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Written by Jim Sloan
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Sunday, 29 January 2012 11:13 |
 The Douglas County Board of Commissioners will be holding a public hearing on the Douglas County Conservation Bill on Feb. 2. The Commission meeting starts at 1 p.m. in the Douglas County Administration Building at 1616 Eight St. in Minden, and the conservation bill will be discussed under the county manager’s report.
We need to fill the historic courthouse with voices that support two key elements of this bill:
1. The designation of Burbank Canyons as permanently protected Wilderness and;
2. The sale of excess federal land in Carson Valley in order to raise funds for conservation easements that will help generate additional conservation opportunities for sage-grouse and their habitats.
Here’s why we support this measure:
The Burbank Canyons are a stunning wilderness study area in the Pine Nuts northwest of Wellington. Not only is there great hiking, backpacking and fishing, but the three deep canyons and the excellent upper-elevation sagebrush in this area provide important wildlife habitat for deer, sage-grouse and other important species.
The bistate sage-grouse population in Douglas County and other Nevada counties has been decimated in recent years due to the loss of its sensitive sagebrush habitat. The easements proposed under this lands bill will go a long way toward providing funds to conserve irrigated meadows and other areas that are essential to the bird’s survival.
The County has been working on this bill for a long time, working with tribes, federal agencies and more than 90 stakeholder groups.It’s a good bill . It carefully balances the county’s development and planning needs with the protection of its cultural heritage, historical agricultural operations, floodplain lands, and natural resources.
We need to make sure it isn’t compromised as it inches toward final approval.
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Wednesday, 25 January 2012 09:49 |
 California Gov. Jerry Brown and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar have agreed to expand a partnership that has expedited more than a dozen utility-scale solar energy projects in the Golden State in the last two years.
The deal ensures that transmission line projects get the same expedited treatment as all the solar projects have received, and is seen as a key element in California’s effort to independently meet its goal of having 33 percent of its energy needs coming from clean power by 2020.
It’s unclear how this new agreement, under which the Renewable Energy Policy Group hustles renewable energy projects through California’s labyrinthine environmental reviews, will affect projects in Nevada. Projects need purchase power agreements from utilities in order to secure other development financing, and California was seen as a prime market since its needs for clean energy were so great.
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, whose state also has an agreement with the Interior to collaborate on renewable energy projects, has made it no secret that he’d like to see Nevada power plants exporting electricity to California.
A big part of the California-Interior agreement is the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which is designed to provide “binding, long-term endangered species permit assurances” at the same time it shepherding renewable energy projects to future homes in the Mojave and Colorado deserts of California.
A rendering of how heliostats will look at the Ivanpah Solar Electric
Generating System in the California desert. According to developer BrightSource, the technology design "allows the solar
field to coexist with existing vegetation."
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Saturday, 21 January 2012 11:18 |
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 The Nevada Wilderness Project last week attended a briefing session sponsored by the Governor’s office to hear federal and state regulators reassure state officials, citizens and stakeholders that they are working hard to prevent the sage grouse from being declared an endangered species.
The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service determined in 2010 that an Endangered Species Act listing was warranted for the sage grouse. But its listing was precluded because the government felt other species were more endangered.
Even before that ruling, the NWP was working to bring various agencies and stakeholders together to find solutions to the problems plaguing the bird, including wildfire, pinyon-juniper encroachment, infrastructure development, disease and other issues. NWP staff wildlife biologist Gregg Tanner has been working on this issue since 2000, when he was with the Nevada Department of Wildlife, and has continued this effort since joining NWP.
Gregg, NWP Executive Director Jeneane Harter, and NWP Conservation Director John Tull all attended the briefing session. Representatives from mining, ranching, farming and energy development, as well as various state and federal agencies, were also on hand in the crowded legislative hearing room in Carson City.
“I came away with the impression that people are beginning to pay attention,” Gregg said. “People are beginning to understand that we can’t tromp on the sage grouse.”
An Endangered Species Act listing would bring a wide variety of activities on public lands in Nevada to a halt, potentially including mining, renewable energy development and other activities. This issue is much broader than Nevada, however; the greater sage grouse population stretches across 11 Western States, and the bistate sage grouse population along the Nevada and California is particularly imperiled.
NWP will be involved as a catalyst to bring groups together to develop ambitious conservation plans that will prevent the bird from being listed.
Gregg Tanner, second from left (top photo) leads a tour of the Bistate Sage Grouse area in 2011. Bottom photo: a strutting male sage grouse.
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Wednesday, 18 January 2012 11:59 |
 The East Fork High Rock Canyon Wilderness grew by 320 acres recently when the Wilderness Lake Trust purchased some private property tucked into the northern region of the 52,000-acre wilderness along the Washoe-Humboldt county line.
The Trust will now transfer the land to the Bureau of Land Management. In an announcement the land trust said the property is also part of the Black Rock Desert High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area. Cottonwood Creek crosses the property, and mule deer, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, coyotes and sage-grouse inhabit the area.
Although this is the first Nevada purchase by the Wilderness Land Trust, David Kirk, the Senior Lands Specialist for the Trust, said he hopes it’s just the beginning. The Trust is in talks with additional willing sellers and hopes to add more properties to its wilderness collection by the end of the year.
The East Fork High Rock Canyon Wilderness is a spacious tract of volcanic uplands cut with deep gorges and pocketed with lush meadows and other riparian areas. It’s nice. Lots of great dayhiking and backpacking opportunities, and the nearby High Rock Canyon contains the historic Applegate Lassen Emigrant Trail. The High Rock Canyon Road is closed each year between the 1st of February until the 2nd weekend in May to minimize human disturbance on nesting raptors and lambing bighorn sheep.
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Sunday, 08 January 2012 17:31 |
 The Bureau of Land Management has issued instructions to its state offices to take immediate steps to protect a dwindling greater sage grouse population in 10 Western states.
In two separate directives, called Instructional Memorandums (IMs) in BLM parlance, BLM Director Bob Abbey outlined how he wants the BLM to manage sage-grouse habitat while the agency revises Resource Management Plans for BLM lands in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.
In a public release, Abby said the goal of the IMs is to restore and maintain sage-grouse and their habitat “while also facilitating safe and responsible energy development and recreational opportunities that power our economy."
For example, in “priority” sage-grouse habitat that includes breeding, brood-rearing and winter concentration areas, human-caused disturbance would be limited to less than 2.5 percent of the species’ total habitat.
In March 2010, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled that listing sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act was “warranted but precluded” because it was busy with more-troubled species. But it said the BLM and U.S. Forest Service are not “fully implementing the regulatory mechanisms available” to ensure the species’ conservation, which is why the two agencies are trying to address the FWS’s concerns.
As part of that effort, the BLM and USFS are holding five scoping meetings in Nevada to allow people to talk to staff and resource specialists about what the agencies should address in the environmental impact statements to evaluate conservation measures for sage-grouse.The BLM and the USFS have identified the following preliminary issues to address in its environmental analysis: greater sage-grouse habitat management, fluid minerals, coal mining, hard rock mining, mineral materials, rights-of-way, renewable energy development, wildfire, invasive species, grazing, off highway vehicle management and recreation.
The scoping meetings will follow an open house format; no formal presentations will be given so participants may arrive at any time during the meeting. The meetings will be held from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at all Nevada locations except for the meeting in Ely, which will be held from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Here's the schedule:
• Tonopah, Jan. 9, Tonopah Convention Center, 301 Brougher Ave
• Ely, Jan. 10, BLM Office, 702 N. Industrial Way
• Elko, Jan. 11, Hilton Garden Inn, 3650 Idaho Street
• Winnemucca, Jan. 12, Winnemucca Inn, 741 W. Winnemucca Blvd
• Reno, Jan. 30, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Hyatt Place, 1790 E. Plumb Lane
The 60-day comment period ends Feb. 7. Comments and requests to be added to the mailing list may be made to the BLM during the scoping meetings, by email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
, or by mail: Western Region Project Manager, BLM Nevada State Office, 1340 Financial Blvd., Reno, NV 89502. Additional information is available at the BLM’s greater sage-grouse website at: www.blm.gov/sagegrouse. Questions may be emailed to:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Wednesday, 04 January 2012 07:33 |
One of the biggest bugaboos for solar or wind energy projects is what you do for electricity when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining.
The answer for a new generation of solar plants going up in the Nevada and California deserts is to use molten salt to store heat, which can be used later to generate power. The system, which uses the salt to heat water to run turbines after the sun goes down, is a feature of the SolarReserve Crescent Dunes project outside of Tonopah. The New York Times calls the Crescent Dunes project and three similar plants in California being built by BrightSource “radically different new power plants.”
Key advantages: By storing energy in salt, plants can still generate electricity at a time of day when its price is at its peak and when generation from solar panels and wind turbines winds down for the day. The Energy Department likes SolarReserve’s prospects so much that it recently gave it a $737 million loan guarantee for the Tonopah development, which is expected to produce 110 megawatts at its peak and will continue producing power for up to 10 hours after the sun goes down.
Why salt? It stores more heat than water and its more efficient that storing power in expensive batteries. And using stored heat to run turbines is cheaper than gas-fired generators, which are the backups of choice in many renewable energy operations.
A recent study for NV Energy found that the utility needed more standby generation to offset the vagaries of photovoltaic production. Molten salt may be radical and new, but researchers are still working on other methods for power generation during those still, dark hours.
Source: SolarReserve: http://www.tonopahsolar.com/pdfs/FactSheet_CrescentDunes.pdf
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Written by John Tull
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Monday, 12 December 2011 12:45 |
 Many of you have heard the sad news that Mike Colpo passed away unexpectedly this past week. This is the kind of tragic event that sharpens our intent to live each moment to its fullest. Most of us will meet few people as fit and energetic, accomplished in the skills of backcountry living or as passionate about protecting wild places as Mike. There are no words that can adequately capture the shock of this for us or any of his friends or family, but we still wish to honor Mike and let others know a little bit about the man we knew and why he was so special to us. Below are a few stories from NWP past and present that we wish to share that capture his spirit as we knew it.
Mike had a desk next to the NWP world headquarters for the many years we were stationed at the Patagonia building in Reno. One day early last spring, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill that that attacked the Antiquities Act, the great 1906 conservation law that has afforded powers to U.S. presidents from Roosevelt onward to preserve some of our country's most impressive wild places. When that anti-Antiquities Act bill was introduced, we initially felt distraught and powerless to try and help tackle such a daunting, national issue. How could we, as a handful of Nevada Wilderness Project employees, help raise meaningful opposition to this horrible bill? Mike overheard our conversations on this topic and immediately agreed to reach out to the larger Patagonia customer base through Facebook. With his help, we reached 100,000 people instead of just 3,000, and more than tripled the number of people who came to our website to take action against this lousy bill! Public outcry from people around the country resulted in its defeat, and Mike threw the heft of Patagonia into the mix for us, something that made a tremendous difference.
Folks who know Mike no doubt knew he was a "foodie," and others can speak to the depth of his passion for this. On one backcountry ski trip with NWP staff and friends in the Schell Creek Range, in a cramped cabin after a long ski in, Mike was fresh off a plane from Chamonix. He had spent the past several months working for Patagonia in France. In the dim light of a crackling fire and in the dank smell of a cabin filled with sweaty people and wet gear, Mike hauled out some contraband–some of the stinkiest and best French cheese to have ever made its way to Nevada. His eyes gleamed and his smile was broad as he recounted his smuggling strategy to get it past Customs.
Mike saw and relished in the deep and often overlooked beauty of Nevada. He bristled at those who thumbed their noses at the state and her mountains. He was also restless in his pursuit of adventure in the Silver State and NWP was often the beneficiary of his creativity. He did the initial wilderness inventories for Wovoka , when we still called it Bald Mountain, in Lyon County and the Kern Mountains, including the Blue Mass area, in White Pine County on BIKE! (Read Mike’s firsthand account of the Kern Mountains adventure.) The former inventory led to several wild and capsized float trips down the east fork of the Walker River, a rare if not first descent. His second inventory resulted in a call to NWP from a bewildered Sheriff inquiring if Mike was missing, befuddled to find his car parked in a seemingly random location in rural Nevada. And though Mike had kindly left a note informing any potential reader that his ancient Subaru had nothing of value in it and that there was some cold beer in the creek to thank anyone for their effort and checking in on his car, neither worked. The beer was gone and the car had been broken into.
Mike's physical forays into wilderness are legendary. He skied, ran, backpacked and paddled into amazing nooks and crannies of Nevada (among so many other places). But he also made forays into activism that resulted in meaningful political and social support for these wild places he loved. He was quietly–though firmly–supportive and encouraging to all of us at NWP, and we will always be grateful and remember him for that.
It doesn't make it easier on anyone when such undeserved tragedy strikes. But we hope it is some comfort to Mike's family and friends that his was a life lived well and fully, and with a purposefulness and a passion that has left a lasting legacy on people he knew and the lands he loved to roam.
(We invite our NWP friends and readers to share your stories and memories of Mike and his Nevada adventures in wild places in the comments section.)
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Friday, 09 December 2011 10:02 |
 The price of photovoltaic solar panels has been plummeting in recent months and many utility-scale solar energy farms planned for the Southwest are abandoning their solar thermal plant plans and switching to PV.
Photovoltaic panels are easier to install than thermal systems, which concentrate sunshine to boil water to turn energy-generating turbines. What is more, utilities, developers and their financial backers will naturally gravitate toward cheaper technology in order to justify their investment to state regulators and ratepayers.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the PV prices are being pushed downward by a glut of cheap panels manufactured in China. As a result, five of nine approved solar thermal projects in California has twitched to PV from thermal and “similar shifts are happening in Arizona and Nevada.”
Although PV projects are more sensitive to cloud cover, thermal projects have some folks worried about plants using so much of the desert’s limited water supplies that native plants and animals might be affected.
Solar thermal projects (top photo), which concentrate heat
to boil water and generate power, are being replaced by
photovoltaic systems (bottom photo) due to a price drop
in the PV panels.
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Friday, 02 December 2011 17:19 |
 The Bureau of Land Management has put five Nevada renewable energy projects on its 2012 priority list.
The five utility-scale projects in Nevada include three solar farms, one wind project and a geothermal project. All the projects would be built on public land.
The five projects in Nevada include:
• Amargosa North Solar, a 100-megawatt photovoltaic project being built by Pacific Solar Investments.
• Silver State South, a 350-megawatt photovoltaic farm planned by First Solar. The first phase of this project is under construction and will be complete by the end of the year. NWP has been meeting with the developer on the second phase but the builders are waiting for a transmission and substation to be built by Southern California Edison before moving ahead.
• Moapa Solar Project, a 350-megawatt plant planned on tribal lands in Clark County. This one appears to be a good project situated in the right location – directly north of the proposed Dry Lake Solar zone in the Apex area.
• The 200-megawatt Searchlight wind farm being built by Duke Energy. The draft EIS for this one should be out in a month or two. We’re not aware of any biological issues, but the Lake Mead Recreation Area is opposed to it because of the visual impact of its location west of Cottonwood Cove.
• The 62-megawatt New York Canyon geothermal project planned by Terragen.
All told, the five Nevada projects are expected to generate up more than 1,100 megawatts of power a year and cover more than 50,000 acres of BLM land in the state. In addition, five solar farms in California, one solar farm in Arizona, three wind farms from Wyoming, one wind farm each in Arizona and California and a geothermal plant in California made the BLM priority list.
According to the BLM’s February 2011 policy memorandum, the priority list helps BLM ensure that projects don’t disturb sensitive areas or require intense road transmission line construction. Projects that avoid special areas, including sensitive wildlife habitat, conservation areas and wilderness, and have fewer conflicts get a higher priority.
We look forward to seeing BLM plans to deliver conservation of wildlife habitats or important landscapes in lieu of the continued transition of so much public land to single-use developments.
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Written by Jim Sloan
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Saturday, 26 November 2011 18:13 |
 Efforts to make the 13,000-acre Tule Springs at the northern corner of the Las Vegas Valley a national monument got a boost earlier this month when the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology held its annual conference in Las Vegas.
Tule Springs is considered the “most significant ice age fossil site” in the United States because it’s chock full of fossils from animals that roamed the area between 7,000 and 200,000 years ago. There are 438 Ice Age fossil sites. Those critters included everything from mammoths to ground sloths – as well as the lions and other predators that came by to hunt them.
According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, certain archaeological features of the area have already been covered by housing developments or damaged by off-road vehicle traffic. Gov. Brian Sandoval, Sen. Harry Reid and a host of local leaders support creating a national monument managed by the National Park Service, but there’s no word on when a federal bill will be introduced.
One hitch is that NV Energy wants to put a transmission line through the area. The utility thinks Nevada can have both a transmission line and a national monument, but supporters of the park say putting in infrastructure projects can impact the 200,000-year archaeological story that is currently on display in the area.
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When asked during 
