Special interests are trying to convert federal land to state control in Nevada. There are hearings today on Nevada Assembly Bill AB408 in Carson City and Las Vegas today. To preserve access to your public lands, register your opposition to this land grab here: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/App/Opinions/78th2015/A/
#Nevada #wilderness #BLM #Bureaoflandmanagement #Canon
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Que lindoooo…
Looks like home outside Apple Valley, Ca.
+David Entrikin It reminds me of places in the Mojave National Preserve as well.
bello lugar ! me encanta!:)
Home Sweet Home—-Utah transplant and EVER SO THANKFUL
I love the gorgeous wildflowers!!
Done. Great photo +Jeff Sullivan!
+Jack Vetterli
I read that Nevada had something in mind for "our" common lands, +Jeff Sullivan . I'll go read and comment.
+Richard Beebe I watched some of the pro and con public feedback testimony on the live video feed. It was interesting.
People in support of the bill were often in objection to the BLM "shutting them out", but I've been on BLM lands all over Nevada and had never seen that, so it took me a while to figure out what they meant. Apparently what they meant was the BLM closing roads, not banning people entirely from lands. If your butt is glued to an ATV seat, closing the road probably does seem like being shut out. So what they object to is often the result of the designation of many wilderness areas under the Wilderness Act of 1964, and its unique new definition of wilderness as a place where humans do not remain, which for some reason has been interpreted as being incompatible with road access. It's not clear what would become of federally designated wilderness areas upon passage of the bill.
There seem to be a lot of details which have not been thought out yet, such as how the state would manage the lands differently or better, and where the funding would come from. One supporter reasoned that there would be plenty of funding available to manage the lands because we would not be sending the supporting revenue to the federal government. Apparently he had no concept of the federal government being funded in part through federal income taxes, which would not magically be reduced for Nevada residents just because the State of Nevada had taken over much of the 86% of the state which is federal land.
Other supporters said that the management would be funded by commercial users. This bill seemed to be precipitated in part by the Bundys not wanting to pay grazing fees, so how likely would they be to pay a state agency trying to recover its costs in user fees like grazing fees? And since the BLM does not try to recoup all of its costs from user fees, the cost of a user-funded state agency would probably be much higher. Furthermore, there is not unlimited pending demand for commercial use of all lands, so management of the majority of lands, with no commercial use and offsetting fees, would be a big cost.
I have frustration with some aspects of the federal commercial use authorization permit system so I can understand why people want something better. But I can get a commercial use authorization on federal lands for 50 user days for $150, or about $3 per person per day. When the Bundy incident came up a few months ago, other ranchers who pay BLM grazing fees were saying that their fees were in the $1/month range per cow. It's difficult to imagine that a user-funded agency could operate with such low fees, paying for facilities, equipment, salaries, benefits, pensions, and so on.
My take is that the bill is one of those "Be careful what you wish for". If this bill passes and it survives costly legal challenges, it's likely that both the state and the proponents of the bill will regret the outcome. The cure may prove to be much more painful than the original perceived ailment.
It is not clear why bill supporters think that a state agency tasked with managing land for the public good would come to different conclusions on the trade-offs among various uses than the BLM did. Management for wildlife typically requires motor vehicle users to stay on roads, but some percentage of OHV users seem unable to follow simple rules like that, which ultimately gets more roads shut down. Then we'll be right back here where we started.
One thing an overwhelming majority of people don't realize is that AmeriCorps workers do a great deal of BLM maintenance, and those people work for a pittance! They get housing. The quarters I personally saw housed 11 people in a 4-bedroom apartment that was about 1000 square feet. That's typical, and some of their quarters are donated or owned by the federal government. They get $4.75 per diem for food. And they get a stipend of about $400/month. They get education grants when they finish their terms. That equates to an additional $500/month but can only be used toward education expenses. The state can never match what AmeriCorps contributes.
Beautiful! +Jeff Sullivan fight is always necessary to preserve; in Austria several years ago they made plans to built a hydroelectric reservoir, which was planned to cover an area of about 11 Km long and some 5 Km wide. Now after popular opposition is enclosed in a wider natural park. Good luck !
Are promoted!
+Pam Boling The Civilian Conservation Corps is another way facilities and trails are built and maintained. The CCC was founded as a partnership between the Department of Interior and the U.S. Forest Service (in the Department of Agriculture).
+Fulvio Garofalo Here in the United States we had a second Yosemite Valley a few miles north of the first. It now lies behind a dam, under Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, inside of Yosemite National Park.
"Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."
– John Muir, The Yosemite (New York: Century, 1912)
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5720/
Today the same water could be stored in Lake Don Pedro a few miles downstream, but apparently the City of San Francisco which controls the reservoir is unwilling to conduct studies to confirm the scope and cost of conversion.
+Jeff Sullivan Unfortunately the sad story lies anywhere, to me doesn't appears absolutely strange if the Planet (the only one that we have) is presenting us extreme to severely extreme weather conditions : today south Germany and part of Austria are affected by strong winds (190 Km/Hr average ), unfortunately till a reverse in this disaster tendency with care only to the short sited profit instead of a global environmental approach the road will be paved by disasters only, ….really I feel sad about the road ahead.
+Fulvio Garofalo Here in the Sierra Nevada our winters are growing shorter, snowpack is less, temperatures are rising. It's scary to think what our children are likely to experience as water and food production become increasingly threatened.
California is Rationing Water Use For First Time Due To Climate Change
"A recent study noted that soil moisture levels are worse than they’ve been for more than a millennium: “the current event is the most severe drought in the last 1200 years, with single year (2014) and accumulated moisture deficits worse than any previous continuous span of dry years.”
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/02/3642058/california-mandates-water-use-cuts-amid-drought/
Very nice
Γεια σου φιλέ μου πως περνάς;
GREAT PHOTO. IT IS NICE YOUR WORK. THANKS.