Deer Creek flap spurs streamlining of process

A respected district ranger who got caught up in the morass of Forest Service bureaucracy and lost his job may have cleared the way for a better process to save Southern Nevada's endangered lands.

To save a rare Southern Nevada pine forest with a mountain creek, Jim Nelson pulled off a heralded land exchange that received acclaim from environmentalists and federal elected officials.

But auditors found a different story, and Nelson was forced to retire. Now the controversy over the deal for the threatened Deer Creek land is setting the stage for a more streamlined acquisition process that could ensure the future of the preservation effort.

Congress is working on a bill proposed by the Clinton administration that would favor purchasing sensitive property rather than exchanging for it. The bill also could provide a clear path for development of the Las Vegas Valley while at the same time preserve the natural heritage of the area.

A prototype bill went into law last year and will allow the sale of 20,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management property in Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas to developers. The proceeds from the sale will be used to purchase environmentally sensitive land in Nevada.

Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt will be in Las Vegas on Thursday to start the process of the land sales.

At 57, Nelson retired a year ago from the Forest Service after a 33-year career ended in a fight with a federal bureaucracy that put the bottom line ahead of the tree line.

Nelson's effort has focused attention on the disappearing wilderness in the rapidly urbanizing West. Elected officials and the Clinton administration are trying to find better ways to preserve and conserve natural areas.

If Congress approves the sale of surplus federal parcels, it will change the way the federal government exchanges or acquires lands.

Nelson decided to tell his side of the story recently after the Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General conducted an audit on land exchanges in Nevada. The audit began more than two years ago.

According to the audit, Nelson accepted gifts, such as a carving knife and junkets from people he did business with, and approved land appraisals that "overvalued nonfederal land."

After the audit, the Forest Service offered Nelson a desk job in Ogden, Utah, and told him if he succeeded in an administrative appeal of the audit, he would remain there. He decided to quit instead.

The Office of Inspector General then turned some of its audit over to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. After more than a year, no charges have been filed against Nelson, although the investigation continues.

Reno attorney Thomas "Spike" Wilson has represented Nelson since the audit. He wrote a letter to the OIG's office on Nelson's behalf and never got a reply.

As a Forest Service district ranger in Nevada for 14 years, Nelson believed in preserving stands of Ponderosa pines and the major sources of Las Vegas Valley ground water coming from the Spring Mountains, west of Las Vegas.

The trouble was that private landowners held 500 acres scattered throughout Deer Creek.

Deer Creek, in the Mount Charleston area between Kyle and Lee canyons, supports plants and animals found nowhere else on earth. About 300 acres of the private property lies within the wilderness boundary.

The Deer Creek area also is considered a prime watershed, feeding the valley's scarce ground-water supply, and Nelson wanted to protect it.

So Nelson teamed with Harriet Burgess, president of the American Land Conservancy, to negotiate for the private property. The Forest Service, at the time, encouraged third-party negotiations.

Burgess had worked with the Trust for Public Lands for 13 years and has secured 50,000 acres of urban and conservation areas worth $230 million in California and Nevada.

In 1990 she launched the American Land Conservancy.

"I wanted to do high-risk land exchanges," Burgess said of her move from the Trust for Public Lands.

Burgess took her $200,000 retirement fund and started the American Land Conservancy. She refused to accept a salary for two years until the San Francisco-based conservancy established a reputation as a top organization for securing private lands for preservation. It helped to have David Brower, a pioneer of modern environmentalism, on the board.

When Burgess agreed to work on Deer Creek, she discovered that Pine Development, a group of small investors, had purchased about 500 acres in 1992 for $2 million. The properties had no water rights or access roads.

It cost the developers another $1 million or more to secure water rights and permits necessary to think about building 243 cabins on 94 acres.

The government agreed in 1994 to exchange federal land worth $5.9 million more than the private property that Pine Development gave up in return. But as negotiations went on, the appraised value was fluid.

Between 1992 and late 1995 the Deer Creek land was appraised at between $6.7 million and $12.5 million. Forest Service appraisers in Nevada set a final value of the land at $10.5 million, the final purchase price paid by the Forest Service.

OIG investigators later contended that the price was too high for rural land, and negotiations between the Forest Service and the American Land Conservancy led to an exchange that favored Pine Development, owned by Jan Bernard.

However, Deer Creek has been preserved for Nevada residents and visitors to enjoy today and in the future.

At the time, Nelson and Burgess pointed out, the Forest Service encouraged negotiating with a mix of private and federal appraisals. There were two independent appraisers and three federal appraisers in those three years.

"I think the appraisers are running the Forest Service," Nelson said recently.

"The inspector general did not want to hear what we had to say. That's my damn story and I'm sticking with it," Nelson said.

The uproar from the OIG audit, Nelson's retirement and a freeze on securing fragile wilderness lands in Nevada have conservationists such as Lois Sagel worried.

There are at least 15 parcels of land worth about $3 million in the Deer Creek area that the Forest Service needs to purchase, said Sagel, a member of the Citizens for the Spring Mountain National Recreation Area.

"It's not fair to the people who are moving into Southern Nevada to lose those parcels," she said.

For Burgess, it has stopped her effectiveness as a third-party negotiator. "There are only a handful of parcels left to purchase (in Deer Creek)," Burgess said after submitting a nationwide project list to the Forest Service of lands needing to be acquired.

Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., who supported the Deer Creek land deal, decided to find a better way of preserving shrinking natural wild places, especially with Southern Nevada's growth lapping at the Spring Mountains' foothills.

Their first victory was saving Deer Creek.

"It's not every day that you can help to preserve an Alpine island in the middle of the desert," Reid said when Deer Creek was sealed.

For Bryan, Deer Creek held memories of picnics and cool breezes on hot Las Vegas summer days. "With this exchange, future generations of Nevadans will be able to use Deer Creek in its pristine condition for public recreation," he said.

Last year the senators sponsored legislation that will allow the BLM to auction up to 20,000 acres of public land in Southern Nevada, instead of simply exchanging it. The money raised from such sales will, among other things, help buy other environmentally sensitive lands within the state.

The Clinton administration is proposing this year to sell excess public lands owned by other federal agencies in the West, funneling the funds into resource protection in the area, based on Nevada's model. After all, 87 percent of Nevada is owned by the federal government.

The Clinton plan includes new authority to sell lands suitable for disposal by federal agencies such as the Forest Service. President Clinton proposed the land sales idea in his fiscal 2000 budget. Congress will work out the details.

While land exchanges take time and cost more, land sales could help solve some of the older abuses, said Jim Lyons, undersecretary for natural resources and the environment in the Department of Agriculture.

Rapid-growth areas such as Las Vegas do not keep an appraised value long, he noted. Thus, selling becomes a useful tool in preserving wild areas, he said.

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