‘They’re relying on us’: Republican-led commission votes to support Ash Meadows protections

The Nye County Commission added itself to a growing chorus of local officials lobbying Congress to expand Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge to become the state’s fourth national conservation area.

As officials and residents expressed Tuesday before a unanimous vote, any further threat to the declining water table that serves the wildlife of “the Galapagos of the Mojave Desert” and rural well users alike is unacceptable.

“It’s vital that we protect and that we are the voices of all of the people, plants and those that cannot speak for themselves,” said Commissioner Bruce Jabbour, whose massive district includes the unincorporated towns of Amargosa Valley, Beatty, Tonopah and Round Mountain. “They’re relying on us.”

The proposed boundary for the national conservation area would include more than 185,000 acres around the current national wildlife refuge, providing a buffer for development as solar farms descend on rural towns.

The Amargosa Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for the preservation of the Amargosa River watershed, began the push after a developer submitted a plan for a solar farm that would come within a mile of the wildlife refuge — home to many endangered species of pupfish found nowhere else but the refuge’s crystal blue springs.

“At the end of the day, life in this extreme desert goes where the water goes,” the nonprofit’s executive director, Mason Voehl, told commissioners. “And if we can get the balance right now, we can ensure that no new ghost towns are made in southern Nye County.”

Temporary protections preventing prospectors from staking new mining claims, spurred from what advocates say is now a long-shot 20-year mining pause under the Trump administration, will expire at the end of the year.

‘Speak for the land and the water’

A handful of residents spoke in support of the agenda item, some pointing to how the Amargosa River just made the nation’s top 10 most endangered rivers list, put out last month by the nonprofit American Rivers.

Carolyn Allen, Amargosa Valley town board chair, said during public comment Tuesday that the new national conservation area would strike a balance between allowing development in designated areas and ensuring that groundwater declines don’t become steeper.

“Simply put, this is a place where we must get this transition right now or risk losing it forever,” Allen said.

So far, the other entities that have expressed support are the town boards of Amargosa Valley and Beatty, as well as the councils of the Timbisha Shoshone and Chemehuevi tribes.

U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., has not yet committed to introducing a bill outright but has said in statements that she would be in favor of more robust protections for Ash Meadows.

“For the Timbisha Shoshone people, this work is not only about conservation,” the Timbisha Shoshone tribal council wrote in a letter. “It is about responsibility. It is about honoring the legacy of those who came before us and protecting the future of those yet to come. We carry the duty to speak for the land and the water, because they cannot speak for themselves.”