Spring/Summer 2009

Saw Mill Canyon, Desert Refuge, Tyler Roemer

Saw Mill Canyon, Desert Refuge, Tyler Roemer

C hange is a big theme in the world these days, and rightfully so. There are a whole lot of challenges we’re beginning to confront after years of denial. Climate change,

for example—just a few short years ago, there was a disturbing number of highly placed elected officials who mocked the reality of climate change. Today, a few wingnutty holdouts remain, but most key decision makers at local, state and federal levels are finally harnessing their policies at the recognition that climate change is the mother of all game changers.

Change arrives in smaller packages too. At the Nevada Wilderness Project, 2009 is our 10th birthday. We’re using the occasion to tell you about our new direction, born of a year-long effort to reevaluate the assumptions of our work, the efficacy of our campaigns and where best we can apply our resources. We believe our next ten years can be even better than the first.

I started the Project in May of 1999 with a singular purpose: to designate wilderness in Nevada. By any standard, we’ve been successful: more than 2.5 million acres designated in four consecutive Congresses, with National Conservation Area protection for another 500,000 acres. This was unprecedented. If you are reading this, chances are you’ve played a big role in this success, along with our friends in the Nevada Wilderness Coalition, Senator Harry Reid and members of the Nevada Congressional delegation. With bipartisan support in Republican-controlled Congresses, our vision and its execution was change in itself.

While we’re still pushing for wilderness designations, we are also leveraging more science in the defense of wildlife corridors and critical habitats. We’re confronting the challenges and opportunities of Nevada’s renewable energy boom with a clear-eyed pragmatism that will get results, while moving conservation up the list of priorities for decision makers. And last but certainly not least, we’re honing in on site-specific areas of advocacy like Gold Butte, featured on the back page, to support volunteers working to protect areas of high conservation value. And we promise to continue to laugh much and never take ourselves too seriously.

Your participation, time, money, creativity and humor are welcome here. Get in touch with one of us and tell us how we can help connect your values with our actions.

-John Wallin, Director john.wallin@wildnevada.org

Desert tortoise by Jeff Servoss, courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Birthdays, pragmatism and blowing a hello kiss to change

The Nevada Wilderness Project is a catalyst for wildlife habitat

conservation, wilderness preservation, and smart

development of renewable energy.www.wildnevada.org

B efore you fall asleep after that opener, please know that this is designed to tell you about the plan without making you

wish you were pressing a fork to your head, reading the phone book, scooping the litter box ... anything but hearing about our strategic plan. So here it is, short and sweet:

We’re energized by our new mission, strategic plan and three programs we’re going to use to address conservation and habitat connectivity in Nevada. John Wallin, NWP’s Director, drank 955 gallons of fizzy water during the planning process. Our new plan outlines three “lenses” or approaches to conservation for Nevada that are solution-oriented, pragmatic and will allow us to build on our past ten years of success. There are tremendous conservation challenges ahead for Nevada, but we’re stoked and optimistic about working on them. Read on to see why.

First, we’ve added a program to our toolkit called Linking Landscapes for Wildlife. This one is the big kahuna, the prima ballerina, the superstar ... the program or lens through which we approach most of our work. It means we will come up with lands proposals that will conserve corridors, or connectivity, between habitats so that animals have room to move freely from place to place.

There is growing awareness around the country that protecting islands of beautiful wildlands is not enough. These areas must be conserved as connected or linked habitats if we’re serious about protecting North America’s amazing wildlife, especially our large mammals. In Nevada, identifying and protecting linked landscapes is essential for the survival of our desert bighorn sheep, mule deer, pronghorn herds and many other species. So the Nevada Wilderness Project will:

● Convene a Wildlife Linkages Working Group in the state made up of many people from different organizations that informs federal, state and local governments on conservation priorities for land use planning. This group will write a conservation “blueprint” for Nevada that identifies and prioritizes areas of habitat connectivity.

In 2009, the Nevada Wilderness Project adopted a new five-year strategic plan.

Long-billed dowitchers by Mike Sevon, courtesy U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

● NWP will contribute to the implementation of Nevada’s State Wildlife Action Plan, required by the federal government, with the objective of maximizing wildlife connectivity and habitat protection statewide.

● In Clark County, conservation projects will be prioritized and mitigated with the county’s Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan in mind.

Climate Change, Energy, and Wildlands is our second lens through which we are addressing conservation on public lands in Nevada. It rests on this premise: We can’t solve our energy crisis—or address climate change—by destroying the land. That’s the easy version. More specifically, the Nevada Wilderness Project supports renewable energy development, such as wind, solar and geothermal, that is “smart from the start.” This means:

● Harnessing Nevada’s renewable and clean energy resources while conserving wildlife corridors and habitats, and protecting the natural beauty and open spaces of the state.

● Maximizing the existing grid, existing infrastructure (roads and transmission lines) and building in areas that are already biologically degraded, for example, places inundated by invasive species or hammered by irresponsible off-road vehicle users.

● “Smart from the start” means mitigating energy development with federal protections for other places, designating them as new Wilderness or National Conservation Areas.

● Developing “smart” renewable energy sources in Nevada means providing a secure, clean and diversified economy that benefits businesses and communities and also reduces our contribution to climate change.

The third part of our new strategic plan talks about Special Landscapes. The Nevada Wilderness Project’s roots are in Wilderness—and in the passion our staff and members have to

No clowns. No petting zoo. But the Nevada Wilderness Project is celebrating our 10th birthday this fall by hosting The Wild & Scenic Film Festival! In September, we’ll be throwing parties in Las Vegas and Reno by showing this amazing collection of films accompanied by music, beverages, raffles ... who knows, maybe a few magic tricks? We’ll spread the word once we have the dates set. In the meantime, you can learn more about the festival at www.wildandscenicfilmfestival.org

Burrowing owls © M.J. Kammerer, info@wingedphoto.com

push for laws that protect some of the greatest, unspoiled, un-touched, un-ruined, most wild places left in our country. And those roots run deep. Three million acres deep. That’s how many acres of Wilderness and National Conservation Areas we have spearheaded protection for since we were founded in 1999.

That’s why we will help protect places identified by local residents and the broader environmental community as some of our state’s most spectacular and unspoiled natural gems. These notable places are ripe for—or in dire need of—Congressional protection. For example, we have been working to pass legislation to protect Gold Butte, northeast of Las Vegas, where first-time visitors inevitably exclaim, “I can’t believe this isn’t a national park ... or something.”

People are incredulous when they see the area’s Native American petroglyphs, stunning rock formations and ancient Joshua trees. And they are just as incredulous when they see the unforgiveable vandalism that has been done to some of them: bullet holes in the rock art, Joshua trees burned along with camper trash, off-road tire tracks scarring the vistas. Special landscapes like these deserve—and will get—NWP’s commitment and focused energy.

There’s much more about these three programs on our website, www.wildnevada.org. For more about Linking Landscapes for Wildlife, contact our Conservation Director, john.tull@wildnevada.org. For Climate Change, Energy and Wildlands, or our Special Landscapes program, contact NWP’s director, john.wallin@wildnevada.org. Or call our office: 775-746-7851.

Other websites to know about: www.weethump.com www.friendsofgoldbutte.org http://friendsofwovoka.blogspot.com We’ve been making lots of changes and improvements to our website. Interested in downloading Wilderness maps? Want to see the habitat distribution of the southwestern willow flycatcher? Looking for a way to donate securely online? It’s all there, plus many new wildlife photos, news articles and simple amusements. Check it out at www.wildnevada.org

Gold Butte petroglyphs by Kristie Connolly

T-shirts are 10 dollars in honor of our 10th birthday We have great NWP t-shirts (organic cotton & fabulous designs!) on sale on our website, discounted to celebrate our birthday and to make sure they reach the backs of wilderness fans far, wide and deep underground.

You can see more t-shirt photos on www.wildnevada.org. Click the “Join Us” tab and scroll down.

Maps help us think.

T his one shows part of Clark County in southern Nevada, with areas

around Las Vegas slated for development of renewable energy, red lines designating new transmission poles and lines, wilderness areas NWP helped protect in ‘02 and ‘04, various towns and highways, and a new city of 200,000 warm bodies that will be built north of Vegas over the next decade.

It also depicts major migration routes for bighorn sheep identified by the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Bighorn sheep are Nevada’s primo large mammal, and people come from around the world to see or hunt them; they are emblematic of our state’s rugged landscapes. They migrate between higher elevations in summer to lower elevations during winter, driven by the constant quest for water, food and shelter from extreme weather. Without access to these high quality habitats – unaltered and unimpeded by human activities – these herds will die out. So all Nevadans have to think:

● Where on the land do these components—development, transportation, wildlife habitat, existing protected areas—intersect?

● How will they impact one another and impact the land?

● Can we mitigate the impacts of development here, by protecting land over there?

● Can we protect the land between two existing wilderness areas, resulting in a safe corridor for wildlife?

● Should we build a large-scale wind farm here where the habitat is already degraded, instead of over there where it is still pristine?

● Can we maximize the existing infrastructure for energy transmission rather than build something from scratch?

● Why not build a bridge for wildlife over the highway to reduce the number of people and bighorn sheep killed in collisions?

● Does all this make your head hurt?

Well, we’re willing to put our heads to it, and seek advice from experienced people who have already grappled with many of these issues. NWP is the only non-profit organization in the state with a fulltime conservation biologist on staff, as well as an experienced and skilled GIS and Arcview map specialist. Their skills paired with our political and grassroots experience give us a better-than-fighting chance to pass positive legislation protecting wildlife and habitat

diversity. In fact, we know that with your help we can leave a lasting and great natural legacy for Nevada.

So to re-cap: The best available data about wildlife populations and habitat, plus up-to-date information about proposed development, plus ground-truthed inventories of our public land, plus peer review and stakeholder input ... these are the components that go into our proposals. That and a responsibility to leave our wildlands for the generations who come after us. Nothing less.

– Charlotte Overby, Communications Director charlotte.overby@wildnevada.org

Las Vegas

CoyoteSprings

15

95

93

95

160

168

Pahrump

Mesquite

Boulder City

Indian Springs

Desert

National

Wildlife

Refuge

Proposed

Gold Butte

NCA with

Wilderness

160

(Read the article on the back page to learn more.)

Wilderness Areas

BLM Energy Transmission Corridor

Pending Renewable Energy Projects

Bighorn Sheep Habitat & Movement

Map illustration by Kristie Connolly

Photo by Kristie ConnollySaw Mill Canyon, Desert Refuge,

Tyler Roemer

Congresswoman Dina Titus

8215 S. Eastern Ave Suite 205

Las Vegas, NV 89123

Ph: 702-387-4941 (Las Vegas)

Ph: 202-225-3252 (Wash. DC)

Congresswoman Shelley Berkley

2340 Paseo del Prado, Ste. D-106

Las Vegas, NV 89102

Ph: 702-220-9823 (Las Vegas)

Ph: 202-225-5965 (Wash. DC)

Congressman Dean Heller

600 Las Vegas Blvd., Suite 680

Las Vegas, NV 89101

Ph: 702-255-1651 (Las Vegas)

Gold Butte Country needs your voice. Please call your Congressional Representative and ask them to introduce legislation for the Gold Butte National Conservation Area with Wilderness.

Please visit our website at www.wildnevada.org and click on the “Take Action” tab. There you’ll find a Take Action For Gold Butte page, with more information.

I n Mesquite’s backyard lies an incredible landscape: Gold Butte Country. The Virgin River is the northern boundary with

the Colorado River to the south. Lake Mead National Recreation Area and Arizona’s Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument are political boundaries to the west and east. Native Americans, miners, ranchers and recreationists have used this area for centuries. Our fall newsletter was dedicated to Gold Butte; in late September last year, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley introduced HR 7132, the Gold Butte National Conservation Area Act, that would have designated 200,000 acres as Wilderness and 362,177 acres as National Conservation Area. No action was taken and the bill died when Congress adjourned.

But Congress’s inaction has spurred us on to new action. Passed by for legislation and undermanaged by the federal agencies, Gold Butte needs your voice now, more than ever. The Nevada Wilderness Project has partnered with the Friends of Gold Butte to bring people together to preserve the rich cultural and natural resources that make up this “Special Landscape.” We are working with Nevada’s Congressional delegation to introduce new Gold Butte legislation this year.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Clark County have designated 350,000 acres as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) for scenic, prehistoric and wildlife values, of which 187,000 acres of that are protected for the endangered desert tortoise. Wilderness is proposed for 100,000 acres of identified unfragmented tortoise habitat, which will guarantee these large tracks of Mojave Desert scrub stay intact and undisturbed for the tortoise and all desert wildlife.

Gold Butte is such a wonderful place for picnicking, camping and studying the cultures of past peoples. National Conservation Area (NCA) designation will provide management, interpretation and facilities for visitors to enjoy the area in a backcountry setting. Recently, the BLM finished an extensive cultural study including historic, prehistoric and site excavation. National Conservation Area will assist in developing a plan compatible with the archaeological study to educate visitors on their importance and help protect these resources from vandalism and theft. Public access to these areas is important to maintain; education is the key to their protection.

Gold Butte: On the front burner

The Friends of Gold Butte and NWP’s vision is to preserve and protect the cultural and natural resources in the Gold Butte area while providing volunteer-based education and interpretive programs. Through monthly presentations, hikes and volunteer projects, we continue to grow a community of informed stewards. Locally based in Mesquite, Friends of Gold Butte is eager to begin work with the public agencies to assist in the education and interpretation needs of the Gold Butte National Conservation Area.

– Nancy Hall, Gold Butte Organizer nancy.hall@wildnevada.org

Bighorn sheep, photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

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NEVADA WILDERNESS PROJECT www.wildnevada.org

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are thousands of ways to bow and kiss the earth.” - Rumi

A s the Nevada Wilderness Project celebrates its 10th Anniversary this year, all of the board members and staff recognize the power of each member and every donation in our work. Every dollar given toward our mission over the last 10 years

has created great success for our state and for the future of Nevada’s wild lands. Every one of those dollars is still at work today: their power has helped us to protect 3 million acres statewide and generate a refined mission statement and renewed vision for Nevada.

It is with gratitude and thanks to you, our supporters, that NWP takes on this next chapter of our work. The power of your donations has a greater impact on our work and Nevada than you will ever know. And by extension, each of you is a change maker for Nevada’s wild lands and animals. The commitment to this work is stunning and goes well beyond your initial gift.

Philanthropy derives from ancient Greek and is defined as “to love people” or the “love of human kind.” By this definition, each one of us is a philanthropist. The power of each dollar given to our work with the intention to make a positive difference HAS, and DOES, make that difference for ourselves and for wildlife. Thank you for being vested in a bright future for conservation in Nevada.

- Mackenzie Banta, Development Director mackenzie.banta@wildnevada.org

Sign of the times, by Tyler Roemer