Last month, U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto introduced legislation to permanently protect a vast swath of Desert National Wildlife Refuge while allowing for a modest increase in military training infrastructure in nearby areas jointly managed by the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This bill, first reported by The Nevada Independent, comes after years of tension between Nevadans and the Air Force over the use of our public lands. It presents a compromise that can ultimately benefit everyone.

Desert National Wildlife Refuge is the largest refuge in the continental U.S., protecting some 1.6 million acres of prime habitat for desert bighorn sheep, Nevada’s state mammal, as well as desert tortoise habitat and key springs vital for wildlife. It is one of the crown jewels of Nevada’s protected public lands. 

For nearly a decade the Air Force has sought to expand its operations at the Nevada Test and Training Range, the primary training area affiliated with Nellis Air Force Base, including a 2019 proposal to assume control over hundreds of thousands of acres of the refuge. 

The 2019 proposal would have blocked public access and made these lands subject to military combat training operations, large-scale infrastructure construction and, in some cases, active bombing exercises. It was fiercely opposed by a broad coalition of Native American tribes, conservation groups, military veterans and more, united under the banner of “Don’t Bomb the Bighorn.” 

While Nevadans’ voices were the loudest, the proposal had many people across the country asking the question: If the Air Force could take over this refuge, was any wildlife refuge safe?

In a moment of Capitol Hill drama, in 2020 then-U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have given the military everything it asked for and blown a hole in one of the most precious wildlife refuges in the country. In response, Reps. Dina Titus, Susie Lee and Steven Horsford introduced an amendment to strip the Bishop amendment. With tens of thousands of people writing in to support them, the Bishop amendment was removed from the military spending bill and the refuge was saved.

The Air Force recently came back with a greatly scaled down plan to construct 15 threat emitters, or small signal transmission sites, within portions of the refuge jointly managed by the Air Force and the Fish and Wildlife Service that are closed off to the public. This proposal is so dramatically pared down from what the Air Force asked for just a few years ago that it alone should be counted as a win for the refuge. 

But Cortez Masto’s proposed bill is an even greater win. While allowing the relatively modest increase in the military’s on-the-ground footprint and infrastructure, it's coupled with a bold and ambitious proposal to protect nearly all of the approximately 750,000 acres of refuge currently open to the public as designated wilderness. 

A wilderness designation, which sets aside land from development and disturbance, is the gold standard of public lands protections. It represents an acknowledgment of lands as the “best of the best” in terms of biodiversity, cultural heritage and public access. 

Protecting this enormous swath of Desert National Wildlife Refuge as wilderness will help ensure that future generations have access to this beloved landscape and provide a significant roadblock against future military proposals to take it over.

Advocates such as Friends of Nevada Wilderness have been pushing for wilderness designation of this area for decades. And with provisions to allow continued cultural access for Native American tribes, ongoing maintenance for water developments designed to benefit wildlife and continued access to the refuge’s rugged four-wheel drive roads, this legislation benefits the whole spectrum of public lands users. 

But Cortez Masto’s bill is coupled with other proposals, including one I find troubling. The bill would allow the Southern Nevada Water Authority to blast a tunnel underneath Sloan Canyon National Conservation Area, just south of the Las Vegas Valley, subverting the purposes that the area was protected for 23 years ago. The Center for Biological Diversity, where I work, strongly opposes any provision that would weaken protections for Sloan Canyon. This measure should be stripped from the bill, especially since it has nothing to do with the military.

Overall, Cortez Masto has struck the right balance on Desert National Wildlife Refuge. Rather than allowing the military to run roughshod over our protected public lands, the senator has given the Air Force a very modest concession that will enhance its training abilities. In exchange, one of the most iconic landscapes in the Mojave Desert will be protected forever. That’s a deal I’ll take any day. 

Patrick Donnelly is Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity. 

The Nevada Independent welcomes informed, cogent rebuttals to opinion pieces such as this. Send them to [email protected].