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Written by Wild Nevada
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Friday, 21 January 2011 13:29 |
NWP uses the best scientific research and conservation planning to find ways to conserve linked—or physically connected—wild areas, benefiting plants and animals that need connected landscapes for migration and population health. We call this programmatic area Linking Landscapes for Wildlife.
One way we do this is by using motion-sensitive cameras to learn more about the wildlife movements and activities in key linkages. NWP has been taking photographs of wildlife in southern Nevada with these cameras for more than a year. So far we have “captured” bobcats, coyotes, lizards, bighorn sheep, the occasional bird and humans. We check cameras monthly and download the photos for documenting wildlife activities in key areas.
Last week, NWP staff went to recover photographs and found that humans had vandalized two cameras! Someone, and were not saying who (although we have a photo that might “show who”), had taken the memory cards from our two most productive locations. Fortunately, they left the pricey cameras behind, but the loss of a month of photographs puts a hole in our data collection.
Here are a couple of photos we were able to recover on the built-in memory of the cameras. The photo of the bighorn sheep is a great example of what we want to gather with these cameras. The other is a shot of someone looking under the camera… not that we’re jumping to any conclusions.
Tip for card-thieves: the cameras revert to built-in memory when the data card is removed from the device.
 
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Sunday, 14 November 2010 18:49 |
 
Congress begins its lame duck session, and conservationists are ready for some action. Across the country, there are twenty wilderness bills awaiting passage.
Twenty!
From the spectacular Rocky Mountain high country of Idaho’s Boulder White Clouds to the stunning desert vistas in southern New Mexico’s Dona Ana County and the majestic beauty of the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee, there remains much to be done before 2010 ends. And counter to most everything we hear about bitter partisanship and division, these bills are sponsored by Republicans and Democrats from both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Here in Nevada, we have plenty to keep our eyes on.
1. Remember those bills co-introduced over the summer by Sen. Reid and Rep. Heller about a solar royalty? The first was Nevada-specific. It paves the way for two good solar projects to be constructed on public land in Lincoln County, along with the development of a royalty program based on the sale of those projects’ electricity. The royalties would go into a Renewable Energy Mitigation and Fish and Wildlife Fund, then come back to Lincoln County to be used on habitat conservation. Shortly after this one was introduced, a national bill with the same general goals followed. When passed, these will be huge accomplishments in our drive to support “smart from the start” renewable energy development. We will have developed renewable energy. We will have accomplished conservation. And we will have done both at the same time.
2. Gold Butte National Conservation Area and Wilderness. No bill was introduced for this area during the regular session, despite ten years of collaboration, compromise and solid campaigning. But we are undeterred! There has been an unbelievably huge groundswell of support over the summer months, and throughout the lame duck session we will continue to say to Senator Reid, Representative Titus and their staff people: the time is now for Gold Butte. We know this is true—and so do many of you who sent letters to your representatives, wrote e-mails, signed postcards, attended meetings and wrote letters to the editor. We’re optimistic.
This is always an exciting, unpredictable and wild time in our nation’s politics. Many conservationists will be minding the 11th-hour work of the 111th Congress as closely as anyone—and that includes us. We’ll do our best to keep you posted.
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Thursday, 11 November 2010 15:13 |
Here at the Nevada Wilderness Project world headquarters, we've always joked about wanting to make a scratch 'n sniff newsletter. You know, where you scratch the surface of the paper and up wafts the smell of roses, fresh baked cookies, a wet desert bighorn sheep... any number of things.
Well, last week we came as close as we probably ever will to creating a scratch 'n sniff publication... by placing a small sprig of sage in letters going out to NWP members. The letters are an appeal for year-end donations, and we figured we'd send along a little whiff of Nevada to inspire people to act. Not everyone will receive a letter--it's getting expensive to raise funds that way. That's why we also sent out an e-mail today with a similar request for donations.
Please make a donation online to the Nevada Wilderness Project.
You can do it securely here: www.wildnevada.org
Imagine the smell of sage (or something else you love from the great outdoors) and think about this: The Nevada Wilderness Project was started 11 years ago to shine a bright light on Nevada's wilderness resources, develop robust and effective campaigns for their legislative protection, and to help build a more effective Nevada environmental community.
Because of your support and hard work over the last decade, more than 2.5 million acres of wilderness has been protected in Nevada, along with another 500,000 acres of national conservation area. This is more protected land than in any other state during the same time. And you know--even without a real scratch 'n sniff--that when you give to the Nevada Wilderness Project, you are supporting a conservation organization that ranks, pound-for-pound, as one of the most effective and efficient conservation organizations in the country.
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Tuesday, 02 November 2010 08:59 |
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Monday, 01 November 2010 08:36 |
Tomorrow is election day. Get out there and vote. And to further inspire you, the Nevada Wilderness Project offers you this link to an article by Yvon Chouinard, the founder and owner of Patagonia, Inc. It's a great essay making a coherent, logical case not for a particular candidate or party--but for a way of thinking. It reads, in part, "the health of our environment never makes it to the top list of voter concerns. But it has everything to do with all the major issues our elected officials face. Everything we make ultimately comes from the ground, or what’s beneath it, or from our common waters. Every job and every economy depends ultimately on the health of the natural world of which we’re a part."
Check out the whole essay here. It includes a link to an interesting piece by Tom Brokaw, as well as to the League of Conservation Voters site and environmental scorecard for candidates.
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Wednesday, 27 October 2010 07:22 |
The assault on reason and science has intensified in America in the last decade. You can develop this thesis around the writings of this guy and this guy. Or you could just infer we’re willfully stupid because of this magnificent testimony to the rigor of scientific thought practiced by creationist Ken Ham.
Here at NWP, our scientists have broken through with conclusive proof that climate change is real.
The inarguable fact that climate change is real and has the power to profoundly affect the way we live our lives is not:
- Evident in the severe heat waves, or the dramatic fire and drought cycles wreaking havoc across the world.
- It is not proven by global photographic evidence.
- Nor is it proven by the plight of the polar bear.
No, the ultimate scientific proof that climate change is real and will cause all sorts of things we’ve never seen before is… here:
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Wednesday, 13 October 2010 08:02 |
 The Nevada Wilderness Project’s main office is in Reno. This is where two-thirds of our staff work, and where the regular mail comes in… correspondence, bills, donations, and the occasional interesting package. Not long ago, we received a package from Trinity University Press containing a new book published over the summer entitled Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape.
It is a collection of more that 850 landscape terms arranged alphabetically and defined by some of the nation’s finest writers – and edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney. It’s a neat book. It rests on the premise that in order to protect the environment and to encourage others to protect it, we must be familiar with our surroundings and know how to describe them and occasionally, know a story or two behind a unique landscape term.
For example, here in Nevada we have hoodoos, seif dunes and, of course, a little 200,000 square-mile closed basin we call the Great Basin. “Hoodoo,” Home Ground tells us, is a term that dates at least to the mid-nineteenth century. Hoodoos are “fantastically shaped stoned pillars in deserts... formed by sporadic, intensive rainfall erosion of steeply sloped but horizontally layered sedimentary rock, leaving freestanding pinnacles.” In Reno, hoodoos inspired musicians in a bluegrass band to call themselves the Hoodoo Voodoo Revue.
Nevada’s landscape is dotted with seif dunes, sand dunes that form in ridges parallel to one another and to the direction of the wind, so the prevailing wind sweeps through the troughs between them. “Seyf” is “sword” in Arabic. Sand Mountain, just east of Fallon on Highway 50, is an example. A favorite destination for off-roaders, Sand Mountain is also called a “singing” dune because sand falling from the dune’s crest produces a loud and sometimes eerie sound.
D.J. Waldie, writing in Home Ground, says “all of these sounds are caused by an incompletely understood interaction of wind, humidity and the geometry of individual grains when a sheet of sand with the right properties slumps from a dune’s crest.” We’ve seen other seif dunes in the heart of the Desert Wildlife Refuge.
And that’s only two out of an astonishing 850 terms describing natural features all over North America—all gracefully defined by great writers such as Barbara Kingsolver, Linda Hogan, Robert Haas and Bill McKibben, to name a few.
If you live in Reno, we recommend you get a copy at Sundance Bookstore, our local independent bookstore on West Fourth Street.
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape
Edited by Barry Lopez and Debra Gwartney
Trinity University Press
465 pages
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Wednesday, 29 September 2010 08:25 |
 Last weekend, three staff members of the Nevada Wilderness Project attended the Desert Conference near Antelope, Oregon – hosted by our colleagues at the Oregon Natural Desert Association (ONDA). The conference was an opportunity to connect with our counterparts in Oregon and hold some in-depth, in-person conversations about issues affecting vast areas of shared sagebrush habitat along the border of our two states.
We stayed at the Washington Young Life Christian Camp near Antelope, Oregon (zip-lining into a muddy pond at night has never been more fun), where we listened to talks about public lands restoration opportunities, steelhead and salmon conservation, different perspectives on saving the sagebrush sea, and a 10-year retrospective of the National Landscape Conservation System.
Highlights included an evening talk by author Craig Childs, who showed slides and told us incredible stories about walking through the world’s deserts – under the title of “The Shape of Water: Exploring a Key Element in World Deserts.”
That’s right, the shape of water. In deserts. Childs was amazing.
We also heard from accomplished conservationist Edward M. Norton Sr., who told us of his experiences with conservation work in China and other parts of Asia. These experiences, he explained, have made him view our U.S. land management agencies in a better light. He’s even a little bit proud of agencies like the BLM and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – not for their efficiency, but for their accessibility. “I don’t care whether the BLM has a soul or not,” he said. “…they are not corrupt, and that means everything.”
We’re excited about the habitat, wildlife and landscapes around the Nevada-Oregon state line. Next week, some of us from NWP and two volunteer interns from Patagonia are returning to the area -- this time to explore the Hart National WIldlife Refuge, Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge and the miles of wildlands that lie between them. We'll let you know what we see and how conservation opportunities for this vast and important habitat shape up.
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Monday, 09 August 2010 10:38 |
 (Denise Barclay, NWP's Director of Administrative Functions, penned this post)
I know… for most of us, the word "audit" can strike terror in our hearts. But in NWP’s case, it’s a good thing (and something we asked for!)
When a non-profit organization is successful in raising money for its conservation programs, as NWP has been since it was founded 11 years ago, contributing foundations and donors want to make sure that their grant money is being used properly. And that’s what audits help reveal. And as individual supporters and donors to NWP, we thought you might be interested too. So we opened up the bookkeeping and administrative procedures to the scrutiny of Kohn Colodny’s CPAs.
We use the word transparency a lot in reference to our government and think it is a very good idea, and as it is with most things in life, the concept is quite different than the reality. I am the bookkeeper and Director of Administrative Functions at NWP and was the lead person throughout the audit. At times it felt a lot like opening up one’s underwear drawer to a complete stranger. There for them to peruse were not only my nice undergarments, but also the holey and tattered ones. They were quite thorough in their sifting through every area, making sure that everything was accountable and that all the t’s were crossed and the i’s dotted.
The CPAs I worked with said that it was refreshing to work with people who were not defensive when asked to present documents and explanations about a procedure. Yes, they found some areas that could use some improvement and a handful of mistakes, but they were impressed with the level of organization and fiscal responsibility that NWP already had in place. Maybe most important—though no surprise to me--they found no evidence of fraud or mismanagement.
I found them to be quite helpful in suggesting ways to make NWP run more efficiently. After all, isn’t that the point of transparency, to learn what’s working and what’s not?
If you have questions about our audit process, feel free to e-mail me. Our IRS Form 990 is available on request.
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Written by Wild Nevada
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Friday, 06 August 2010 11:27 |
 Wide open skies. Camping under the stars. Glimpses of wild animals… This is the part of conservation work we all love. Reviewing government documents? – not so much. But it is hugely important to successful outcomes for habitat conservation, and it's part of the job we take seriously.
The Nevada Wilderness Project (NWP) reviews a variety of federal documents about activities proposed on Nevada public lands. Recently, we reviewed and provided written comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) Bridgeport Travel Management Plan for all roads on national forest lands in Lyon, Mineral and Douglas Counties.
This document and planning effort was in response to fundamental changes being undertaken by the Forest Service to control a proliferation of unauthorized routes in these areas - and to best manage a travel system by designating legal roads, trails and areas for motor vehicle use. Roads impact wildlife and habitat. That’s why we pay close attention to where they are, whether or not they are legal or illegal, and how they are managed.
The Forest Service’s Bridgeport District office published a map of the district and solicited comments from the public about either opening or closing roads and trails that were in use within the district. NWP’s comments focused on providing suggestions for road and trail restrictions that would protect wildlife, important wildlife habitat, and Native American cultural resources within the Nevada portion of the Bridgeport Ranger District.
The Forest Service then modified the proposed action based on comments received from the public, including those from us. Their final decision ultimately resulted in the seasonal closures of some areas in order to protect sage grouse and mule deer during critical months of the year. All unauthorized cross-country motorized use was closed throughout the District. The Forest Service eliminated 10 routes in the district that would result in negative impacts to biological and cultural resources, and they said no to an 85-acre area being proposed for a cross-country motorized area based on the public’s comments that certain sensitive plants and other significant resources were present on the proposed site, and would be negatively impacted.
While this story isn’t about rousing speeches or a dramatic 11th-hour “rescue” of habitat, it is about the real work of making progress for conservation. More often than not, real gains are made by reading government planning documents, deciphering what they will mean on the ground, and by vigorously participating in these agency-public land management processes. All in the name of doing what we passionately believe is best for our public wildlands.
For more information regarding the Record of Decision for the Bridgeport Travel Management Project, you can download a pdf here: http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/htnf/projects/bridgeport/feis/2_btm_record_of_decision.pdf
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