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Get on the Ground Visitor Center Wilderness Needs You!
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Help Protect the Gold Butte Region ACTION NEEDED: Please Please take a minute to contact:
Addresses and phone numbers are to the right. Gold Butte legislation introduced On Friday, September 26, 2008, Congresswoman Berkley introduced the Gold Butte National Conservation Area Act. This act would create the Gold Butte National Conservation Area and designate 7 BLM managed areas as wilderness and 6 National Park Service areas in the Lake Mead NRA. Some of the areas include the BLM Million Hills Wilderness Study Area, Bitter Ridge, Billy Goat Peak as well as the Scanlon Wash and Twin Springs Wilderness in Lake Mead NRA. This legislation is supported by the local government in Mesquite as well as by the Clark County Commission. The legislation is also consistent with the BLM’s travel plan for the Gold Butte region. Read the bill. Background Northeast of Las Vegas waits the 350,000-acre region known as Gold Butte, which offers wondrous geology, intriguing history and prehistory, remote and undeveloped camping opportunities, important and fragile wildlife species, and timeless solitude.
Impressive rock outcrops in the Gold Butte region © Ron Hunter
Gold Butte lies east of the Overton Arm of Lake Mead, west of the Arizona border, south of Virgin Peak, and north of the Colorado River. In this region, the Great Basin, Mojave, Sonoran and Colorado Plateau eco-regions all meet, each contributing a colorful piece to the region. The Bureau of Land Management has designated several Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) in the region to protect critical habitat for desert tortoise and 77 other plant and animal species, fragile rock art and other cultural resources, historic mining districts and unique scenery. Unfortunately, ACECs are administrative, which means they can be removed and don’t offer the permanence of Congressional protection like wilderness or national conservation area designation. In 2002, the Clark County public lands bill designated two small wilderness areas—Lime Canyon and Jumbo Springs. But these two areas comprise only 28,000 acres of this large, beautiful landscape. Many other places, such as Billy Goat Peak, the Million Hills Wilderness Study Area, Black Ridge and North Bitter Ridge are home to wonderful biological, cultural, scenic and historic resources that deserve protection from short-sighted ignorance and recklessness. It’s also feeling the brunt of excessive and uncontrolled off-road vehicle use and other disrespectful human activities. The lack of management or control of human activities in Gold Butte leaves means that many of the things that make this region wonderful might be destroyed before it’s too late. Poll Shows Strong Support for Gold Butte A recent poll of Clark County voters found broad, robust support for permanent protection of public lands in the Gold Butte region, which lies south of I-15 and Mesquite in southern Nevada. The poll was commissioned by the Nevada Wilderness Coalition and Friends of Gold Butte to determine public opinion about conservation of the Gold Butte region. You can read the entire press release.
Vista from Billy Goat Peak © Ron Hunter Why this legislation is important
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How to take action: "Wilderness is disappearing like a snow bank in the hot August sun." - Robert Marshall |
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