AUSTIN -- Nye County District 1 Commissioner Lorinda Wichman traveled to Austin Wednesday to meet with Eureka and Lander County officials and a public lands attorney from Idaho to discuss how to proceed on appealing a new U.S. Forest Service travel management plan.

Forest service supervisors rejected a Nye County appeal of the travel management plan, signed by Wichman Aug. 26, during a hearing in Ogden, Utah, last month.

Wichman threatened a lawsuit.

In her appeal she wrote, "A takings case filed against the USFS will ultimately cost the taxpayer. No taxpayer wants to pay for incompetence at any time but most especially now with the hard, economic times, and shrinking budgets a daily news item."

When asked how to proceed at a county commission meeting Tuesday in Tonopah, District 3 County Commissioner Gary Hollis told her to proceed full speed ahead with the county's objections.

He said an injunction could be filed to prevent the implementation of the plan.

Hollis was upset Steve Williams, ranger for the U.S. Forest Service Austin district, didn't honor a tri-party road management protocol, signed by Nye County, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in October 1997 to iron out disputes.

That evolved after protests by former Nye County Commissioner, the late Dick Carver, who led a blockade to protest the closure of a forest service road in Jefferson Canyon in the 1990s that attracted nationwide publicity.

The language of Wichman's appeal letter seems likely to reignite the sagebrush rebellion of the last decade.

Williams participates in quarterly meetings of the three parties, but the travel management plan hasn't been on the agenda since 2005, Wichman charged. When she raised the issue last April, Williams said the comment period had already passed.

Nye County commissioners in September passed a joint resolution with Elko and Lander counties, protesting the travel management plan scoping process. That resolution notes the inaccurate maps would close hundreds of miles of roads and trails.

It asks the Forest Service to cease all work on the plan until it can provide new maps and asks for an extension of the public comment period. The resolution also asks the USFS to present scientific information used to justify closing the roads.

Wichman said the road closures would personally affect access to her home and her water rights on her Smoky Valley ranch.

In her appeal Wichman wrote:

"The routes are being closed by omission from the maps. A sweeping road closure action is taking place with this decision as it currently stands. District Ranger Williams had been asked many times about the missing routes on the published maps and many times District Ranger Williams has responded by stating that if the routes are not on the map then they will be closed."

The routes are used to maintain water right diversion points, access privately-owned lands, mining claims, harvesting pinion nuts and firewood, hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, wildlife-viewing and gathering catttle, she said.

Some of the routes intended for closure were established over 100 years ago, and road closures would make those properties useless, Wichman said.

"We have been working diligently to foster a cooperative working relationship with the agencies charged in managing lands in Nye County. The results of this decision will add fuel to smoldering embers of anger that we have been working to extinguish," Wichman wrote.

"This decision has also led to the belief that the USFS has no respect for the honorable efforts of the public to assist with a manageable, enforceable travel management plan within the Austin Tonopah Ranger District. This decision has led to both the public and the local governing body to believe the USFS has no intention of acting in good faith," she wrote.

The Forest Service considered the Lander and Eureka County federal land use plans, but Wichman charged the Nye County comprehensive land use plan of 1994 was ignored. Most of the affected area is in Nye County, though Wichman said Eureka and Lander counties might appeal the decision.

While she worked as a governmental affairs representative for Round Mountain Gold in 2005, Wichman said she presented concerns about the Forest Service road maps to the Nye County Public Works Department, which presented a compact disc of roads recognized by the county to the Austin forest service ranger.

The Forest Service came out with a map of roads in 2008 that were still not accurate, she said.

Wichman said it was only at her insistence that open house events were scheduled on the new travel management plan. But she said no significant changes were made to the maps.

Williams claimed 70 to 80 percent of the public input was incorporated into the maps.

Wichman wrote: "Today we are left with a complete disregard of the honorable efforts of the people and agencies attempting to work in good faith to assist in attaining the goals of the travel management plan for the USFS. It is no wonder that many USFS employees are fearful of traveling the rural areas of Nevada. I predict that without some intervention the hate and discontent of the citizens of Nye County will fester and grow into another outright confrontation with the USFS personnel in the area that are only trying to do their jobs."