Looking back on the
disastrous wildfires of 1999 and facing a devastating future in the
Great Basin, the Bureau of Land Management saw an opportunity to
try a holistic restoration effort that would break the
cheatgrass-induced fire cycle (HCN, 5/22/00: Save Our Sagebrush).
This landscape-sized idea spawned the Eastern Nevada Landscape
Coalition, a nonprofit partnership of area universities, federal
agencies, environmental organizations, agricultural and mining
concerns, local businesses and Native American groups committed to
rejuvenating the ecosystem.
The coalition’s main
role is to help the BLM get projects such as thinning, reseeding
and riparian restoration done more quickly by dealing with the red
tape. “We handle the overhead headaches and the administrative
headaches,” says Betsy Macfarlan, executive director of the
Coalition. The group solicits bids from contractors and evaluates
the proposals, sends them to the BLM for a technical evaluation,
and awards the contract.
“This thing is growing
into its own,” says the BLM’s James Perkins. “The government cannot
rely on its own financial resources to get projects
done.”
But tackling these sometimes-controversial
plans can be prickly: The Mount Wilson project near Ely, Nev., has
been hit by a lawsuit from a group of environmental organizations
claiming that removal of the juniper and pi–on pine trees is
unnecessary.
Even so, Macfarlan says that finding
new ways to facilitate projects couldn’t come at a more crucial
time: “We’re moving toward biological bankruptcy.”
To learn more about the Eastern Nevada Landscape
Coalition, visit www.envlc.org or call
775/289-7974.
Copyright
© 2002 HCN and Julie Elliott
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A kick in the grass for restoration.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
