Letters to the editor for Friday, Nov. 25, 2016

Nevada sportsmen: Be wary of public lands bill

Nevada’s sportsmen ignore the public lands bill (H.R. 1484) being pushed by Mark Amodei at their own peril. The justification for the bill emphasizes “local control” and “Washington bureaucracy.”

As a native Nevadan who has spent my life hunting all over the state, I can’t figure out what activities are really being hindered here. There’s plenty of new quad roads everywhere, I don’t know of many mining projects that have been turned down, and local management of land-use issues is already happening, as evidenced in the success of the Governor Sandoval’s Sage-Grouse Working Group.

So what makes this transfer so necessary and urgent? The only logical answer is acquisition of public land by private interests. Of the 4 million acres we were granted at statehood, we have about 3,000 left. If you think the BLM and Forest Service are bad landlords, you’re really not going to like the new ones. There’s not enough bolt cutters and toothpicks in the world.

Ernie Thompson

Reno