Nevada’s wildlands - battered by climate change, urban sprawl, grazing, and mining - face another fast growing threat as construction crews prepare to bulldoze nearly 16 square miles of intact desert habitat. Large-scale solar projects built on public lands threaten to further unravel the Mojave ecosystem and rapidly contribute to the decline of wildlife species. Nevada may have a chance to change this and ensure that our solution to the climate crisis does not worsen the extinction crisis.

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A legal challenge against decisions signed by Trump's Interior Department provides an opportunity for the Biden administration to bring a science-based approach to the environmental review of the Gemini Solar project in Nevada. The project, as approved by the Trump administration, would mow down 11 square miles of important desert tortoise habitat and 50% of a rare plant's known population.

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The Department of Interior earlier this month approved plans for a lithium mine that would pulverize nearly nine square miles of sagebrush steppe and grassland in the northwestern corner of Nevada.

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A proposed national monument in southern Nevada would protect public lands of vital significance to Native American tribes. But the proposal omits key lands that - if developed - could jeopardize the cultural and ecological resources of the monument's landscape.

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A mining company is hoping that we will look the other way as it drives a very rare plant to extinction for the sake of electric vehicle batteries. We have an opportunity to speak up this week to protect this plant. We must value sustainability in our transition to clean energy, and this lithium mine is anything but sustainable.

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Nevada’s legislators have an opportunity to pursue a sustainable, equitable transition to clean energy. Making use of the spaces in our cities to deploy solar not only spares our wildlands from destruction, it also ensures that our communities reap the long-term economic benefits of of this transition.

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Nevada’s Governor is asking the Trump administration to short circuit the environmental review of a solar project that will destroy an area of desert wildlands three times larger than the Las Vegas airport, or the equivalent of 148 Allegiant Stadiums. The Battle Born Solar project is just one of at least 45 square miles of solar project applications pending on public lands in southern Nevada. Meanwhile, the State of Nevada lags behind in its support for energy policies that promote distributed generation in our communities or that steer projects to already-disturbed lands.

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Whatever you call it, it has long been a place on the way to somewhere else. But I will miss this place. This land in the shadow of two mountain ranges in Nevada. Each and every creosote bush and cactus that earned its right to exist here. They may not remain here for long, but they belong here.

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Clark County officials want to loosen the belt around southern Nevada’s already-burgeoning urban sprawl. But that means lower quality of life, and a sacrifice of desert public lands that we clearly cherish for recreation. Protections for our public lands are urgently needed, but we should press pause on sprawl and chart a path for livable and sustainable communities in southern Nevada.

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