Sustainable Expansion is Not an Oxymoron

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Green Means

Sustainable Expansion is not An Oxymoron

By Shannon Scott

Green is in, hunting is hip, and rural Nevada has it all.  The problem is that the quickest way to ruin an area is to inhabit it.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and youngest billionaire, has embraced harvesting and processing his own game.  He’s the most famous hunter under the age of 30. 

Michael Pollan’s books on food, self-sufficiency, and raising or harvesting one’s own meat have many taking up a sport they once found abhorrent.

Barbara Kingsolver’s, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, catalyzed many to live more rurally, till backyard garden plots, and grow vegetables in pots on high rise terraces. 

Smart economics coupled with health and environmental concerns have more middle and upper income groups growing and harvesting their own food.  Rural life ways are in vogue.  This growing demand might suggest that the lives we’ve lived in the rural west may be seeing twilight.

Nouveau-riche techies, urban trendsetters, and their star-struck followers whose predecessors congested Montana, central Arizona, and western Nevada, seek more remote places.  More people want sun for off-the-grid homes, space to grow vegetables, and access to hunting.  Stalking coastal mule deer and troublesome wild boars has Silicon Valley trendsetters riding their $18,000 bicycles to their nearest gun stores. 

All of us seek areas that match our interests – fishing, mountain biking, opera, or theatre.  Star struck types also move to trendy, boomtowns that attract the who’s who.  Whitefish, Bozeman, Aspen, Missoula, Santa Fe, Ketchum, and Sedona well know this population influx trend.  People move to areas for jobs, but surprisingly often to pursue a lifestyle. 

Fifty years ago in northern California’s Napa Valley, land owners grazed dairy cows, maintained olive orchards, and grew a few grapes.  People hunted ducks and geese on the Napa River.  The valley’s bucolic qualities attracted visitors and residents alike.  As the valley grew, Robert Mondavi proposed producing upscale wines from good vintages.  The valley vintners’ association told Bob Mondavi that he was crazy if he thought he ever would see more than $3.50 for a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. 

Mondavi’s ideas struck gold.  Hollywood trendsetters discovered Napa.  The L.A. jet-set bought land and started micro-wineries.  Congested with traffic, Napa Valley’s air became thick and dirty.  Upscale businesses boomed.  Corner drug stores folded.  Agriculture changed from crop diversity to solely wine grapes.  

With acreage fast disappearing, residents wanted to preserve open space and valuable soils.  They voted to limit residential and commercial development initially in the hills, then on the valley floor.  Slow growth initiatives and building moratoriums seemed like a good way to support economic growth, while maintaining the area’s tranquil qualities.  Bare land became more prized and valuable than Robert Mondavi’s Private Reserve cabernets. 

Through similar slow growth initiatives, the Sierra Club and Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) have tried to protect the Lake Tahoe Basin.  The limited growth legislations coupled with bans on deforestation, while good intentioned, have proven insufficient to the point of disaster.  The basin is congested and polluted, just like the Napa Valley.  For those who remember and viewed Lake Tahoe’s miles of un-constructed, unadulterated shoreline as a treasure, the exploitation of the Tahoe Basin bears out as an epic environmental tragedy. 

A similar growth trend hit Montana.  Who would have ever thought that Hollywood hipsters and Florida beach combers would survive -40˚F winters and grey, depressing air inversions?   Survive they have, and multiplied.  Montana became an outdoor playground for the rich and famous, resort goers, yoga junkies, and non-profit organizations.  Few remember, nor would recognize Chet Huntley’s Big Sky.

All of these areas were in turn, “the last great place”. 

Population densities, commercial demands, and short sighted land use restrictions worked against residents’ visions for their communities and their children’s futures.  Residents’ children could no longer afford to live where they were raised. 

The areas mentioned above once provided decent places for all to live - low income, middle class, and affluent.  Yesterday’s single income wage earners easily supported families in Napa, Big Fork, Sedona, and others.  Now two-income, working class families can’t afford average homes in these places.  These once pastoral lands and integrated communities are gone.  

Northeastern Nevada has much to offer: mountain biking, open space, hunting, fishing, rivers, lakes, skiing, reasonable housing, a college, Amtrak, an airport, poetry gatherings, brothels, western color, and cities within easy driving distance.  Yet demand for open space and too loosely regulated growth in our area may mean that those who need to hunt and access public land the most won’t be able to afford it. 

With Zuckerberg’s  Silicon Valley, the Bay Area, Sacramento, and Reno a quick I-80 drive away, word is spreading about the “undiscovered” Ruby Mountains.  Newly minted hunters, the more affluent, and their followers, seeking something better, something greener, are less than a day’s drive away.   

Growth may be inevitable, but environmental destruction and life style death is avoidable.  Our challenge as a community is to vehemently protect open space along with public access to it, grow up not out, think long, hard, and green, so that further development secures our area’s pristine qualities.  More importantly, growth and land use policies must ensure access for all, so that future generations across the socio-economic spectrum can feed their families safe, healthy, harvests and enjoy the great outdoors.