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Miles and Miles of Solitude Fifteen thousand years ago, toward the end of the last Ice Age, the lakes covering most of present-day Nevada and parts of Utah, California, Oregon, and Idaho dried up. Left behind was a vast, arid, high-elevation basin, with deep canyons and steep, north/south-trending mountain ranges, piercingly cold in winter and blisteringly hot in summer. Today the Great Basin/High Desert is a region of wild beauty and extreme ecological fragility, sparsely populated and seemingly desolate. Yet its ranges sustain bobcats, mountain lions, deer, and numerous other animals. Many Great Basin species have become uniquely adapted to these highlands because the dryness of the desert floor prevents migration between ranges. Fleet-footed pronghorns are a notable exception, as are raptors: golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, goshawks, peregrine and prairie falcons, harriers, kestrels, and even bald eagles sweep the skies of this sere landscape. The bad news? Livestock, grazing on private and public land, often trample streamsides, obliterating all vegetation. Cyanide from heap-leach gold mines contaminates water sources. Irrigation flushes boron, arsenic, and mercury out of the soil into streams and ponds, where they poison fish and wildlife. Toxic wastes are dumped illegally in remote areas. Military jets roar through the Basin's airspace, while armored vehicles tear up the land in war maneuvers. Cities on the Basin's periphery drain off its water, threatening to turn an already arid region into a genuine wasteland. For many years, the Sierra Club has led efforts to protect the Great Basin environment. Club activists in the region have opposed power lines, radioactive-waste dumps, coal-fired power plants, nuclear reactors, and the increasing takeover of the desert by the military. They have pressed for mining-reclamation bills and promoted alternative energy sources and conservation techniques. Above all, the Club has worked to preserve Great Basin wilderness; it was instrumental in passing the Nevada Forest Service Wilderness bill as well as in establishing Great Basin National Park. Yet more than 10 million acres still qualify for wilderness status, while others not technically roadless have special values that need safeguarding. The park itself, in eastern Nevada, is far too small to adequately represent Great Basin ecological values, and by law permits domestic-livestock grazing. For these reasons, enlarging Great Basin National Park and designating additional wilderness and park areas are high on the Sierra Club's list of programs for protecting and restoring the region. To make sure all wilderness is properly managed, the Club is pressing BLM and Forest Service agents to become more forceful and conscientious land stewards, despite still resistance from miners who currently have free run of the public domain, and from ranchers who feed on the largesse of government grazing subsidies. Club activists who want the Endangered Species Act strengthened and enforced are helping to identify critical Great Basin plant and animal communities: at the same time, they are assisting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the restoration of overgrazed and polluted wildlife refuges. Some visitors to the Great Basin find the immense flat stretches between mountain ranges lonely and monotonous. Yet the region's isolation and wide-open spaces are precisely what endear it to those who stop and explore, and what motivate activists to seek the desert's protection . . . at least until the next ice age. Recommended Reading
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