Nevada: Draft Plan Would Endanger Natural Treasures
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
put forward a draft resource management plan (RMP) for southern Nevada
that ignores opportunities to protect lands with wilderness
characteristics and proposes industrial-scale energy development near
natural landmarks. The draft RMP adds to the extraordinary burden that
desert activists face as they comb through the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan
for neighboring California; comparing the two plans highlights how
bureaucratic boundaries can result in arbitrary differences in how we
manage desert wildlands.
Wildlands Sidelined
The RMP acknowledges that an inventory of desert habitat identified over 378 square miles of land with wilderness characteristics - sufficient size, naturalness, and outstanding opportunities for either solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation - that could be managed to preserve these attributes. However, the preferred alternative would only protect about 15% of these lands.
Most of the lands with …
Wildlands Sidelined
The RMP acknowledges that an inventory of desert habitat identified over 378 square miles of land with wilderness characteristics - sufficient size, naturalness, and outstanding opportunities for either solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation - that could be managed to preserve these attributes. However, the preferred alternative would only protect about 15% of these lands.
Most of the lands with …