilderness designation on fish and wildlife management programs in Federal wilderness areas. To bring this discussion a little closer to Nevada, let's consider the table Mountain wilderness study area. Table Mountain is the site of a major effort to introduce elk. But in order for the elk to thrive, the Forest Service needs to manage the habitat in ways that would not be possible, or at least extremely difficult, if Table Mountain were to become a wilderness area. The Spring Mountains in southern Nevada is another area where the State is trying to establish an elk population. It hasn't been easy, and any success has resulted from aggressive habitat management, the same sort of habitat management that would be difficult or impossible inside a Federal wilderness. The choice is clear: Federal wilderness or elk. An important part of any decision- making process, whether it's in government, business, or the playground, is evaluation of the results of one's actions. Unfortunately, government is usually more interested in starting new programs, making more Federal wilderness, than it is looking back to see whether the program actually worked, and whether it had any unexpected negative effects. We have now designated about 90 million acres of Federal wilderness in this country, and yet, as far as I know, no Federal agency has ever evaluated the impact of all that Federal wilderness designation. Have the less-advantaged elements of our society suffered discrimination as a result of Federal wilderness designation? Has hunting decreased or increased in Federal wilderness? Are fish and wildlife more or less abundant as a result of Federal wilderness designation? Has visitation in newly designated Federal wilderness areas increased or decreased in comparison to prewilder-ness levels? Has employment in communities near Federal wilderness areas increased or decreased? Has ranching gradually been eliminated from Federal wilderness? Have areas that were considered for Federal wilderness; but not designated as wilderness, actually been devastated as supporters of wilderness had feared and predicted? Have active mines been shut down as a result of Federal wilderness designation? Has the Nation lost important mineral or oil and gas Reserves through Federal wilderness designation? These are just some of the important and legitimate questions that need to be answered, because this Nation is going to be debating Federal wilderness designation for many years to come, in many States across this country, and we can gain a great deal of insight into the effects of our past decisions by examining what has happened in areas that have already been designated wilderness, or that were considered but not designated Federal wilderness. At the appropriate time I plan to do what I can to promote a systematic review and evaluation of past decisions on Federal wilderness designation. As I mentioned earlier, public opinion in Nevada is definitely divided on the issue of Federal wilderness. The challenge which I have considered over the last few weeks is how to satisfy the desire of Nevadans for wild lands experiences, without imposing an unacceptable burden of Federal wilderness restrictions. The people who live in Nevada's rural areas are not ignorant slobs who mindlessly destroy the land. The modern rancher has a college degree in range management or animal husbandry; if he doesn't, you can bet that his son or daughter does. The modern rancher has also usually lived for generations on the land he uses, and has learned from the experiences of his parents and grandparents. The rancher is certainly aware that proper range management is the only way he can survive economically, and so he is not about to destroy the very resource on which his way of life depends. The rancher's respect and affinity for the land must be appreciated by his city cousins; after all, ranchers have shown their commitment to the land by choosing to live and work on it. Urban supporters of wilderness are often viewed in Nevada's rural areas as wild-eyed extremists who couldn't survive an unescorted weekend in the mountains, either in an official wilderness or an unofficial but just as imposing wild land. This view is also distorted. The urban wilderness advocate has a very genuine affection for the land his rural cousin regularly enjoys. Indeed, the intensity of the city dweller's desire to see wild areas protected is perhaps related to the degree to which he feels isolated from nature in the course of his daily life, as he sits behind a desk or works under a roof that is far removed from the open air of the mountains. The honesty and depth of the feelings expressed by the wilderness supporter deserves to be acknowledged and respected. Nevadans should make decisions on Federal wilderness designation based on an assessment of what is in the best interest of Nevada. What's best for California may not be best for Nevada. There is no-reason why Nevadans must necessarily have as large a fraction of our State as Federal wilderness as neighboring States. Nevada has nothing to apologize for, and we should not let others dictate to us. Nevadans have the right, and the responsibility, to determine our own future, and we should never acquiesce in the outrageous demands of Congressmen from Georgia or Minnesota that they be allowed to determine how we will live in Nevada. Designating wilderness is not some sort of race where one State wins and another loses, and creating, Federal wilderness in Nevada will certainly not dissuade Congressmen and Senators from Eastern States from their efforts to build a high level nuclear waste repository in our State. We already have unmistakable proof of this. In 19S6, I introduced the bill that created Ne- vada's first national park, Great Basin and yet, in 1987, the same Congressmen who want Nevada to have a lot of Federal wilderness, twisted the nuclear waste law to force a nuclear waste repository on Nevada. With friends like these, Nevada doesn't need enemies. Nevadans should make decisions as to how to manage Nevada's land based on our own needs, not in vain attempts to score points with people from other States. If some people think we need to improve our State's, image across the country, then the way to do this is through a properly managed State tourism program, not by changing the color on Nevada's maps from light green indicating national forest, to dark green indicating Federal wilderness. The bottom line question is where do we designate wilderness and how much do we create there. I feel very strongly that my job is to represent the people of Nevada, and to try to accomplish their desires in Congress. I have always felt that the government which is ciosestlo the people is likely to be the most familiar with what the people are thinking. I have always been a strong supporter of local control, so I also believe that the people most affected by an issue ought to be given a good deal of deference by the rest of us in deciding how that issue should be addressed by the larger society. For these reasons, I give a great deal of weight to the opinions of local governments with respect to the management of Federal lands within their borders, including the designation of Federal wilderness on those lands. In the case of wilderness, I also must weigh the fact that the Nevada State Legislature has passed a resolution supporting 132,000 acres of Forest Service wilderness, and additional Federal wilderness at the Desert National Wildlife Range, which is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Governor Bryan signed that resolution, although I understand he has changed his mind and now favors far more Forest Service wilderness for Nevada. The Nevada League of Counties has also supported the 132,000 acre Forest Service wilderness legislation, and various individual counties have passed their own resolutions concerning Federal wilderness designation within their counties. Based on what I have heard from the citizens of Nevada, and the State and local governments that represent them, I have looked for areas where the demand for wilderness-type experience may soon outstrip the supply of such areas. I have also looked for areas where Federal wilderness designation might provide an awareness, within the State, of wild land recreation opportunities that are available in some beautiful areas that may now be currently overlooked by- most Neva-dans. I have tried to steer clear of areas where there is strong local opposition to Federal wilderness, and to thoroughly consider the wilderness potential of areas where there is strong local support for Federal wilderness. I have tried to avoid designating Federal wilderness in areas where Federal wilderness would threaten the economic development or survival of communities within our State, or conflict with the many entirely appropriate nonwilderness recreational opportunities. In particular, I have tried to avoid designating wildernes