Save the Esmeralda/Fish Lake ACEC

Monte Cristo Range by Kurt Kuznicki

This amazing place being bulldozed now by NV Energy to construct the Greenlink West powerline.

After years of exploring the amazingly intact volcanic wonderland of Esmeralda County, mapping it and conducting an intensive field inventory of the landscape, Friends of Nevada Wilderness decided that this intact landscape was worthy of special protection. We formally identified the Esmeralda/Fish Lake Area of Environmental Concern (ACEC) and in August, 2023, submitted it to the BLM for consideration. Unfortunately after two years of providing comments to the BLM on the importance of protecting these landscapes during both the Greenlink West transmission line EIS and the giant Esmeralda 7 solar facility EIS we have gotten no closer to protecting the ACEC. We have taken the extraordinary step for Friends of Nevada Wilderness and filed a lawsuit on May 28, 2025 against the BLM on the Greenlink West transmission line with its associated solar developments. These Esmeralda landscapes and resources need a champion and we will be that champion.

The wildness of this amazing region is being lost now as NV Energy and their bulldozers plow through the heart of our ACEC. In what appears to be a deliberate move, NV Energy jumped way north on their powerline construction directly into the Esmeralda/Fish Lake ACEC. FNW staffer Julien Pellegrini, who extensively inventoried and roamed this region for the last 15 years witnessed the destruction first hand on the last day of June. Julien reported seeing multiple housing units and campers, giant bulldozers, tractors and earth movers, a fleet of steamrollers and dump trucks, water and fuel tankers, and a huge bulldozed parking lot full of vehicles and an office building. Julien says “I am desperately heartbroken, it feels like I have lost on old friend.” This portion of Esmeralda County was completely surrounded by lands with wilderness character and the undeveloped valley was the core that held the wildness together.

The proposed ACEC covers 849,170 acres and comprises 508,867 acres of lands with Wilderness character, significant for their natural integrity and intactness. The remaining 337,303 acres include interconnected valleys, watersheds, important spring and aquifers, and playas that provide ecological and wildlife connectivity between the lands with Wilderness character. The Esmeralda/Fish Lake ACEC reflects environmental values that BLM policy says are important to preserve, including landscape intactness, significant cultural resources, sensitive and endemic wildlife and flora, as well as exceptionally dark skies and scenic vistas. There are about 23 species of animals and 42 plant species found here that are at risk or formally protected.

This entire area is seriously threatened

Actions that pose an immediate threat to this entire landscape that could change its character forever:

The first is the construction of the Greenlink West transmission line and substation. Despite the lawsuit Friends of Nevada Wilderness filed on May 28, 2025 on the BLM for failure to analyze an alternative that routed the Greenlink West line into an already built out powerline corridor – NV Energy’s bulldozers have recently begun destroying the heart of the ACEC building a substation for the powerline. In August, 2023, we and other partner organizations met with the BLM State Director to express our grave concerns with the alignment through the proposed ACEC and urged the BLM to place the transmission line to the north, along an already existing powerline corridor to avoid disturbing an intact landscape. Our efforts were unsuccessful, our formal protest filed in July, 2024 was denied and the BLM issued permits for the construction of the line to proceed.
The Esmeralda 7 solar energy project is a proposed 62,300 acre industrial development in the middle of our proposed ACEC connected to the Esmeralda substation that is currently being built by NV Energy. We analyzed the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for this project and prepared extensive comments in October of 2024 in partnership with numerous other organizations and the Walker River Tribe. While the final EIS was scheduled to be released in April 2025,we have still not seen the final EIS for this horrible project. When it is released we will file a protest and then be prepared to litigate once more to attempt to protect these landscapes.
BLM’s Westwide Solar Preliminary Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) identified more than 40% of Esmeralda County, including most of the proposed ACEC, as open to future solar energy development. We prepared extensive comments on this PEIS as well.

What can you do?

Sign this petition to tell BLM to protect this landscape from further development from the Esmeralda 7 and other solar proposals within the proposed ACEC.
Write a letter to the editor about why it's important to save unique landscapes like the proposed ACEC and why it makes so much more sense to locate these projects in already developed areas or areas with less sensitive cultural landscapes and wildlife habitat and migration corridors.