Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) introduced a lands bill for Pershing County on Tuesday, that would privatize public land for economic development — including mining — while adding conservation protections to other parcels in the area.

Like past Nevada lands bills, it has support from a wide coalition of interest groups, from local officials to the Nevada Mining Association to Friends of Nevada Wilderness — with opposition from some environmentalists, including the Center for Biological Diversity.

“As Nevada continues to grow, I’m working to support responsible economic development while also prioritizing the conservation of public lands,” Rosen, who also crafted a lands bill for Washoe County, said in a release. 

On the development side of the ledger, the bill would authorize the sale of public lands with existing operating mining claims to their claimholders, while also allowing for the privatization of public lands via sale or exchange, with the goal of expanding the rural county’s tax base. It would also release more than 48,000 acres from the Wilderness Study Area designation, opening it up for new development.

Pershing County, with its county seat in the farming and mining town of Lovelock, has a population of less than 7,000 people. Because the majority of land in Pershing County — and in Nevada — is owned by the federal government, any changes involving federal land must be approved by Congress. Seventy-five percent of land in Pershing County is federally owned.  

The bill would reorganize the county’s land management by resolving the checkerboard pattern issue, a vestige of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad. In the 19th century, as the federal government stimulated the building of railroads, it granted rail companies land alongside the train tracks in alternating sections, holding onto every other square mile of land. The railroads would then sell their tracts to finance construction — an arrangement that has made development in the 21st century difficult.

This land pattern persists alongside Interstate 80, which approximates the first transcontinental railroad route. Rosen’s bill aims to simplify the model by creating a Checkerboard Resolution Area in which the Pershing County Commission can more easily facilitate the sale or exchange of land already identified for disposal. The goal is to “block up” the land by potential use rather than by historic ownership along the checkerboard, so that parcels with economic value can be consolidated and converted while land with conservation value can follow the same process. 

As with past Nevada lands bills, proceeds from the sale of land will stay in the state rather than go to the federal treasury — 85 percent will go toward protecting environmentally significant land and improving outdoor recreation access, 10 percent directly to Pershing County and 5 percent toward Nevada schools.

Companies with operating mines on public land can now purchase that previously leased land, while companies interested in future mining claims on land designated for potential sale or exchange within the checkerboard can ask the county to facilitate land acquisition.

Unsurprisingly, the bill has support from the mining industry. Nevada Mining Association President Amanda Hilton urged “swift passage” of the bill in a statement and lauded it for “providing positive outcomes for all involved.”

The conservation portion includes the designation of more than 130,000 acres of public land in Pershing County as Wilderness Areas, providing a layer of permanent environmental protection from development and human impact. Wilderness lands are preserved for multiple uses consistent with the preservation of the area. For example, recreation is allowed but motorized vehicles are not allowed to operate within the boundaries. Grazing is still allowed only where it had already occurred in the area, and new mining claims are no longer permissible.

The protected land touches areas across the county, from the hiking-friendly Selenite Mountains near Gerlach to the rugged Stillwater Range to valley playas and canyons in the desert. Seven new Wilderness Areas would be created under the bill.

Shaaron Netherton, the executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness, said the group is “excited for the opportunity to block up public and private lands to support appropriate development including green energy along with better conservation and management in the checkerboard area along the railroad and I-80 corridor.” 

And for tribes, the legislation would transfer land into trust for the Lovelock Paiute Tribe in order to expand its tribal cemetery, whereby the Department of the Interior holds the title of the land for the tribe to use to its benefit.

The Pershing County lands bill is not a new invention. It has been introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) in multiple Congresses, most recently as part of his broader lands package for Northern Nevada. First created by local stakeholders in 2015 and 2016, it was drafted and approved by the Pershing County Commission in 2016. 

In the Senate, the Pershing County bill was first introduced by then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV) in 2016 and is now in Rosen’s portfolio.

The only differences between Amodei’s version and Rosen’s are the inclusion of the parcel for the Paiute cemetery and the exclusion of a 10-acre land conveyance to the county for a cemetery in Unionville because the county has since acquired that parcel.

While it has the support of some environmental groups, others worry that it’s too friendly to the mining industry. There are already operating mines on the lands available for sale to mining companies, but once the land is in private control, mining companies can expand their operations without meeting the environmental protection standards in place for public lands — though private land is still subject to environmental regulation.

Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said he worries that the Pershing bill leans too far toward privatization.

“The actual lands in question may not be the most environmentally sensitive in Nevada,” he said in a statement to The Nevada Independent. “But this type of massive public lands giveaway sets a very dangerous precedent for future public lands legislation.”