Virgin Mountain, Nevada

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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.