Area sportsmen rallying to fight WSA designation

WINNEMUCCA — Sportsmen in Nevada are being asked to participate in a grass roots effort to get nearly 26,000 acres of land released from a Wilderness Study Area (WSA) designation in northern Humboldt County in the Pine Forest Region.

Jim Jeffress, backcountry land coordinator for Trout Unlimited's Sportsmen's Conservation Project, came before members of the Winnemucca City Council during their meeting Jan. 5 to apprise them of his ongoing efforts to organize the campaign.

He also informed them of a meeting scheduled for later this month in which all interested parties will gather to discuss the details, issues and strategies surrounding the designation.

In a letter sent to those interested parties, Jeffress said it's important to show a strong local support for the endeavor in order to persuade politicians at the federal level.

"The process is designed to engage the knowledge of local and regional people, from all user groups, to asses the values of these two WSAs, develop credible recommendations as a group for ultimate status of these areas and present those findings to the (Humboldt County Commission)," he stated in the letter. Jeffress added that the county will then forward their recommendation to Nevada's congressional delegation.

The county commission has the option to recommend a wilderness designation (different than a wilderness study area), no wilderness, other designations, or a combination thereof, he said. He did not specify in the letter what other possible designations there are.

The meeting will be held on Saturday, Jan. 30, in the West Hall of the Winnemucca Convention Center from 10 a.m. — 3 12:30 p.m. — 1:30 p.m. Members from all user groups are invited and encouraged to attend.

Jeffress' proposal allows the sportsmen, citizens and officials of Humboldt County to perform an evaluation of two WSA within their jurisdiction and make an informed and precise request that Congress take action on these lands.

"The only people that can move any of those WSAs forward, backward, drop them from the inventory list, is Congress. It literally takes an act of Congress to make any changes within wilderness studies," he told council members.

The two WSAs he is concentrating on with this pilot program — Blue Lakes and Alder Creek — make up about 26,000 acres of Pine Forest.

"They have been in Wilderness Study Area designation, it seems like forever, since the late 70s, and it's going to remain that way with this current process," he explained.

Trout Unlimited is pushing for the city's support because they feel that the smartest way to handle the re-designation is to area from a local bias, where they can test the merits of the current designation and determine whether the areas are truly unique and warrant Wilderness Status or whether they are better fit for multiple use.

By doing so, the local sportsmen, many of whom know Nevada's back country better than most, can classify these areas, or portions of them, according to their unique contribution to retention of biodiversity. Jeffress stated that local input is the best preserved if they encompass spectacular geographic attributes and are released if they are better fit for multiple use purposes.

"This is completely new," Jeffress said. "This really hasn't been done throughout the west an awful lot, but I think that is the way the process should work, a lot of local and regional input. Not saying that outside people don't have a place at the table to influence what takes place on public lands, but I think it should be more local and should be driven from this level."

In his letter to interested parties, Jeffress outlined a plan stipulating what kind of data needs to be gathered, how meetings will be conducted and who will be looked at for different committees to establish the recommendations.

He said that the key factor in those recommendations is not going to be what they like and don't like but why they are making that recommendation. The "why" will create the foundation to carry the request forward to Congress.

He stated that the committees that their assertions are justified and that their data backs up their recommendations.

Once that process is complete, Jeffress will bring the analysis back to county officials for approval and support before going forward with a request for congressional designation.

If this process is successful in Humboldt County, Trout Unlimited is then looking at taking the process to other counties throughout the state and the west that have WSAs sitting in perpetuity.