Mojave Desert Blog

It has been nearly two and a half years since BrightSource Energy began destroying over 5 square miles of intact desert habitat in the Ivanpah Valley to build a utility-scale solar energy facility.  After mowing down desert vegetation - some of it potentially hundreds of years old - and installing nearly 300,000 giant mirrors and three "power towers", the company is nearing the point of generating and shipping energy over hundreds of miles of transmission lines to customers far from this corner of the Mojave Desert.  The destruction caused by BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is unnecessary -- during the project's construction, California added more rooftop solar than will be generated by BrightSource, and other companies are building solar facilities on already-disturbed lands. Rare plants, such as the Rusby's desert mallow, Mojave milkweed and Parish club cholla cactus are lost, as are nests of cactus wrens and thrashers, and fora

Scattered showers brush past the Desert National Wildlife Refuge in February. The same storm system dusted the higher elevations of nearby Bare Mountains and Spring Mountains in snow.  The Desert National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1936, and is the largest refuge in the lower 48 states.  Hopefully urban and industrial sprawl do not isolate this trove of biodiversity from the rest of Nevada's desert wildlands. You should plan a hike at the Refuge if you are in the Las Vegas area, and you can access the area from the Corn Creek Field Station off of I-95, north of the city.

The Nevada State Legislature is considering a bill (Senate Bill 123) that would begin a modest distributed generation program (i.e. rooftop solar) in Nevada.  This would normally be very good news. Even despite the modest size of the distributed generation program, any rooftop solar benefits in Nevada is a major step forward.  Now the predominant state utility company in Nevada, NV Energy, plans to add an amendment to the bill that would (good news) retire coal plants early, and (bad news) increase natural gas generation. The Reid Gardner Coal plant pictured above is located next to a community of Moapa band of Paiute , polluting the environment and harming health with toxic emissions. The toxic Reid Gardner coal plant could be retired as early as 2017 if the plan is approved.  This would be very good news because the residents of Moapa are burdened by the emissions of this coal plant, which was built along the Muddy River in an otherwise scenic corner of the Mojave Desert nort

I got these photos of what I am pretty sure is a Western Diamonback rattlesnake while on a hike with my brother in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, deep in the Sonoran Desert. Luckily it heard me coming, and gave me some warning!  

This photo from the US Fish and Wildlife Service's flickr photostream is accompanied by a sensible message about renewable energy -- if we keep renewable energy projects on degraded or already-disturbed lands, we can minimize ecological damage as we transition away from fossil fuels.  Photo credit: USFWS/Rachel Molenda Solar Panel   Hopefully this message is heard by decision makers in Washington. At this moment the Bureau of Land Management is considering plans by First Solar to build the Silver State South Solar project on a critical desert tortoise habitat linkage in the Ivanpah Valley, Nevada. Surely there are better places for those solar panels.

The Obama administration this month released the  National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy , which details the threat climate change poses to a variety of ecosystems, and the steps needed to help species cope with what is likely to be long-term damage. The number one goal identified in the strategy is the conservation of habitat and wildlife linkages to help species adapt and bolster ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change.  According to the Strategy: "Many of our nation’s imperiled species (both those currently listed either as Threatened or Endangered as well as many other species that may eventually be considered for listing) do not occur in existing conservation areas. Indeed, the major threat to many species on the U.S. Endangered Species List is the loss of habitat caused when the habitat they depend on is converted to a different use. Climate change will make the problem worse—and will make the need for new conservation areas more urge

The Sierra Club's My Generation Campaign put together a nifty graphic to mark an important milestone: 1,500 megawatts of rooftop solar installed in California. We have a long way to go to match other countries' rooftop solar progress, but this is worth celebrating.  Rooftop solar is bad for coal, and safe for wildlands.