In her quest to secure land for the continued growth of the greater Reno area, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) places rural industry in Washoe County on the chopping block.  

Pursuant to the Truckee Meadows Public Lands Management Act, which Rosen introduced to Congress on Jan. 17 after years of development, 15,860 acres of federal public land would be conveyed for disposal. In English, this essentially means that the land would be used to accommodate urban growth in Washoe County by various means, including sale to housing developers and utilization for road expansions, parks and K-12 school sites.

In exchange, nearly 950,000 acres of public land — almost 6,000 percent of the amount slated for urban growth — would be preserved and permanently excluded from any sort of economic development, mostly in northern Washoe County. The bill possesses other facets, but I specifically want to address the significant and controversial component related to public land preservation.  

Without a doubt, there are exceptional natural places in Washoe County that ought to be protected; however, industries that constitute the economic backbone of rural Nevada, such as mining and ranching, require access to large tracts of federal public land in order to function. This does not mean that all the land usable for economic ends is industrialized at one time — or even ever.

Nevada is a testament to this. If you drive across the state on any given highway, you are not confronted with endless open pit mines and cattle at the trough, but rather an expansive, desolate desert that mostly looks the same as it did 1,000 years ago. Most of what you see (58 percent of Nevada but consistently shrinking) is federal land open for recreation and certain commercial uses, although you might never guess the latter. 

Historically, Nevada has leveraged this system to its great advantage by maintaining public access to well cared for natural places while fostering rural economic development. Mining alone comprised about 4 percent of Nevada’s gross domestic product in 2021, and in several rural counties including Lander, Eureka and Pershing, mining jobs accounted for over half of all employment in 2020. This is made possible by the perception of the state as a mining destination (not tourist) that attracts a steady stream of foreign and domestic investment. In fact, Nevada routinely ranks among the world’s top mining jurisdictions, coming in first place globally in 2020 and 2022. 

By preserving nearly 950,000 acres of public land, the Truckee Meadows Public Lands Management Act is a proposed coup de grâce to any sort of beneficial balance between conservation and industry in Washoe County. To be sure, extensive areas of preserved public land already exist, including the 800,000-acre Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area and the over 500,000-acre Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge.

In contrast to most of Nevada, if the bill passes, it will be very challenging to find areas in Washoe County where rural industry can operate without severe encumbrances. It is perplexing to me that Sen. Rosen has introduced legislation that is so one-sidedly detrimental to her rural constituency, especially when clear feedback in opposition was provided during the bill’s development. 

During a round of public comments submitted in early 2020, groups representing rural industry including the Nevada Mining Association, Nevada Mineral Exploration Coalition and Nevada Farm Bureau provided letters clarifying the importance of access to public lands for their respective industries and pushing back on the proposed, extensive conservation easements. Prior to that time, new conservation easements associated with the bill totaled around 300,000 acres. 

To our chagrin, the draft of the bill made available for comment in 2023 disregarded our feedback and increased the new conservation designations to nearly 1 million acres. Although legislative motivations had been tacitly made clear, the Nevada Mineral Exploration Coalition, a group with which I volunteer, reiterated our protest by submitting a letter making a transparent, data-based argument for the exclusion of small zones of high economic potential from the proposed preserved areas. In January, when the introduced bill was revealed and it was clear that we had again been ignored, I think everyone was past the point of surprise.

It is important to recognize the hypocrisy floating visibly on the surface of this bill. Before any parcel of federal land is privatized and brought to market, it must be evaluated by the managing government agency — probably as it should be. However, who has conducted an evaluation of the proposed conservation easements that justifies their establishment on unique ecological, environmental or cultural grounds? After all, these areas would be excluded from modern commercial uses and, in the case of wilderness areas, from vehicle-based recreation. Much of the public would like to see the information supporting these consequential decisions, but it is nowhere to be found. The implicit double-standard has been made as palpable as it can be.

If the Washoe County lands bill becomes law, Jacky Rosen stands to gain, clipping a new piece of major legislation in an election year. Special interest groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of Nevada Wilderness, staunch advocates for the preservation of public lands, also count among the winners.

But here in Washoe County — where rural industry is dealt a harrowing blow, the public is denied accessible recreation opportunities on at least 220,000 acres of their own land and the Reno area is permitted a few rattling breaths to palliate its arrested development — I’d say we lose.

To anyone interested in sustainably balancing conservation and economic development, who enjoys unencumbered access to public lands or who likes the idea of legislation that is drafted in a reasonable and transparent fashion, I urge you to express your dissatisfaction with this bill. 

Eli Turner is a volunteer with a special interest group called the Nevada Mineral Exploration Coalition and works as a geologist in mineral exploration.

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