As we get ready to dive into 2011, the Nevada Wilderness Project has a clear vision for habitat conservation: We see special landscapes such as Gold Butte, Blue Lakes, and Alder Creek bet-ter managed and protected as Wilderness and National Conservation Areas. We see “smart from the start” renewable energy projects fueling Nevada’s economy and additional habitat conservation. We see royalties from the sale of solar energy coming back to the very counties from whence that energy sprung. We see a focus on landscape connectivity and large-scale protections for sage grouse—heading off that species’ downward trend and a federal listing as an Endangered Species.

In other words, the Nevada Wilderness Project is strong and we’re moving into year three of a five-year strategic plan—with clear purpose, solution-oriented advocacy, and a sharp eye out for new conservation opportunities.

Inside, you’ll read about the progress we’ve made in our three programmatic areas and the work that lies ahead. Most of what the staff and board of the Nevada Wilderness Project accomplishes is directly connected to the involvement and action taken by you—an NWP member. Communi-cating with members of Congress, writing letters to the editor, attending the Wild & Scenic Film Festival, forwarding an Action Alert, being someone who loves and cares for the land... all of these actions are meaningful and effective. We count on you and need your continued engagement.

The only thing missing from NWP in 2011 will be our founder, director, and instigator of all office silliness, John Wallin. After eleven amazing years at the helm of NWP, John has decided to move on. “I’m negotiating with my wife,” he has said, “to take a two-month to five-year sab-batical... she doesn’t think that’s very funny.”

John assures us he will stay in the field of conservation, and that’s a good thing. Few people have accomplished so much in such a relatively short time. Because of his leadership, vision, work ethic, and an unusual knack for enlisting the help of diverse and committed people, Nevada has 2.5 million acres of new Wilderness; 500,000 acres of National Conservation Area; a new approach—catching on Westwide—for habitat conservation that is tied to renewable energy development; respect among the national conservation community for trying new and brave approaches to old problems—and getting things done. John and NWP led success-ful campaigns and created more Wilderness in Nevada in these first ten years than all other states during the same period of time.

And few people know how to make everything from camping trips to board meetings, road trips to conference calls, strategy sessions to employee evaluations... so darn much fun. So thank you, John, from past and present staff, board members, and the many members of the Nevada Wilderness Project. We want you to take a well-deserved break, have an NWP closure drink on us, and get busy again.

And NWP will continue firing on all cylinders, many of which you can read about inside. In par-ticular, Board Treasurer Lynn Schiek has brought her finance experience to NWP for five years. Greg Seymour, a 15-year resident of Las Vegas, has joined the NWP staff as Renewable Energy Coordinator to address new conservation opportunities that lie at the intersection of renew-able energy development and our vast public lands. And more. Thanks for reading.

For the wild,

Charlotte OverbyCharlotte Overby, Acting Director,Communications Director, Nevada Wilderness Projectcharlotte.overby@wildnevada.org

The Nevada Wilderness Project is a catalyst for wildlife

habitat conservation, wilderness preservation, and smart

development of renewable energy. www.wildnevada.org

Winter 2010

Top: Trekking up Boundary Peak, Esmeralda County. Photo by Trevor Clark. Middle: Desert tortoise. Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Bottom: John Wallin scopes it out. Photo by Run Hunter.

Wallin’s Alien Adbuction Confirmed

The backstorySpecial landscapes are places in Nevada identified by local residents and the broader conservation community as some of our state’s most spectacular and unspoiled, natural gems. With our part-ners, NWP works to legislate Wilderness, National Conservation Area (NCA) or other designations for these special places.

All summer and fall, we have been deliver-ing a consistent message to our Congres-sional delegation about one such place: Gold Butte. Our campaign for Nevada’s “piece of the Grand Canyon puzzle,” as Gold Butte is often called, began 10 years ago. We have helped secure a unanimous Mesquite City Council resolution support-ing protection for this land of petroglyphs, Joshua trees, bighorn sheep, ponderosa pines and so much more. Next came a near unanimous resolution of support from the Clark County Commission (the commis-sion representing, among others, that little town called Las Vegas.)

A decade of public meetings, hikes, events and outings, and the flowering of a new local stewardship and advocacy group—Friends of Gold Butte—have culminated in this: The time is now for Gold Butte. And at this writing, Congress is grinding through a lame duck session, after which we are confi-dent we’ll be celebrating a new Gold Butte National Conservation Area with Wilderness.

What lies aheadAt NWP, we include mentoring others to get involved in conser-vation as one of our organizational values. And this year, NWP’s Gold Butte organizer, Nancy Hall, will “spin off” at the beginning of the year and run Friends of Gold Butte to focus solely on stewardship projects and educational outreach for this stunning place.

Hall came to NWP as a volunteer while work-ing as a waitress in Mesquite. She began volunteering her time on wilderness cam-paigns in early 2001 and was instrumental in seeing the Clark County (’02) and Lincoln County (’04) bills passed. She exchanged coffee re-fills for grassroots organizing, join-ing the NWP staff in 2006 to turn fulltime attention to Gold Butte. We couldn’t be hap-pier for Nancy, the Friends of Gold Butte and all southern Nevadans who have worked so hard to protect Gold Butte and secure such a bright future for this national treasure.

Nevada’s Special Landscapes

People from all over the world visit southern Nevada in search of our famous wild places. Certainly, one of the wild places is the Vegas strip. But, we think our best wild lands are actually about an hour up the road in the beautiful desert landscape of Gold Butte. Whenever we’re looking for a bit of solitude among the red rock canyons, a day exploring ancient rock art, or a chance encounter with an endangered desert tortoise, we look to the vast beauty of the real wild west—Gold Butte. We came from all over to find this amazing place, it’s vital we take care of it, so future generations can enjoy Gold Butte just as we do.

Help Protect Nevada’s Gold Butte. www.CommonGroundGB.org

Wilderness is our common ground. Photo by Tyler Roemer

James T. Reynolds retired National Park Service superintendent

Annie Hoskin retired teacher

Paulette Cameron cocktail waitress

Bill Potter casino floor supervisor

A series of “Wilderness is our Common Ground” ads appeared over the summer in the Las Vegas Review-Journal and other publications.

Blue Lakes, Humboldt County, NV. Photo from the NWP collection

And in the northern part of the state, grassroots work to protect Blue Lakes and Alder Creek wilderness study areas in Humboldt County is also underway. NWP’s staff biologist Gregg Tanner has been par-ticipating with a committee of local peo-ple—in a unique process spear-headed by Trout Unlimited—to find the best way to protect this wild backcountry and first-class trout-fishing area. And in the process, the group secured a unanimous recom-mendation from the Humboldt County Commission in support of designating these areas as Wilderness. Work continues this spring to gain the support of Nevada’s congressional delegation for introduction of legislation in 2011.

Up-coming opportunityAll Nevadans, but especially those in southern Nevada, will have the chance to help out with trail building, road restora-tion work, native plant restoration and clean up projects in Gold Butte. Watch for

NWP e-mails announcing dates, and check www.friendsofgoldbutte.org for volun-teer opportunities.

And we recommend a trip to Blue Lakes or Alder Creek. Seeing this area firsthand will no doubt inspire you to help advocate for Wilderness designations. We’ll keep you posted on progress and opportunities to get involved at www.wildnevada.org.

The backstoryThreats to Nevada’s wild public lands and sensitive habitats look a lot different than they used to. In the past, our greatest challenges were the rapid pace of growth, poor management and ignorance of the spectacular qualities of our public lands. Today the chal-lenges are more severe because they are more complex. Climate change is gripping the southwest, affecting precipitation patterns, migrating habitats and driving wildlife to new extremes.

That’s why the Nevada Wilderness Project has invested its resources and expertise in the brave new world of renewable energy on pub-lic lands. Our team developed the concept of “smart from the start” renewable energy projects. These are projects that, simply put, develop good renewable energy projects, protect wildlife habitats, and do them both at the same time.

We have focused our work in this programmatic area in two ways. First, we have been evaluating Nevada’s 11 so-called “fast-track” renewable energy projects proposed for construction on BLM lands. We have determined some are “smart from the start” and we support them; others, such as the Spring Valley Wind Project, are terrible projects embodying the worst in terms of poor siting, tech-nology that will kill wildlife, and an environmental review process that excluded meaningful public input.

Second, we have helped write legislation that establishes two “smart from the start” solar developments in southern Nevada and a royalty on the sale of that solar energy that will go into a Renew-able Energy Mitigation and Fish and Wildlife Fund to be spent for conservation work in the county where the solar development lies. Legislation was introduced over the summer and Congress will consider it over the lame duck session. Pursuing this type of legis-lation will be a high priority for us in the coming year.

What lies aheadWe are going to continue to champion our “smart from the start” approach to developing renewable energy projects. Interior Department officials and the media are beginning to use the term, and we are collaborating with other Western conservationists to make “smart from the start” a national campaign. Yes, we need good renewable energy projects that make use of appropriate technologies sited in environmentally appropriate places. We also

Climate Change, Energy & Wildlands

The Documentary Group filming in eastern Nevada. Photo by Charlotte Overby

Adam Bradley goes the distance. Photo by Tyler Roemer

need—and this is the important part—additional conservation to go with the approval of those projects. These are either extra financial resources for habitat restoration or land acquisition, or a legislative solution that establishes new Wilderness or National Conservation Area on nearby lands. Develop renewable energy. Protect wildlife habitat. Do both at the same time.

Up-coming opportunityYou may recall last spring’s “SWIP Trip,” that extraordinary hike by Adam Bradley along the path of a 500-mile transmission line in eastern Nevada. We organized that hike because it offered us a way to paint a realistic picture of the line’s impact on the landscape and highlight conservation opportunities accompanying its con-struction. While we recognize that its construction will result in the loss of some lands and habitat, the SWIP line will also carry the very kind of “clean” energy we have been clamoring for – energy gener-ated by solar, wind and geothermal facilities that will help reduce our state’s carbon output. Adam’s journey—and the media and blog coverage that came out of it—was an exploration of these complex issues.

A film crew traveled with Adam during his hike. They have made a 26-minute film about the journey called, “Walking the Line: New Energy in the Old West.” It will premier at the Wild & Scenic Envi-ronmental Film Festival in Nevada City, CA January 14-16, then be part of Wild & Scenic’s national film tour. We’re excited about it and will let you know when and where you’ll have the opportunity to see it. www.wildandscenicfilmfestival.org

Linking Landscapes for WildlifeThis fall, a few NWP staff members traveled to eastern Oregon to take part in the Desert Conference, which was attended by about 150 conservationists with a particular interest in the Great Basin and Oregon’s high desert lands. We were there to talk about Nevada’s Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, the Hart Mountain Antelope Refuge just north in Oregon—and the vast public lands that lie between the two.

Plans are shaping up to focus organizational and volunteer energy on this area. Spearheaded by the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA) and the Nevada Wilderness Project, we dis-cussed ideas for a significant conservation area that would pro-tect a large, unbroken landscape of some of the best sagebrush habitat in the U.S.

Both these refuges were established in the 1930s to protect prong-horn antelope, and given how much we’ve learned about this spe-cies and how they move, we know how important connectivity is between protected areas—connectivity ensures pronghorn (and dozens of other species) have room to roam, benefitting from sea-sonal migrations and contiguous access to food, water and cover.

American pronghorn. Photo by Tyler Roemer

On the edge at the Hart Refuge. Photo by Jim Little

A conservation area of this magnitude would also help the sage grouse, a beautiful bird that is threatened with listing on the Fed-eral Endangered Species List. Addressing habitat issues now—and keeping sage grouse off the list—is in the bird’s best interest as well as Nevada’s economic interests.

So what lies ahead? More discussion among conservation groups, local residents, ranchers, local and state elected officials, agency employees, and more. A Hart-Sheldon National Sage Grouse Conservation Area is a ways off, but much more than just a glimmer in the eyes of conservationists. We’ll keep you posted on www.wildnevada.org.

Getting oriented. Photo by Jim Little

Five years ago, Lynn Schiek volunteered to serve on the Board of Directors for the Nevada Wilderness Project. She brought profes-sionalism, hard work and more than a decade’s worth of business experience to the organization (and on every camping trip, a nice bottle of wine to share.) In many ways, she helped NWP “grow up” in terms of its fiscal management and board governance.

“I was drawn to volunteer for NWP because of the group’s entre-preneurial attitude. They’re not afraid to take pragmatic risks and have a strong desire to get work done. They also knew all the most beautiful and impressive landscapes in Nevada, and could show me where they are,” she says. “People involved in the orga-nization want to have fun and make a difference.”

She saw an organization accomplishing big things for Nevada’s natural landscapes with limited financial resources and knew her experience in the worlds of business development and finance could help NWP stretch those even farther. She challenged the staff and succeeded in raising NWP’s game when it came to financial planning and setting sites high for fundraising and tight fiscal management.

“It has been gratifying to be part of developing a strategic vision that positions NWP ahead of the curve. We’ve worked to get the right people on the board and staff to execute the plan. And they

Way back at the beginning of ‘09 when we revised our mission statement to include addressing renewable energy development on Nevada’s public lands, we knew the time would come to bring new expertise on staff to work on this emerging intersection of habitat conservation and renewable energy development. We wanted to accomplish both at the same time, and in April, Greg Seymour became NWP’s Renewable Energy Coordinator based in Las Vegas.

Seymour’s experience with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and wilder-ness policy has given him a broad perspective on public lands issues. He also serves as a member of the BLM Resource Advisory Council–MOJO (Mojave-Southern Great Basin).

Project People

Members of the NWP Board of Directors get it done. Photo by John Wallin

Greg Seymour atop Wheeler Peak, Great Basin National Park. Photo by a friendly passing stranger

are really nice people too,” she explains. “I urge people to support NWP because they have the people, knowledge and organization to influence the conservation of wilderness and wildlife habitat in Nevada—and at such a critical point in its history.”

Schiek leaves the board, but not NWP, in January after guiding the organization through a thorough and successful first audit—among so many other contributions. She is an integral part of that success she describes above, and the NWP family is ever grateful.

“This MOJO volunteer position has helped me appreciate the pressures that our public lands are under,” explains Greg. “The biggest challenges we’re facing with renewable energy develop-ment on our public lands has to do with the fast pace at which things are happening. And the federal agencies were not pre-pared. Like any large organization, getting that ship to change course is a slow process.”

Seymour will engage proposed renewable energy projects at the local, state and national levels to weigh in and assist governmen-tal procedure and policy change, so that the projects reaching the finish line, so-to-speak, are the right projects in the right locations with additional habitat conservation measures factored into them.

Seymour spent the summer getting up to speed on Nevada’s 11 so-called fast-track renewable energy projects, further defining NWP’s “smart from the start” approach to renewable projects, and introducing himself and offering NWP’s habitat expertise to energy companies and agency staff ready to cooperate on conservation. Last month, you may have heard him interviewed on KNPR 88.9 in Las Vegas. It was a hectic time, and next up for Seymour in the short-term: opening a new NWP office at 7465 W. Lake Mead Blvd., Suite 105, Las Vegas, 89128.

“I have been pleasantly surprised how the conservation commu-nity as a whole has come on board with us to incorporate “smart from the start” policy at the national level,” he says.

“It confirms that NWP’s perspective on renewable energy projects and conservation is the right approach. This is one reason why I decided to work on the smart from the start initiative, along with my extraordinary colleagues at NWP. These issues are complex and have lots of moving parts. Our responsiveness and on-the-ground approach is an asset to getting positive things done.”

You can read much more about Seymour’s work and NWP’s “smart from the start” approach at www.wildnevada.org.

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You allow us to look to the futureYour financial support and your time and energy have allowed us to set a visionary and breakneck pace for conservation that is the pride of the West. You know that when you give to the Nevada Wilderness Project, you are supporting a conservation organiza-tion that ranks, pound-for-pound, as one of the most effective and efficient conservation organizations in the country.

Thanks to your support for our mission, NWP has scientists and wildlife experts; communications and organizing pros; a sophis-ticated Geographic Information Systems (GIS) shop; and a track record for success.

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