Plans Discussed For A Gold Butte NCA

The vast Gold Butte region is a local treasure. It is rich with archaeological, historic and natural beauty. The region has been a favored recreation spot for many Moapa and Virgin Valley families for generations. But the Gold Butte area may be facing some big changes… and soon.

Preliminary plans are being made that would propose creating a National

The initial plans were discussed at a meeting, organized by U.S. Congressman Jon Porter’s office, held in Mesquite last week. This meeting brought a group of key Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley residents together with Porter’s staff to discuss the rough ideas in the plan and to give feedback. The meeting was informal and was not open to the public.

“This meeting was meant to just open the conversation,” said Porter’s press secretary Matthew Leffingwell in an interview. “It was just a listening session to discuss the initial rough ideas. Whatever proposal is finally approved would have to go through the entire (Congressional) delegation.”

But there was more that was requested. “While looking at it we wanted to also gain access to additional lands on what is known as the “top shelf” of the Mormon Mesa,” Hacker said. This land would bring an additional 4900 acres into the Mesquite city limits.

“We were told that Senator Reid was especially interested in seeing this conservation element,” Hacker continued.

Hacker explained that Porter had then worked with an organization known as the Friends of Gold Butte to create a general conservation proposal for the area.

The resulting proposal would create an NCA on the roughly 350,000 acres of land lying just south of Bunkerville stretching south all the way to Lake Mead. The land is bordered on the west by the Virgin River and is inclusive of the Virgin Mountain Range to the east.

The plan would also create several new Wilderness Area designations within the NCA. A Wilderness designation is established by Congress and is defined in the Wilderness Act as “…an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Recreational and other uses in Wilderness areas are heavily restricted.

Members of Friends of Gold Butte have been concerned about a lack of adequate management in the Gold Butte area. They believe that the NCA designation would solve some of those problems.

Nancy Hall, who is President of the Friends of Gold Butte organization, has noticed a dramatic increase in recreational uses in recent years. With that has come damage and destruction to important resources and habitat in the area, Hall said.

Despite the fact that Gold Butte is being managed by the Bureau of Land Management as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), Hall says that there is little being done to mitigate the damage. Popular destinations in the area are seeing unauthorized ATV trails being created in the desert. Unmanaged campgrounds are expanding into sensitive areas. These things are causing damage to delicate plant life as well as to valuable archaeological and cultural resources, Hall said.

“In the decade that this area has been an ACEC, there has been virtually nothing done that would address these problems,” Hall said. “We have made requests to the BLM for simple things that might provide a solution and have usually been told that it simply can’t be done.”

So Hall’s group believes that an NCA designation is the best way to cut through the bureaucratic red tape and to solve these problems.

A National Conservation Area can only be established by the passage of legislation through Congress. The legislation provides the perameters for the creation of a Management Plan for the area. The BLM is then mandated to formulate a detailed Management Plan within three years after the passage of the legislation.

The benefit of the NCA status, according to Hall, is that it would provide additional funding for the enactment of the Management Plan. “There would be funds available to provide things like policing and enforcement in the area,” Hall said. “Also additional infrastructure could be built such as a restrooms, a visitor center, trail development and other informational and interpretive facilities.”

But Hall is swift to point out that she would not be in favor of a Management Plan that would close any existing roads or restrict current uses in the area. The additional Wilderness Areas which are being proposed by the plan have no existing roads in those areas that would need closure, she said.

Hall, who is a resident of Mesquite, spends a good deal of time exploring the back country of the Gold Butte area. She stated that it is vitally important to her that she, and future generations as well, be able to continue to do so.

“We have no desire to close roads or to restrict hunting and other activities in areas where they currently go on,” Hall said. “The area is big enough and varied enough to be able to support all of the current recreational uses. We just want to make sure that the area is managed appropriately to preserve it for future generations.”

But many people feel that a federal designation would cause more trouble than it solves. Bunkerville Town Advisory Board Chairman Duane Magoon expressed concerns about what would happen after the management plan was complete. “Once that is done, our say in it is all over,” Magoon said. “Then they don’t consider our input anymore and do what they damn-well please.”

Magoon recognized that the idea for the proposal comes from good intentions to protect and preserve the resources. “But I’ve been 30 years in this area,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of good-intended projects come back and bite us pretty hard.”

Logandale resident, Lindsey Dalley, who serves as Chairman for the Partners in Conservation (PIC) organization, expressed similar skepticism. “We have heard that same line before about not wanting to close anything down,” Dalley said. “And they always seem sincere and maybe they even mean it. But somewhere in the process, the roads and the lands get closed anyway.” Dalley relates a personal experience which occurred a few years ago during the drafting of the Lincoln County Land Act. He had made sure to be in attendance at all of the public meetings discussing the details of the Act. He, and other family members, had spoken out specifically in favor of keeping one old favorite family hunting area open in the Fortification Range in Lincoln County. He had been told in those meetings that there was no intention to close access into those areas. Yet, when all the dust settled, the roads were closed anyway.

“I’m afraid that it comes down to a credibility issue,” Dalley said. “There is a real credibility gap there for me and a lot of other people because of past performance in these things.”

Dalley recognizes the need for management in the Gold Butte area. He points out that a great deal of the open public lands in other areas of Clark County have, in recent years, been closed to off-road vehicle use. This has caused crowding at the few spaces that are left for that activity, Dalley said.

“We see that going on right here at the Logandale Trails,” Dalley said. “People are crammed into one small area and you see overuse and damage to the area because people don’t know anywhere else to go.”

Dalley explained that there needed to be an overall plan of the region that would educate, direct and give options to people. This way these recreational uses could be spread out to more areas rather than restricting and confining those uses to a few small areas. “We need to plan and prepare so that we don’t have a repeat of the mess that exists at Logandale trails,” Dalley said.

But Dalley is not convinced that a federal designation is the best, or the only, answer. Over the past five years, PIC has had moderate success in securing state funding to perform a management plan specifically for Whitney Pockets, one of the most heavily used spots in the Gold Butte area.

“There is no doubt that there are real management challenges out there,” Dalley said. “But the solution is not to take an exclusive approach and keep people out. That just puts pressure somewhere else. Rather it is to move in a direction solve these problems in an inclusive way where you include everybody and exclude nobody.”

In any case, Congressman Porter’s office has pledged to continue to take public input on the plan being proposed. “We don’t have a preference for any specific proposal at this point,” said Matthew Leffingwell. “We will be listening closely to the concerns of all the different interested parties and get input as we move forward.”