By Christian Gerlach, Our Wild Organizer
Join the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America Campaign on February 14 to virtually mix with and mingle with fellow environmentalists who love Nevada's public lands and are ready to do more to protect them. Public lands are beautiful places that inspire our love and wonder of nature. Now more than ever, these lands need your adoration and support.
We need help urging the Biden administration to designate the proposed Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. Nevada’s Public Lands also need your help to push back against the Nevada Bureau of Land Management’s leasing of Public Lands for oil and gas development, which would hurt unique places like the Railroad Valley Wildlife Management Area.
The Bureau of Land Management’s Railroad Valley Wildlife Management Area is an amazing treasure with terrific birding, showcasing some 147 species. Several sensitive wildlife in the area are being threatened with parcels of land being offered in the Bureau of Land Management’s first Quarter oil and gas lease sale of 2022.
These species include threatened yellow-billed cuckoos, federally protected golden eagles, ferruginous hawks, Swainson’s hawks, red-tailed hawks, prairie falcons, American kestrels, and antelope. Aquatic species also call this place home and include the threatened Railroad Valley springfish and the Railroad Valley tui chub. These aquatic species are dependent on the groundwater specific to Railroad Valley, so any drilling presents a threat to their existence.
The proposed Avi Kwa Ame (Spirit Mountain) National Monument is a plan to establish a new national monument on roughly 450,0,000 acres of public land in southern Clark County. The lands would be managed to conserve their outstanding ecological, cultural, recreational, scenic, and other values and would be preserved for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations. Avi Kwa Ame contains one of the largest Joshua Trees of the entire world. It would fill a doughnut shaped hole of already protected landscapes, connecting Lake Mead National Park, the Mojave National Preserve, and several wilderness areas, affording wildlife a continuous corridor of habitat preserving keystone Mojave Desert Species.
A 2019 report published by Center for American Progress (CAP) and Conservation Science Partners (CSP) states that between 2001 and 2017 there was a loss of 24 million acres of nature to human development, or one football field-sized patch of land every 30 seconds. While Nevada's population has grown, the needs of growth must be balanced with conservation of our disappearing Mojave Desert.
Such tremendous changes in what natural land is left highlights the urgent need to conserve public lands. We must urge President Biden to act to preserve the natural wonders we have left. Future generations deserve to make their own memories in nature and be allowed to continue to explore, enjoy, and protect places like Avi Kwa Ame.
With your help and writing of "Love Letters to the Earth", (or rather to the editor) in support of Nevada's public lands like Avi Kwa Ame, and the Railroad Valley Wildlife Management Area, we will protect the places we all love.