Land protections for Nevada

Helping secure permanent federal protection for wilderness areas in Nevada has always been central to our work. Since our formation in 1999, we have played an active role in securing more than 2.5 million acres of designated Wilderness (that’s 3,953 square miles - or equal to two Delawares), with another 500,000 acres of National Conservation Areas.We've worked with local interests to craft a variety of lands protection bills, including the Black Rock Desert in 2000, the Clark County Public Lands Bill in 2002, the Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act of 2004 and the White Pine County Public Conservation, Recreation and Economic Development Act of 2006.

Preserving wildlife habitats

In more recent years we've worked hard to review renewable energy projects proposed for public lands. We helped the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Department of Interior designate solar energy zones in Nevada where utility-scale solar projects would have the least amount of impact on plants and animals in the Nevada desert. We've also worked with utilities and developers to properly map out transmission lines so they would not harm senstive wildlife nesting sites or migration routes.

Protecting native plants

Over the years, NWP wildlife biologists and ecologists have worked to educate land managers and the public about the importance of the native grasses and shrubs that Nevada wildlife depend on for their survival. We've helped call attention to the need to restore sagebrush habitats on fire-ravaged rangelands. We've documented the threat of pinyon-juniper expansion on the sagebrush steppes of Nevada that are critical habitats for the endangered Greater Sage-grouse.