|
Wise-users intimidate Nevada wilderness advocates.
By
Geoff Schumacher
|
|
|
Credit: Terry LaBan |
A dispute over repairing a washed-out dirt road in a remote corner of Nevada has become the latest flashpoint in the ever-raging battle between environmentalists and wise-use activists. Led by Nevada Assemblyman John Carpenter, wise-users are sending thousands of shovels to Elko, the largest city in the region, in a symbolic protest of U.S. Forest Service efforts to close the road and protect the threatened bull trout. The group has even erected a 30-foot-tall shovel in front of the Elko County Courthouse.
On a more ominous front, the wise-users plan to gather on July 4 with shovels, picks and horses to repair the 1.5-mile road, which runs along the west fork of the Jarbidge River in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest near the Nevada-Idaho border. If federal officials prevail in a court battle with the local wise-users over the next few months, the Fourth of July party could turn confrontational, if a similar case a few years ago is any indication.
On July 4, 1994, Dick Carver, a county commissioner in Nye County in southern Nevada, defied a Forest Service ranger and used a bulldozer to open a federal road. If the federal officer had drawn his weapon, Carver said afterward, "50 people with sidearms would have drilled him."
Geoff Schumacher is managing editor City Life, Las Vegas' alternative weekly.
|
In These Times ©
2000
Volume 24, Number 7 |