January 16, 2025 - Pahrump, NV - The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued a Record of Decision today approving the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project on public lands located just south of Pahrump, Nevada, in spite of the grave impacts the project will inflict on federally protected Mojave desert tortoises. 

The project site is located on diverse high elevation habitat for several other important Mojave Desert species as well. These include Joshua trees, Mojave yuccas, kit foxes, American badgers, rare cacti, kangaroo rats, roadrunners, and LeConte’s thrashers.

The Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project is a proposed 400-megawatt solar photovoltaic facility on 2,400 acres of public land that would replace nearly 4 square miles of Mojave Desert habitat with solar panels, battery storage banks, substations, and new transmission lines. The project is one of 5 new large-scale solar projects and new transmission lines proposed for Mojave Desert habitat on public lands south of Pahrump, Nevada. 

Read more >>here.

December 26, 2024 - Pahrump, NV - Basin and Range Watch along with The Coalition to Protect America's National Parks joined a lawsuit initiated by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) to protect the Old Spanish National Historic Trail from energy sprawl on public lands. 

The the full story >>here.

December 12th, 2024 - The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has prepared this Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Copper Rays Solar Project and is taking comments until December 19th, 2024.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Southern Nevada District Office, has released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the construction and operation of the 700 megawatt Copper Rays Solar Project project including battery energy storage and interconnection to the regional transmission system proposed on public lands. The Copper Rays Solar Project is located on approximately 4,414 acres of BLM-managed public land in Nye County, Nevada, southeast of the town of Pahrump and 40 miles west of Las Vegas and includes a photovoltaic solar power generating facility with battery storage and interconnection to the regional transmission system. The electricity generated from the project would be collected at the onsite substation and conveyed to the existing Gamebird substation located northwest of the project site via a gen-tie transmission line. Construction for the facilities is estimated to take approximately 54-months over two phases. All energy would be exported to California. 

The project will create multiple environmental and socioeconomic impacts. 

Development would impact mesquite woodlands, habitat for rare plants on alkali soils, desert tortoise population, Ice Age fossils, cultural landscapes and archeology sites, visual resources (including the Old Spanish Trail viewshed), and overuse of groundwater. 

The Copper Rays Solar Project will need 1,750 acre feet of water and seeks to drill a well onsite. This will draw down the aquifer and most likely impact the mesquite on the site which is used by neotropical migrating birds. It could also lower private wells in the south Pahrump Valley. See more >>here.

November 22, 2024 - Lathrop Wells, Nevada -  The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has moved this large solar application forward into the variance and application evaluation phase, and has held public meetings. Unfortunately BLM already placed this project on High Priority in the variance determination, and is gathering more information on whether to move forward in the environmental review.

The project is proposed at over 10,000 acres of public lands desert ecosystem, and 1,600 megawatts. Read more, including a field trip report >>here.

November 12, 2024 - Indian Springs, NV - Basin & Range Watch attended the November 6 public meeting on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) held at Indian Springs, Nevada. The utility-scale solar project application lies just north of Cactus Springs up the road along US 95, on prime Mojave desert tortoise habitat that is also a crucial connectivity corridor for the tortoise according to the best available science. The area is important for local recreation. 

EDF Renewables, a French utility company, is the proponent for the solar project, and reps were present at the meeting. More >>here. Plus: Sample letter to send.

November 4, 2024 - Beatty, NV - Greenlink West Transmission Project was recently approved to be built on public lands from natural gas generating stations at Apex, Nevada, to Reno-Sparks data centers and industrial factories. The impacts to desert tortoise, sage grouse, Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, rare plant populations, and wild areas in remote Nevada will be huge.

But we underestimated the gigantic impacts to one small town as the NV Energy-owned project begins the early construction phase. Representatives from the construction contractor came to Beatty, in Nye County, Nevada tonight, to a town board meeting, to demand resources from this small, rural town which is already supporting by gold exploration and tourism. The new large socioeconomic impacts were not analyzed in the environmental review, and we just learned about them tonight. Read more to hear about how rural towns will be strained when developers come through, bringing impacts but giving little back to most people locally >>here.

November 3, 2024 - Barstow, CA - NextEra Energy sent in a Standard Form 299 application to the Buresu of Land Management, which we obtained. They are seeking to build a 300-megawatt photovoltaic project on 2,866 acres of public lands, and some on private lands, in two parcels. This is wedged in between the west side of Mojave Trails National Monument and the Ord-Rodman Critical Habitat unit for federally threatened Mojave desert tortoise on the other side. The application is outside of a Development Focus Area and on General Public lnads as classified in the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan area. Will this set a bad precedent? The applicant wants to interconnect to the existing Pisgah Substation with flat lands around it. Yet the area is near lava flows and desert bighron sheep populations. Read more >>here.

October 25, 2024 - Tonopah NV - The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has prepared this Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Esmeralda Seven Solar Projects in remote Nevada. The comment period closed on October 24.

Some of the huge impacts of this proposed energy sprawl project include:

• Sand cholla (Opuntia pulchella), a BLM sensitive species and Nevada fully protected species, was observed on the project area.

• 279 miles of new chainlink fencing would be constructed in the proposed alternative. This will fragment habitat and block large areas of connectivity for bighorn sheep, which regularly travel and disperse between mountain ranges.

• BLM’s Preferred Alternative would grade flat 35% of the desert, vegetation, and rangelands. 

• BLM estimates that 10,607 acre-feet per year of water will be needed for the solar field and battery storage areas for dust suppression. Water would be purchased from a public or private entity and trucked in, or new wells within the solar project area would be drilled. 

Read more, and read our detailed comments sent in to BLM >>here.

October 2, 2024 - Basin and Range Watch, along with other groups, have commented all long the way during the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) review, and we filed our Protest on October 1. The Bureau of Land Management failed to address many of our concerns, such as failing to analyze our nominated Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, failing to exclude crucial Mojave desert tortoise connectivity corridors from solar development, grandfathering in earlier solar applications on high-value public lands, and pushing a large amount of solar development areas into the sagebrush habitats which will impact sage grouse, pygmy rabbits, pronghorn antelope, and the socioeconomics of rural communities.

Read all our comments uploaded into our public library of PDFs >>here.

September 10, 2024 - Reno, NV - The Greenlink North Transmission Project proposed from Ely to Yerington, Nevada, moved forward on September 10, 2024, when BLM announced the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for public comment. This next stage of the large Greenlink Transmission Project would open up remote sage grouse habitat along “The Loneliest Road”—US 50-- in central Nevada. This is the second leg of the Greenlink Project set to open the remote Nevada Outback up top renewable energy development. Greenlink West is the first leg.

The public comment period is 90 days. Bureau of Land Management: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2017033/510

September 6, 2024 - Las Vegas NV - The $4.2-billion Greenlink West Transmission Project was approved on September 6, 2024, to be constructed across more than 400 miles of wildlands, including public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from Las Vegas to Reno-Sparks, Nevada, opening up tens of thousands of acres of habitat for Mojave desert tortoise, sage grouse, pygmy rabbit, pronghorn antelope, and rare plants to remote solar development. The new 525-kilovolt electric line would have power poles 200 feet tall crossing Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument managed by the National Park Service. The Record of Decision was signed by the Acting Deputy Secretary of Interior on September 9, 2024, with no appeals allowed. This represents the final agency action and approval, and the utility NV Energy plans to begin construction in phases, starting in December 2024 in the Amargosa Valley segment. NV Energy ratepayers will pay for this approved transmission project on their monthly bills for years. See Bureau of Land Management: https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2017391/510

See more >>here.

September 6, 2024 - Indian Springs Valley, NV - Today, the Bureau of Land Management released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Bonanza Solar Project, a 2,413-acre photovoltaic project on public lands that would be built in what experts have determined to be “the most crucial Mojave desert tortoise connectivity corridor in Southern Nevada,” according to a study by the U.S. Geological Survey. Over three square miles of tortoise habitat would be destroyed, and the power would be exported to the Southern California Public Power Authority in Pasadena, California. Nevada would see no long-term benefits of the proposed project, only ecosystem sacrifice. Press release >>here.

See more at our Cactus Springs Area of Critical Environmental Concer nomination page.

July 2, 2024 - Pahrump NV - Basin & Range Watch, Mojave Green, Old Spanish Trail Association and others nominated an Area of Critical Environmental Concern this week to the Bureau of Land Management, as an alternative to large-scale solar development on this intact Mojave Desert landscape, and to protect recreation on these public lands. 

See the press release from July 29, 2024 at the link below.

See more >>here.

March 18, 2024 - Las Vegas, NV - A coalition of organizations and individuals are requesting that the Department of the Interior (Interior) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) cancel the proposed large-scale solar energy project located south of Pahrump, Nevada called the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project because of significant impacts to the imperiled Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii).

See the Rough Hat Solar Project page.

Sign the Petition!

Sample letter to send. Conservation organizations nominated a high-value Mojave Desert habitat for protection to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), requesting the establishment of a 58,000-acre Cactus Springs Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) located just north of Cactus Springs, Nevada, in the Indian Springs Valley northwest of Las Vegas. The region has been described by the US Fish and Wildlife Service as the “most critical desert tortoise connectivity corridor in Nevada.”

See more >>here

January 14, 2024 - Pahrump, NV - The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has just released an Environmental Impact Statement for the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project, a proposed 400-megawatt solar photovoltaic facility on 2,400 acres of public land that would replace nearly 4 square miles of good quality Mojave Desert habitat with solar panels, battery storage banks and new transmission lines. The project is only one of 6 large-scale solar projects and transmission upgrades either built or proposed for Mojave Desert habitat on public lands managed by BLM south of Pahrump, Nevada.  Deadline to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement is April 11, 2024.

To build a solar project in such a big area, large grading equipment must clear the path for solar panels. Plants, animal burrows, biological soil crust and desert pavement all must be graded or crushed to clear the way for panels and associated facilities. It also needs to be noted that all of these living organisms sequester C02, and their removal contributes to climate change. More >>here.

January 10, 2024 - Laughlin, NV - The Bureau of Land Management is considering Resource Management Plan amendments and preparing an Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate modifying (revising, deleting, or adding to) seven designated Section 368 energy corridors (also known as West-wide Energy Corridors). The BLM proposes to amend 19 BLM RMPs in seven states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming). Ani Kwa Ame National Monument could have a 2-mile wide corridor cut through it. See more at our 368 Corridor page.

November 10, 2023 - Tonopah NV - In an unprecedented move, the Bureau of Land Management is streamlining the environmental review for seven solar projects located on 118,631 acres (158 square miles) in one programmatic environmental impact statement. Read the story and our field site visit report. 

November 12, 2023 - Moapa NV - Gemini Solar Project is touted as a "model" better way to develop solar energy projects on desert ecosystems. We investigated. Based on all the classic tenets of conservation biology, we strongly disagree. Stay tuned for this important field report.

November 11, 2023 - Spring Valley, NV - We opposed Spring valley Wind Project next to Great Basin National park several years ago, in a basin that harbored an abundant wintering eagle population. The wind project was approved on public lands, in a low wind resource area, and our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request discovered three golden eagle kills recently: 2 in 2015 and one in 2019. More >>here.