In recent weeks the special interest that has been pushing for a National Conservation Area (NCA) at Gold Butte has ironically taken up the mantra of the great economic benefits of its plan for the region.

Just last week a letter appeared in the Review Journal extolling the economic treasures that lie out there, just waiting to be exploited through a new federal designation. That letter; purporting to be written by former Nevada Senator Richard Bryan, Las Vegas business mogul Sig Rogich and former Mesquite mayor Susan Holecheck; was certainly persuasive — that is, until you realize that at least two members of that dollar-sign-eyed trio have very little real interest, or stake, in the Gold Butte region. In fact it’s questionable whether two of them have ever even been out to Gold Butte at all.

In any case, with all this sudden excitement about the extravagant commercial riches just laying in wait for us there, one might think that we should be eager to rush out and sign up for our very own NCA. After all, given the pitiful economic state of our region, we’d be crazy not to welcome anything that would bring a little business to our withering communities. True enough. But before we rush to sign on that dotted line, there are a host of nagging questions regarding this NCA-as-economic-engine idea that ought to be addressed.

The first among them is just whether the federal government can, or even ought to, be in the business of churning economic development through land conservation measures. It’s a very slippery slope: holding out economic prosperity as the reward for a federal land designation. Things could start to smell rotten in a hurry. After all, shouldn’t the unselfish preservation of the land really be the pure goal of such actions. Adding this vague host of baser, more economic enticements, just seems to open the door to extortion-like tactics and bait-and-switch politics.

Besides, economic benefits are already calling to us from these areas, if only we were allowed to follow them. No new federal designation is really needed to draw business to wonderful areas like Gold Butte. If allowed to, any enterprising businessman could promote the beauty and splendour of the area as it is and draw an international audience. If only it were allowed.

So the question remains: how much do we gain with an NCA designation. Just how much will such an enterprising businessman be allowed to do, once we build it and they start to come?

Let’s say we get our wish and the NCA increases visitation to Gold Butte as promised? That’s great for hotels, restaurants and other businesses in Mesquite and the surrounding areas. But in order to sustain all that traffic, won’t there be a need for infrastructure out in the most popular areas of Gold Butte? And who will approve and pay for all that remote infrastructure to keep this promised economic engine firing?

What happens when our enterprising local businessman decides to take advantage of the newly revving economic engine and wants to open, say, a nice little tour operation? Let’s go ahead and make the extremely unlikely assumption that he quickly receives all the permits he needs to begin his new Gold Butte Tour Line business.

Then the engine really starts cranking. Demand becomes such that he needs to bring, say, two large tour buses a day full of visitors to see the, by now, world renown “Falling Man” petroglyph site in the Gold Butte complex. Are those buses going to be allowed to traverse the bumpy little one lane track winding through the desert to get to that site? There is very little parking area or space for turning around at the end of that road. There are no restroom facilities for all those visitors on site. So how will this booming new local business manage to meet the demand brought on by our making Gold Butte a new star on the map?

Of course, this is admittedly an extreme case. Still, tour buses or no, eventually that narrow track to “Falling Man”, passing through tortoise habitat, will become more and more congested and clogged by this promised, roaring engine of economic development. And there are many more sites out there just like it.

Will the BLM bureaucrats and the NCA/Wilderness crowd look with a friendly eye upon the prospect of expanding and improving those roads to keep our economic engine firing? Will they hop right to the task of bulldozing and paving over the tortoise habitat to provide access and adequate parking in these most popular areas? Perhaps it could happen. But if you believe that, there is some nice river front property way down near Tassi that someone might be willing to sell you.

More likely the answer would be: No, it can’t be done. We simply haven’t the funding for such improvements, they would say. And, by the way, since we have this serious traffic problem tearing up the habitat, that road might need to be closed. Then the bureaucracy makes an emergency decision, puts a chain across the road, and farewell to that little economic engine. Also, farewell to that other adamantly made promise of keeping roads open and retaining the historic uses at Gold Butte.

It is at that point that we will find that this whole idea of economic development as a fringe benefit to an NCA has been little more than a glimmering mirage out in the arid distance. It will have been no more than an enticing carrot dangled just out of our reach, even while the big stick of exclusion and closure is used to whack us from behind and escort us off the premises.

Yes, no doubt there is some economic benefit to be gained from a new public land designation at Gold Butte. But these superficial commercial perks would always be just scraps from the table thrown in to keep us quiet. In truth, they would amount to a bitter mess of pottage for which we had sold our precious birthright.

This is unfortunate. Of course, we long for greater economic opportunity to be opened up on our nearby public lands. But the simple fact is that true economic development comes from opening up the field of commerce, not from placing added regulations and restrictions upon it.

In the long run, tightening the federal screws on Gold Butte in this way would perpetually be in conflict with the very economic boon that is being promised. The relationship would always be adversarial.

In order for such an economic engine to really start revving at Gold Butte, restrictions would eventually have to be loosened and dropped. The way would have to be opened for concession-style businesses to fully exploit the inevitable interest that would be drawn to the area.

Now is that really what this Wilderness crowd, or for that matter any of us, truly wants to see out at Gold Butte? If not, then all this talk of commercial development as an enticement for an NCA with Wilderness is just another empty promise.