Irreversible impacts would occur for wildlife, desert flora, water resources, visual resources, and the quality of life for residents. Conservation groups are requesting that Interior Secretary Haaland and the BLM withdraw the Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project located on public lands south of Pahrump, Nevada. (See the letter to the Department of Interior, below.)

The Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project is a proposed 400-megawatt solar photovoltaic facility on 2,400 acres that would destroy nearly 4 square miles of Mojave Desert habitat for solar panels, battery storage banks, and new transmission lines. The project is one of 6 large-scale solar projects and transmission upgrades either built or proposed for Mojave Desert habitat on public lands in the area.

The project site is beautiful Mojave Desert over 3,000 feet in elevation, receives 5 to 10 inches of rain annually and supports a healthy, reproducing desert tortoise population.

The proposed solar project partly overlaps with a closed grazing allotment that was meant to be conservation mitigation land for the tortoise in exchange for urban growth over Las Vegas Valley.

The Environmental Impact Statement for the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project estimates that there are 114 adult desert tortoises on the site. Usually, the number of juvenile tortoises is more than the number of adults on any given habitat site. The US Fish and Wildlife Service only requires that adult tortoises be moved and not juveniles due to the difficulty of finding dollar-coin-sized juvenile tortoises, but this means that hundreds of juvenile and hatchling desert tortoises will likely be crushed or buried alive by large earth-moving equipment. Nearly 3 times as many tortoises were found on the adjacent 3,000-acre Yellow Pine Solar Project site than predicted by project biologists who used the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s survey protocol for estimating tortoise numbers. Tortoises were relocated on a record-breaking drought year and 33 were killed by badgers in their new location. 

“Approval of the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project will likely contribute to this on-going extinction trend by digging up and moving over 100 adult desert tortoises,” said Kevin Emmerich, Co-founder of Basin and Range Watch. “Associated with desert tortoises are dozens of other species of plants and animals that will be harmed by this project. The desert tortoise is a true indicator species of the overall health of Mojave Desert habitat.”

The desert tortoise was listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 and has seen sharp population declines in several of its Recovery Units due to causes including solar energy development and production. Starting in 2009, utility-scale solar energy applications have been accepted on thousands of acres of tortoise habitat throughout the range of the species. Over 75,000 acres of this habitat has been developed for solar energy so far with more solar projects proposed for development.  

The desert tortoise density predicted for the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project is estimated to be 5.6 per square kilometer. The tortoise density of this project site surpasses 17 of the established US Fish and Wildlife Service designated Critical Habitat units for the desert tortoise. 

In total, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that the desert tortoise has seen a 37 percent range-wide decline from 2004 to 2014 during counts, and this downward trend is continuing in most populations that are needed for survival and recovery of the species or is not showing improvement. For the last few years of monitoring data collected by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the data indicated that four of five have tortoise recovery units have population densities below the population viability threshold. 

“We support solar project construction on already disturbed lands, and distributed solar in the existing built environment,” said Laura Cunningham, biologist and California director with Western Watersheds Project. “This Mojave Desert ecosystem is a large, intact landscape that should be protected, and not developed for energy production when better alternatives exist.”

Solar energy does not need to be built on the most sensitive habitats. Alternative locations include rooftops of residential and commercial/industrial buildings, degraded lands, and well-planned Solar Energy Zones on public lands that could be used to avoid these impacts. Enough important habitat has been compromised for utility-scale energy and we have the technology and ability to avoid these habitats. 

Basin and Range Watch is a nonprofit working to conserve the deserts of Nevada and California and to educate the public about the diversity of life, culture, and history of the ecosystems and wild lands of the desert.

Western Watersheds Project is a nonprofit environmental conservation group dedicated to protecting and restoring wildlife and watersheds throughout the American West.

The Letter Sent to Interior Secretary Haaland:

March 18th, 2024

To:

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland

Laura Daniel Davis, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management

Department of the Interior

1849 C St NW 

Washington, DC 20240

Director Tracy Stone Manning

Bureau of Land Management

1849 C Street NW 

Washington, DC 20240

Nada Wolff Culver, Principal Deputy Director

Bureau of Land Management 

1849 C Street NW 

Washington, DC 20240

Jon Raby, Nevada State Director 

Bureau of Land Management 

1340 Financial Blvd 

Reno, NV 89502

Paul Souza, Director Region 8 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 

Pacific Southwest Region 

2800 Cottage Way 

Sacramento, CA 95825

Via US mail

Re: Petition to the Interior Department to Cancel the Environmental Impact Statement review of the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project

Dear Secretary Haaland, Assistant Director Davis, Director Stone-Manning, Deputy Director Culver, State Director Raby, and Director Souza,

Due to the large-scale elimination of viable, intact habitat for the federally threatened Mojave desert tortoise throughout its range in the Southwestern United States, the undersigned request that Secretary Haaland, and the Interior Department cancel the Environmental Impact Statement and further review of the proposed Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project located on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) south of Pahrump, Nevada.

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 good quality Mojave desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) habitat with solar panels, battery storage banks, and new transmission lines. The project is one of 6 large-scale solar projects and transmission upgrades either built or proposed in Mojave desert tortoise habitat on public lands managed by BLM south of Pahrump, Nevada. 

The project site is over 3,000 feet in elevation, receives 5 to 10 inches of rain annually, and supports a healthy, reproducing desert tortoise population.

The draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project estimates that there are 114 adult desert tortoises on the site. According to population models based on life table information, the number of juvenile tortoises in a population should be much greater than the number of adults. However, most field studies find far more adult desert tortoises than juveniles, which indicates that juvenile recruitment is low at these sites, likely due to high rates of predation by common ravens. 

The 2020 Biological Opinion for the Yellow Pine Solar Project issued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the number of adult tortoises to be 66 in the 4,284.5-acre fenced solar footprint, while the number of juvenile tortoises was estimated to be 434. These data suggest that the population here is healthy and exhibits high juvenile recruitment. It should also be noted that nearly 3 times more tortoises were found on the adjacent 3,000-acre Yellow Pine Solar Project site than were predicted by project biologists. 

The US Fish and Wildlife Service requires that only adult tortoises be moved and not juveniles due to their higher mortality rates, but this means that hundreds of desert tortoise juveniles and hatchlings will probably be crushed and killed by large earth-moving equipment. Tortoises located by biologists would be moved 5 miles south to the Stump Spring and Trout Canyon translocation areas. 

However, translocation should not be assumed to be the solution to deal with tortoises for projects approved in tortoise habitat. The “success” of translocation depends on several factors including the absence of drought, the ability of the translocation area to support additional tortoises, social interactions between resident and translocated tortoises, and effective management of the translocation areas to minimize/eliminate human-caused threats to the tortoise. Mack and Berry (2023) monitored translocated adult tortoises for 10 years. They learned that 17.72% of the tortoises survived, 65.82% died, 15.19% were missing, and 1.27% were removed from the study because they returned to the original site. Mortality was high during the first 3 years: >50% of the released animals died, primarily from predation. Thereafter, mortality declined but remained high. Thus, few tortoises survived during this translocation effort. The authors considered the translocation unsuccessful because > 50% of the tortoises died (Mack and Berry 2023). In addition, during the first four years, male tortoises that were translocated did not produce offspring with resident or translocated female tortoises. This means their genes were not added to the population at the translocation site (Mulder et al. 2017).

The desert tortoise was listed as Threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act in 1990 and has seen substantial declines in all five Recovery Units according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) data through 2021 (please see the two tables below). Starting in 2009, large-scale solar energy applications have been accepted on tens of thousands of acres of tortoise habitat and over 75,000 acres of this tortoise habitat have been developed so far for solar energy. In the Pahrump Valley in 2021, 139 tortoises were moved off the adjacent Yellow Pine Solar Project during a record-breaking drought and 33 were killed by badgers. The habitat on the Rough Hat Clark site is even more suitable for desert tortoises due, in part, to its higher elevation. This may prove important in helping tortoises survive during predicted environmental impacts from climate change, making this location desirable for future survival and management for the tortoise.

The desert tortoise density predicted for the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project was originally estimated to be 3.4 tortoises per square kilometer (km2).  In 2022, the BLM admitted that the project site predicted density is actually 5.6 per square kilometer. It needs to be noted that the tortoise density of the project site now exceeds 7 of the established U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated Critical Habitat units for the desert tortoise. 

Table 1. 

Table 2.

The first table includes the area of each Recovery Unit and Tortoise Conservation Area (TCA), percent of total habitat, density (number of breeding adults/km2 and standard errors = SE), and the percent change in population density between 2004 and 2014 (Allison and McLuckie 2018). Populations below the viable population level of 3.9 breeding individuals/km2 (10 breeding individuals per mi2) (assumes a 1:1 sex ratio) and showing a decline from 2004 to 2014 are in red.

In total, the USFWS has determined that the desert tortoise has seen a 37 percent range-wide decline between 2004 and 2014 and has not experienced any improvement. In the Eastern Mojave Recovery Unit where the proposed Rough Hat Solar Project would be located, the desert tortoise has seen a 67 percent decline in tortoise density between 2004 and 2014 (Allison and McLuckie 2018). Approval of the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project will predictably contribute to this on-going extinction trend.

The second table shows the estimated density of adult tortoises since 2014 using USFWS data (USFWS 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022a, 2022b). Between 1998 and 2019, tortoises in the core reserve area of the Upper Virgin River Recovery Unit declined more than 50 percent (Eddington 2024) and tortoise densities in the Northeastern Mojave Recovery Unit declined in three of the four TCAs to densities less than that needed for population viability (USFWS 1994). 

The BLM has designated the entire region as Priority 2 Desert Tortoise Connectivity Habitat (https://solareis.anl.gov/documents/fpeis/maps/FWS_Connectivity_Explanation.pdf). These are defined as blocks of habitat with the greatest potential to support populations of desert tortoises, outside least cost corridors, and may also have important value to recovery. 

The 1994 Desert Tortoise Recovery Plan (USFWS 1994) states that: “Large blocks of habitat, containing large populations of the target species, are superior to small blocks of habitat containing small populations.” The Revised Recovery Plan emphasized the need for linkage habitats to be managed to maintain gene flow between tortoise in Tortoise Conservation Areas (e.g., critical habitat units, etc.) (USFWS 2011). Thus, managing more than designated critical habitat is needed for the survival and recovery of the tortoise. 

Regarding linkage habitat to provide and manage for population connectivity for the tortoise, Averill-Murray et al. (2021) stated that “Ignoring minor or temporary disturbance on the landscape could result in a cumulatively large impact that is not explicitly acknowledged (Goble, 2009); therefore, understanding and quantifying all surface disturbance on a given landscape is prudent.” They further stated that “habitat linkages among TCAs must be wide enough to sustain multiple home ranges or local clusters of resident tortoises (Beier and others, 2008; Morafka, 1994), while accounting for edge effects, in order to sustain regional tortoise populations.” The lifetime home range for the Mojave desert tortoise is more than 1.5 square miles (3.9 square kilometers) of habitat (Berry 1986) and tortoises may make periodic forays of more than 7 miles (11 kilometers) at a time (Berry 1986). Consequently, effective linkage habitats are not long narrow corridors. Any development within them has an edge effect (i.e., indirect impact) that 

extends from all sides into the linkage habitat further narrowing or impeding the use of the linkage habitat, depending on the extent of the edge effect. 

Solar energy projects require so much land, they have become one of the major threats to the desert tortoise along with highways, urban sprawl, ravens, invasive species, and climate change. 

The Interior Department has the authority to cancel a National Environmental Policy Act review and has done so in the past. In 2018, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Energy and Infrastructure Team canceled the Environmental Impact Statement for the Crescent Peak Wind Project near Searchlight, Nevada, which would have developed over 200 wind turbines on 38,000 acres of sensitive wildlife habitat in what is now the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument.  

In 2021, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland canceled the Environmental Impact Statement that would have weakened many of the conservation actions approved under the California Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (see  https://www.blm.gov/press-release/official-statement-department-interior-will-revoke-blms-comment-period-proposed). 

Large-scale solar projects can be sited in many different locations. The Interior Department is mandated to protect the desert tortoise and other species protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act. 

The Federal Endangered Species Act was established in 1973 with the goal of preventing extinction, recovering plants and animals, and preventing habitat loss. These goals cannot be accomplished when thousands of acres at a time are approved for habitat removal. With so many alternative locations for solar projects, we question how responsible it is to approve this development on so much important wildlife habitat.

For the sake of the future viability of the desert tortoise, please cancel the Environmental Impact Statement review for the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project. 

Thank you,

Kevin Emmerich

Co-Founder

Basin and Range Watch

Laura Cunningham

California Director

Western Watersheds Project

Edward L. LaRue, Jr., M.S.

Desert Tortoise Council

Ecosystems Advisory Committee 

John Hadder

Executive Director

Great Basin Resource Watch

Steve Bardwell

President

Morongo Basin Conservation Association

Shannon Salter

Mojave Green

Katie Fite                                                                                     

Public Lands Director

Wildlands Defense

Stacy Goss

Desert Survivors

References:

Allison L.J. and A.M. McLuckie. 2018. Population trends in Mojave desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii). Herpetological Conservation and Biology. 2018 Aug 1;13(2):433-52. http://www.herpconbio.org/Volume_13/Issue_2/Allison_McLuckie_2018.pdf

Averill-Murray, R.C., T.C. Esque, L.J. Allison, S. Bassett, S.K. Carter, K.E. Dutcher, S.J. Hromada, K.E. Nussear, and K. Shoemaker. 2021. Connectivity of Mojave Desert tortoise populations—Management implications for maintaining a viable recovery network. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2021–1033, 23 p., https://doi.org/ 10.3133/ ofr20211033. https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2021/1033/ofr20211033.pdf

Berry, K.H. 1986. Desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii) relocation: Implications of social behavior and movements. Herpetologica 42:113-125. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3892242.

Desert Tortoise Council. 2018. Letter dated 12 August 2018, RE: Opposition to Senator Mike Lee’s "Desert Tortoise Habitat Conservation Plan Expansion Act" (S. 3297), to Senator Lisa Murkowski, by Ed LaRue, Jr., Desert Tortoise Council.

Eddington, M. 2024. Utah’s tortoise population in free fall, scientists warn: Wildlife biologists blame drought, wildfires, habitat loss and human activity for drop of more than 50%.Salt Lake City Tribune. January 24, 2024. https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2024/01/24/southern-utahs-mojave-desert/vehicle

Mack, J.S., and K.H. Berry. 2023. Drivers of survival of translocated tortoises. Journal of Wildlife Management 87(2): (27 pages) (February 2023) 87:e22352. https://doi.org/10.1002/jwmg.22352

OR https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.22352

Mulder, K.P., A.D. Walde, W.I. Boarman, A. P. Woodman, E.K. Latch, and R.C. Fleischer. 2017. No paternal genetic integration in desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) following translocation into an existing population. Biological Conservation, June 2017 210A:318-324. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320717307127

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 1994. Desert Tortoise (Mojave Population) Recovery Plan. June 1994. Prepared for Regions 1, 2, and 6 of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region I - Lead Region, Portland, Oregon. 73 pages plus appendices. https://ecos.fws.gov/docs/recovery_plan/940628.pdf

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2011. Revised Recovery Plan for the Mojave Population of the Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii). U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, California and Nevada Region, Sacramento, California. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USFWS.2011.RRP%20for%20the%20Mojave%20Desert%20Tortoise.pdf

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2016. Range-wide Monitoring of the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii): 2015 and 2016 Annual Reporting. Report by the Desert Tortoise Recovery Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Reno, Nevada. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USFWS.2016%20report.%20Rangewide%20monitoring%20report%202015-16.pdf

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2018. Range-wide Monitoring of the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii): 2017 Annual Reporting. Report by the Desert Tortoise Recovery Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Reno, Nevada. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USFWS.2018%20report.%20Rangewide%20monitoring%20report%202017.pdf

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2019. Range-wide Monitoring of the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii): 2018 Annual Reporting. Report by the Desert Tortoise Recovery Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Reno, Nevada. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USFWS.2019%20report.%20Rangewide%20monitoring%20report%202018.pdf

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2020. Range-wide Monitoring of the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii): 2019 Annual Reporting. Report by the Desert Tortoise Recovery Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Reno, Nevada. 42 pages. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2019_Rangewide%20Mojave%20Desert%20Tortoise%20Monitoring.pdf

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2022a. Range-wide Monitoring of the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii): 2020 Annual Reporting. Report by the Desert Tortoise Recovery Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Reno, Nevada. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USFWS.2022%20report.%20Rangewide%20monitoring%20report%202020.pdf

[USFWS] U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 2022b. Range-wide Monitoring of the Mojave Desert Tortoise (Gopherus agassizii): 2021 Annual Reporting. Report by the Desert Tortoise Recovery Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Reno, Nevada. https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/USFWS.2022%20report.%20Rangewide%20monitoring%20report%202021.pdf

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Draft Environmental Impact Statement is Out for Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project

On November 14, 2019, Candela Renewables, LLC submitted a right-of-way application to the Las Vegas Field Office for a right-of-way grant to construct, operate, maintain, and eventually decommission the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project, a 400-megawatt photovoltaic power generating facility. The Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project is located on 2,400 acres of BLM-managed public land in Clark County, Nevada, southeast of the town of Pahrump and 38 miles west of Las Vegas. The Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project includes a photovoltaic solar power generating facility with battery storage and interconnection to the regional transmission system. See https://eplanning.blm.gov/eplanning-ui/project/2019992/510

Deadline April 11, 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.  

The project site is over 3,000 feet in elevation, receives 5 to 10 inches of rain annually and supports a rich diversity of Mojave Desert flora and fauna. 

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. 

“While the BLM and the solar developers will do their best to minimize impacts, this can be considered a great loss of old growth Mojave Desert Habitat,” said Kevin Emmerich, co-founder of Basin and Range Watch. “We have seen so much intact Mojave Desert go under the blade for multiple development projects. Solar projects require so much land, they have become a major contributor to the decline of the iconic desert tortoise and other species. Solar energy should be developed on rooftops, over parking lots and on previously disturbed sites, not on intact habitat.”

These are just some of the many species that will be lost from the aggressive “green” development plans in this region of the Mojave Desert and on the Rough Hat Clark County Solar project site:

June 7, 2022 - Pahrump, NV - The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today that the 400-megawatt Rough Hat Clark Solar Project on 2,400 acres of public land just south of Pahrump, in Clark County, is moving forward in its application phase to an environmental review. Last winter BLM held a virtual Variance Process determination meeting, where the agency assessed whether this large-scale solar project should be allowed to be built outside of an established Solar Energy Zone. BLM determined that it could. Now BLM will prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and seek public comment.

We made several site visits to this alluvial fan, and it is high quality Mojave desert tortoise habitat and contains Joshua trees. Both can be moved out of the way of energy development. Recreational access will be cut off with 8-foot tall chainlink fences, and dust pollution will be a potential looming problem. Water will be needed to try to suppress dust during construction--where will that come from? The project is proposed for the west side of highway 160 close to the boundary of Nye County in south Pahrump Valley.

Stay tuned for more information as the scoping process begins for this utility-scale solar project by Candela Renewables, LLC--a company out of Spain. The Rough Hat name apparently comes from a local mine.

Rough Hat Clark and Nye Solar Projects archive page >>here.