[…] her letter in its entirety here at Las Vegas […]

Yes Russ you are correct, the lands do belong to everyone, so when visit an area I should be the one to decide how I want to recreate/travel in it-by foot, horse, Mt Bike, OHV or truck. You know, multi use recreation, not hikers only. I visit the proposed wilderness areas often and I have never seen a hiker out there, never. It is all about sharing the public lands, not designating them for specific user groups, they belong to everyone. And don’t go off on how OHV’s, Mt Bikes, Jeeps etc rape the land, have you been to Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Griffith Park or on the Western States trail lately? No OHV use there but there is a lot of resource damage…from hikers.

Nice try, Pete buddy, conjuring up that old stereotype that wilderness lovers are all Sierra Clubbers sitting in some far off tower in Berkeley or Boston. But I’ll put my many forays off the beaten path in remote Nevada BLM and NF public lands against yours or anyone’s. Bring your map! And let’s not forget, shall we, the key word here is “public”. So let me remind you, the public lands held in trust for the American people belong to everyone, not just y’all rural locals.

I go to those areas proposed for wilderness. They do not meet the requirements of the Wilderness Act. I get tired of the “do good’ers anti-access groups” from Las Vegas and Reno trying to close down places that I enjoy to all but a select few. I seriously doubt that any of you that have commented on this article have even been to the proposed wilderness areas AND I doubt you ever will visit them if they do become Wilderness areas. Go play in all of the unused wilderness we already have and leave Lyon, Mineral and Esmeralda Counties alone….we don’t want you here!

Don’t you love those like Sue Silver who have an agenda they claim is supported by the “ordinary Nevadan”. Sorry honey, it’s 2008 and there are plenty of us’n ordinary folks who maybe just maybe do NOT blow the trumpet in support of endless unlimited access to our public lands by motorized vehicles. I’m pro-choice, and I vote, and I’m pro-wilderness, and I spend money out in rural Nevada and I am more than happy to leave my 4×4 pick-up OUTSIDE my favorite remote mountain ranges, to hike & camp and get a spiritual feel for the real wild wild west: a wilderness untrammeled by yahoos in all-terrain vehicles insisting they go everywhere. And something tells me that population pressures inexorably building in the American West are only going to make our designated wilderness areas more valuable, not less.

Certainly Andrew. But they make for wonderful trades in order to get land out of the federal system (protect 10k acres here and get 6k acres to develop in Las Vegas).

Great points, Nick. I think one thing lost in this — and a point I should have perhaps made in my original piece — is this notion of wilderness meaning “pristine,” which isn’t always necessarily the case.

1. Mineral, Nye and Esmeralda counties should be merged. There’s no reason for all three to exist. At minimum, they should be combined to two, with Pahrump as one seat of government and Tonopah as the other.

2. The western half of the state, between Pahrump and Fallon, has nothing. The minerals have been extracted and exhausted, the little water it had is going away, the military operations are barely hanging on as the government consolidates the armed forces.

The only thing those counties have to hope for is transportation investment. Nevada’s senators should be pitching an interstate highway from Phoenix to Portland, providing freight traffic an alternative to I-5 on the west coast. That would also open up places like Hawthorne and Tonopah and Goldfield to warehouse investment, like Fernley and St. George have seen.

Wilderness designations are selected specifically because NOBODY GOES THERE. Leave them as walk-ins only. There’s plenty of desert and forest across Nevada that ATVs and hunters can have access to.