City and feds team up to protect open space

In an effort to connect the thousands of acres of open space and recreational trails around Carson City, local and federal land managers are getting together to design future public-lands projects.

Carson City Open Space Manager Juan Guzman said collaborating with the federal government, namely the U.S. Forest Service, will be a boon to the city's mission of connecting "parks, school yards and recreation facilities to public land," with a system of trails. "Trails that lead you to the outside," he said.

"These are things that you don't have in other towns."

The cooperative planning effort began with the creation of the U.S. Forest Service's Clear Creek/Kings Canyon Landscape Analysis and Strategy, which city supervisors approved April 7.

The land management plan encompasses about 17,000 acres, 10,000 of which are National Forest System lands west of Highway 395 along the California-Nevada border.

Carson City lands represent only about 2 percent of the land in the analysis area but that land is home to trails for hikers, bikers and recreators. A main goal of the plan is to connect those trails to the those on adjacent federal land, and to keep the purpose of the trails the same no matter whose jurisdiction the land is in.

"What we want to do is find recreation opportunities," said USFS spokesman Franklin Pemberton, "and the best way to do that is match up with Carson City and Douglas County. Also, we can pool our resources and come up with better projects."

While the city and the Forest Service likely won't carry out their projects at the same time, the plan will ensure the designs complement one another.

"We might do a trail and the Forest Service might do theirs three years later," but they will meet in the end, Guzman said.

"We don't want to build a half-mile trail from nowhere to nowhere."

Aside from motorized and nonmotorized trails, the analysis plan also includes ideas for day-use areas, fire management, scenery management, watershed and cultural resource protection, law enforcement and noxious-weed management.

n Contact reporter Cory McConnell at cmcconnell@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1217.