Due to pressure from Wilderness Watch and Western Watersheds Project, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has decided to scrap its misguided plan to torch the sagebrush habitat and native pinyon-juniper forests of the remote Highland Ridge and White Rock Range Wildernesses in eastern Nevada to create more food for cows. BLM proposed an unspecified number of helicopter landings and other motorized equipment to complete a project fundamentally at odds with the Wilderness Act’s requirement to protect areas “untrammeled” by humans. Both high-elevation Wildernesses are home to elk, mule deer, ferruginous hawks, eagles, and other native wildlife, including the imperiled pinyon jay, which relies heavily on pinyon-juniper woodlands. The Highland Ridge Wilderness is contiguous with Great Basin National Park. BLM proposed the project under the guise of reintroducing fire to the area, but the appropriate strategy is to let natural fires reintroduce themselves. That might not create the conditions desired by BLM managers, but it will create the untrammeled, natural conditions that are right for Wilderness. While this is a win for Wilderness, BLM still proposes to chain, burn, poison, and reseed hundreds of thousands of acres of adjacent public lands, to the detriment of sage grouse, pygmy rabbit, pinyon jay, and other native wildlife. Hopefully the groups challenging that part of the project will find success. |
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