At 1.6 million acres, the Desert National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) is the largest national wildlife refuge in the lower 48 states. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established this refuge in 1936 to protect one of the largest blocks of intact desert bighorn sheep habitat in the Southwest. The U.S. Air Force is now proposing to take control of over 1 million acres of these refuge lands.
The Desert NWR is located immediately north of Las Vegas, Nevada, and covers a wide array of habitats, from low-lying wetlands to high elevation forests. The refuge includes six distinct mountain ranges, with elevations ranging from 2,200 feet at the valley floor to over 10,000 feet. Annual rainfall ranges from less than 4 inches at low elevations to more than 15 inches on the highest peaks. The wide range of elevation and rainfall creates incredibly diverse habitats for a wide variety of flora and fauna, with seven recognized plant zones, including salt brush in the valleys and long-lived bristlecone pines at the highest elevations. The refuge also contains over 450 recorded prehistoric sites, including both petroglyphs (carved stone) and pictographs (rock paintings). Because of its generally pristine character, over 1.4 million acres of the Desert NWR have been proposed for wilderness designation.
After the refuge was established, a series of Presidential Executive Orders and Congressional actions gave the U.S. Air Force access to 850,000 acres of the refuge for the Nellis Test and Training Range. However, the Desert NWR continues to maintain primary jurisdiction and administrative control over these lands, as well as the remainder of the 1.6 million-acre refuge.
The areas of the Refuge not overlain by U.S. Air Force activities provide hiking, camping, horseback riding, and hunting opportunities for visitors from the rapidly growing Las Vegas area as well as for tourists from other states and countries.
The Air Force’s Nellis Test and Training Range comprises about 2.9 million acres of lands withdrawn from the public domain, including the 850,000 acres overlaying the refuge. Public domain lands are generally controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, but may be “withdrawn” for specific uses, such as national wildlife refuges, national parks or military bases. Most parks and refuges have indefinite withdrawals of public domain lands. But Congress required the Department of Defense to seek congressional authorization every 20 years for continued withdrawal of Nellis’s 2.9 million acres. As part of its upcoming request to renew the withdrawal authorization, the Air Force prepared a Draft Legislative Environmental Impact Statement (LEIS) which proposes to request Congress to give them “ready access” (i.e., complete control) over the existing 850,000-acre refuge overlay, as well as control over an additional 260,000 acres of Desert NWR for an indefinite period.
The Refuge Association is greatly concerned about the impacts to the Refuge’s biological and cultural resources, as well as the loss of public access and wilderness values from this proposal. In addition, the Draft LEIS states that if the Nellis Test and Training Range were to close today, the Department of Defense would face cleanup costs ranging from $1 billion to $4 billion. Adding even more lands to the military training range would greatly increase future cleanup costs for the federal government.