Omigod! It’s wilderness sprawl!

About this time last year, I attended the dedication of the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. Folks in attendance felt vastly betrayed by the move to protect these areas from development. During the ceremonies, a plane flew over the playa with a banner calling a former and current Nevada senators “Traitor Dick [Bryan] and Dirty Harry [Reid].”

One man told me he feared that he wouldn’t be able to hunt chukar in the High Rock Canyon anymore, which just wasn’t true. Although wilderness designation does protect land from motorized vehicles, mechanized transportation and the building of structures, the 1964 Wilderness Act does not prohibit grazing, climbing, hiking, tent camping, horseback riding, firefighting efforts or even hunting and fishing with the proper permits and licenses. And on the Black Rock Playa, a national conservation area designation allows even more recreational activities, including the use of motor vehicles, aircrafts, bikes, existing mining operations including geothermal and special recreation events by permit, like Burning Man.

But that’s northern Nevada for you. Surely, you wouldn’t run up against such opposition in the fastest-growing U.S. city, Las Vegas, where land is being replaced by theme casinos at an alarming rate. Right? Nope.

These days, anti-wilderness folks in the south are plenty upset, fearing the loss of their family picnics and—again—hunting, trapping and fishing, as a coalition of environmental groups goes after something like 4 million acres (encompassing parts of southern Nevada, southern California and northern Arizona) to be preserved under a Citizens’ Wilderness Proposal for Nevada’s Mojave Desert Region.

Don’t worry, SUV-lovers. These groups don’t stand much of a chance. But a bit of progress may be in the works. Senators Reid and John Ensign Tuesday introduced in the U.S. Senate a comprehensive management plan for public lands in Clark County. The plan, according to a pitch at Ensign’s Web site, “will accommodate growth while protecting natural resources.”

The Clark County Conservation of Public Lands and Natural Resources Act designates over 440,000 acres of wilderness area, while it “releases” more than 233,000 acres for multiple-use management.

“It’s very exciting, a great first step,” says Brian Beffort, the northern Nevada representative for Friends of Nevada Wilderness. But then again, the plan isn’t terribly comprehensive. One area not even being considered for wilderness designation is the Highland Range, home to protected species such as the desert bighorn and the desert tortoise. Also, land currently protected will be traded to accommodate such business and utility interests as Nevada Power, which wants to run a mega-power line through the wilderness study area near Sunrise Mountain, on the east side of the Las Vegas Valley. These trade-offs make wilderness advocates a bit wary and rightly so.

“I think it’s clever political positioning that forces people to swallow a bitter pill and they get a piece of candy in return,” Beffort says.

Wilderness is a scary contagion. Starbucks, anyone?