The bleached sandhill skipper, a rare butterfly that lives only in a single meadow in Humboldt County and is threatened by a geothermal power plant. It is unprotected and unmanaged by any state agency. (Photo by Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Nevada’s is among the most unique biodiversity of any state in the union – and it’s under assault by industry, mining, sprawl, and the ravages of climate change. Substantial reforms are needed to the state’s management of rare and imperiled species to avoid the extinction of Nevada’s species or a dramatic increase in federal Endangered Species Act listings. 

Biodiversity, the assemblage of all the plants, animals, fungi, and microbes that make up life on earth, is essential for humans’ continued existence. Biodiversity is what gives us clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, puts food on our plates, and puts a roof over our heads. 

There is a global extinction crisis, wherein species are going extinct literally every day across the globe. The United Nations has estimated that as many as one million species are at risk of extinction. 

And that extinction crisis is knocking on Nevada’s door. According to the Nevada Division of Natural Heritage (NDNH), there are 646 at-risk species in Nevada – plants and animals that are at-risk of extinction without conservation efforts to save them. This is the third most of any state. Additionally, there are 196 species on a watch list, which could become at-risk. Nevada has 48 species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act, and 78 species listed under the state’s endangered species regulations. Since European colonization, eight species have gone extinct.

The federal Endangered Species Act is the primary tool used to prevent extinction. The Act makes it the policy of the United States to prevent extinction, and puts species listed by the federal government as threatened or endangered under federal jurisdiction. This is in contrast to non-listed plants and animals, which by default are managed by the states. This transfer in management authority upon listing is why federal listing has been traditionally resisted by most Western states.

Nevada has some statutes on the books to manage endangered species, but they are weak and mostly unenforceable. Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW) has authority over state listed animals; Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF) has authority over state listed plants. However, state listing is primarily an administrative function, and permits to kill species listed as endangered by the state are regularly given without environmental review or public input. In recent years, NDF has given out permits to kill Webber’s ivesia in constructing the Stonegate master planned community north of Reno and Las Vegas bearpoppies for the Lima Gypsum mine near Las Vegas, all without environmental review or public input.

There are currently nine species in Nevada which have been petitioned for federal Endangered Species Act protection, most by the organization where I work, the Center for Biological Diversity. Some, like Tiehm’s buckwheat and the Dixie Valley toad, have become quite high profile, and are illustrative of the fundamental issues at play here.

In both cases a proposed development—a lithium mine for Tiehm’s buckwheat and a geothermal power plant for the Dixie Valley toad—pose existential threats to these narrow endemic species. And in both cases, state agencies have failed to take action to stop the proposed developments and now the species are going to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. 

There are dozens more imperiled species that we’ve identified that could qualify for Endangered Species Act protections which we are considering petitioning, including the Monte Nevada paintbrush, the Amargosa toad, and the Pahranagat montane vole. 

Thus, if Nevada hopes to stem the extinction crisis and the tide of incoming federal endangered species petitions, the state must reform its management of biodiversity. We have identified three key gaps in biodiversity management, and suggestions to remedy them, which I recently presented to the legislative interim committee on public lands.

Policy Gap: Nevada Department of Wildlife has no statutory authority to manage terrestrial invertebrates (insects). Currently terrestrial invertebrates, including butterflies, beetles, and other non-pest insects, are unmanaged in Nevada. NDOW has no ability to protect or restore habitat for terrestrial invertebrates, nor to implement conservation measures to prevent their being listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. The legislature should give NDOW statutory authority to manage terrestrial invertebrates, and resources to hire scientists to manage them.

Policy Gap: Nevada Division of Forestry is not the appropriate agency to manage endangered plants. NDF’s primary role is coordinating and executing the state’s wildfire suppression and prevention program in an era of rampant increase in wildfire activity. Managing endangered plants is an afterthought for NDF, and they are unable to muster the resources necessary to prevent state endangered plants from becoming listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Forty-three states have an endangered plant conservation program. Most of those programs are administered by the state’s department of wildlife or by the same agency as the wildlife management program. Only four states have endangered plants managed by the department of forestry. Meanwhile, the only endangered plant issue that NDF has been asked to engage on isTiehm’s buckwheat, and they have failed to take action. The Legislature should transfer management authority over endangered and regulated plants, including cacti and succulents, to NDOW.

Policy Gap: No agency in Nevada has statutory authority over non-endangered plants.  One of the key reasons that rare plants could become in danger of extinction is due to a lack of management and protections. This is a driver of federal Endangered Species Act listings. If an agency was empowered to proactively manage and protect non-endangered plants, it could implement habitat management and restoration, regulatory protections, or other mechanisms to ensure rare plants do not become endangered, thereby helping to prevent federal Endangered Species Act listings. The Legislature should give statutory authority over non-endangered plants to NDOW.

Ultimately, once the management of biodiversity in Nevada has been properly consolidated and authorized, the legislature should substantially revise and update the Nevada Endangered Species Act to reflect the realities of the 21st century extinction crisis. The state of Nevada needs to have authority to “say no” to projects that will drive species extinct. If NDOW could say no to the Dixie Meadows geothermal plant, perhaps the Dixie Valley toad wouldn’t need federal listing. 

In the meantime, these simple fixes of current gaps in Nevada’s regulatory structure for rare and imperiled species will help consolidate and streamline management and give the state the best possible chance to stop the extinction crisis. 

The post Nevada needs tools to stop the extinction crisis appeared first on Nevada Current.

(Photo: Michael Lyle)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

Today I’m honored to join thousands of Nevadans, hundreds of thousands of Americans, and many millions of people around the world in the first global Climate Strike.

The Climate Strike is intended to raise awareness of the looming climate catastrophe facing our planet. We aim to compel bold, immediate action by governments to dramatically reduce and eventually eliminate carbon pollution from our economy.

Nevada has a lot at stake in the fight against climate chaos. Las Vegas and Reno are two of the fastest–warming cities in the United States. The Colorado River, main water supply for more than 70 percent of Nevada’s population, faces a crisis of declining flows and overappropriation. And our wildlife populations, from the greater sage-grouse and the desert tortoise to our tiny beloved Devils Hole pupfish, face calamity from the changing climate.

Yet greenhouse pollution continues unabated. In 2018, global carbon emissions reached a new all-time high, increasing by 2.7 percent year over year, after a 1.6 percent increase in 2017. We are actively making the climate catastrophe worse. Today.

The younger generation won’t stand for it. Action on climate change has been galvanized over the past year by the emergence of the Sunrise Movement, an inspirational group of young people who have taken bold, direct action to raise the visibility of the harms of climate change and take the fight directly to policy-makers. Their signature climate policy, the Green New Deal, is an ambitious plan to radically re-orient America’s economy toward decarbonization, sustainability, and perhaps most importantly, equality and justice.

So today, we strike.

We strike because policy-makers, frequently beholden to the powerful interests that profit from carbon emissions, have taken only tepid action to cut planet-warming pollution.

We strike because the fossil fuel industry continues its campaign of disinformation and obstruction to block necessary action.

We strike because young people today will face truly dire circumstances as they get older. And only we — the adults who have power and influence right now — can save them.

And we strike in front of the Venetian Resort on the Las Vegas Strip, headquarters to Sheldon Adelson’s empire, because he is among the chief funders of the Trump climate denial machine.

The time has long since passed for politicians to say, “I believe in climate change” and call it an environmental policy. Instead, we need to boldly take immediate steps toward decarbonizing our economy.

And while the most significant target of the climate strike is the recalcitrant Trump administration, Nevada too could take more tangible steps toward heading off climate calamity. These are outlined in the Climate Strike demands.

For starters, Nevada needs a transition to 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2030.

Nevada’s current law, recently passed, sets the bar at 50 percent by 2030. This is halfway there at best. And, unfortunately, a sweetheart deal for NV Energy means that destructive, carbon-emitting hydropower from the Hoover Dam and the Bonneville Power Administration counts as “clean energy.” Our state’s plan also intentionally excluded rooftop and distributed solar from counting toward the clean energy target, putting small consumers and communities at a disadvantage.

Nevada needs a plan for rapid and complete decarbonization — a clean energy standard where every megawatt generated by the sun or wind counts, but hydropower, nuclear power, and credit trading schemes don’t. In the end, only raw carbon emissions reduction matters.

Nevada’s climate hero state Sen. Chris Brooks passed legislation in 2019 instructing the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to develop such a decarbonization plan. We hope that our strike illustrates the desire and need for rapid action and broad community involvement as we chart a future toward a carbon emissions-free Nevada. We expect a plan completed and ready for action before the 2021 legislative session.

Another demand of the Climate Strike is to protect and restore biodiversity, specifically by protecting 50 percent of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030. Biodiversity is what gives us clean air, clean drinking water, and the food that sustains us. And scientists have warned that we’re in an extinction crisis, with up to 1 million species at risk of extinction.

Nevada has made advances in land protection in recent years, but only 9.1 percent of our state is protected as national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, wilderness, and state parks. We need to increase that by 41 percent — some 28,700,000 acres — in just the next 11 years. That’s an area three times the size of Clark and Washoe Counties combined.

While that sounds like a lot, Nevada boasts a huge amount of relatively undisturbed wild lands – ripe for the protection. My organization, the Center for Biological Diversity, will be putting forward proposals in coming months for the type of ambitious land-preservation agenda that Nevada needs to protect our biodiversity and climate.

Are these bold demands? They are. We are experiencing the climate crisis, right now. And we have one last chance to avoid the worst of this catastrophe, which could condemn future generations to a hellish existence unlike anything humans have experienced before.

We must act boldly, now, to decarbonize our economy, to empower communities through a just transition, and to protect huge swaths of our landmass to save biodiversity. So today we strike. We hope you join us.

The post Why Nevada needs the climate strike appeared first on Nevada Current.

Clark County Government Center (Clark County photo)

Policy, politics and progressive commentary

If Donald Trump could write his own proposal for managing public lands in southern Nevada, it might look something like the bill slated to be voted on by the Clark County Commission on Tuesday, June 19.

Complete with public land sell-offs to developers, giveaways to utility companies, and a huge exemption to the Endangered Species Act, the Clark County bill is a veritable wish list for those who wish to privatize public lands and gut our bedrock environmental protections.

For almost two years, Clark County has been quietly putting together a proposal that would dramatically alter the pattern of development in southern Nevada. Selling off almost 40,000 acres of public land for development, it would allow Las Vegas to begin to sprawl outward from the bounds of the Las Vegas Valley.

It would also legislatively amend the plan that guides protection of the desert tortoise, an animal with threatened status under federal law, putting politicians instead of scientists in charge of protecting Nevada’s official state reptile.

Clark County leaders should consider the broader national political context surrounding this proposal.

Trump doesn’t know public lands from public restrooms, but his cronies like Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, are busily dismantling our country’s entire environmental regulatory system.

Recent examples include:

• Legislation rammed through by Bishop that would allow oil drilling and fracking in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge;
• Trump’s possibly illegal move, on Zinke’s recommendation, to strip protections from more than one million acres of conservation lands in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah through executive fiat;
• Zinke’s Secretarial Orders shortcutting environmental review laws to expedite oil and gas drilling and fracking.

Indeed, a proposal with similar provisions to the Clark County bill just worked its way through Bishop’s House committee. The duplicitously named “Desert Tortoise Habitat Conservation Plan” bill from Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, would put Congress in charge of the management of the desert tortoise in Washington County, Utah, blasting a highway and utility corridors through tortoise conservation areas in the name of expedient development without scientific review or input.

Thus it should come as no surprise that the Las Vegas Review-Journal, owned by Trump supporter and GOP-mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, editorialized in favor of the county’s proposal last week.

What’s more, the paper framed it in terms of the larger public lands seizure movement: the Review-Journal editorial page views the Clark County proposal as just the first step in privatizing all of Nevada’s public lands.

This all begs the question: Why on earth would well-intentioned conservationists and ostensible Democrats on the county commission be negotiating with the anti-public lands, anti-conservation troika of Trump, Zinke, and Bishop and their ilk? It is unclear what outcome they could possibly hope for when it is so clear that negotiations at the federal level with these men would be conducted in bad faith.

And what’s next for Southern Nevada and our state reptile? Will we see a new Trump National Golf Course on former public lands south of the city? Will the tortoise continue its slide to extinction while developers get fat on profits from newly minted subdivisions?

Will the Endangered Species Act continue to be chipped away by the nefarious forces that have hijacked our federal government and pursue reckless development at all costs?

There is a time for discussions and a time for negotiations. But there is also a time to say no, and to resist. And that time is now.

The post Guest op-ed: County land bill is a wish list for privatizers appeared first on Nevada Current.