Category: Articles

And Large Scale Solar Energy Facilities Are Threatening It by Chris Clarke At this point, no one with any sense disputes the reality of climate change. It is happening, it is getting worse, and human society is responsible for it because of our adding incomprehensible amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over the last … Continue reading The Desert is Alive

Threatened by Mining Exploration by Maria Jesus One of my most memorable trips to Conglomerate Mesa was on a hot summer day when I was looking for rare plants, but also keeping an ear out for helicopters. I had heard that K2 Gold, a Canadian exploration company, had received authorization to drill for gold at … Continue reading Botanical Riches of Conglomerate Mesa

A Photographer's Journey by Justin McAffee A desert is defined as a place receiving less than ten inches of sporadic rainfall annually. It doesn't mean a place uninhabited by flora or fauna, but the lack of rain certainly limits a desert's capacity to host large numbers of people, plants, and animals. But wastelands, they are … Continue reading Desert Home

A NEPA Categorical Exclusion by Lynn Boulton Still in effect today, the 1872 General Mining Act makes it very difficult for the federal govern-ment to deny proposals for hard rock mining. The Act and rising gold prices reaching a height of $2,038/oz on August 5, 2020, has stimulated gold exploration in California and Nevada. Over … Continue reading Gold Exploration in Long Valley

The Next Green Energy Ground Zero by Kevin Emmerich, Basin and Range Watch Large-scale renewable energy developers have been looking for ways to develop vast swaths of Nevada public lands for about twelve years now. Their problem has always been a lack of available transmission access and capacity. Just about every basin in Nevada has … Continue reading Nevada’s Outback

Poem by Shannon Salter, read at the site of the Yellow Pine Solar Project in Pahrump Valley Jackrabbit, you are my brother! The blue whale burst off inside you The white sun It is 1905 and America has built the Union Pacific Railroad And the heart of God has put his face onto the cement … Continue reading Mo-ja-ve

One Citizen can Make a Difference by Nick Ervin He is gone. Yet his legacy, in all too many regrettable ways, persists. Donald Trump is now a private citizen, but the consequences of his four year assault on America's environment live on to haunt us. The destruction has occurred at so many levels and can … Continue reading Trump’s Border Legacy and a Civics Lesson

We are All Locavists Now - Let's Stay that Way! by Steve Hollenhorst We've all thought it while stuck in our contracted pandemic worlds of home, zoom meetings, grocery runs, and local exercise circuits. We can't help but think, "I can't wait to travel again." Like starving castaways, we fantasize over the places we will … Continue reading The Climate Costs of Tourism

by Monica von Behr It was in 2011, on a research-trip for a documentary, that my husband and I saw Death Valley for the first time. It was love at first glance: the overwhelming space, melting into a bluish infinity, surrounded by far away mountain ranges, vaulted by an enormous unlimited sky. We never had … Continue reading In Love with Death Valley – a Visitor from Europe