News
Desert National Wildlife Refuge
We hope you will join us for our 2022 Wildlife Refuge Awards hosted in Washington D.C. and live-streamed on September 14th, 2022 starting at 7 pm ET. Check out a preview of the evening by watching the video!
Don’t mess with the National Wildlife Refuge System (Refuge System). If you do, Federal Wildlife Officer Robert Peloquin of Las Vegas is there to set you straight, with education, awareness and dignity. For his 20 years of service at the Desert National Wildlife Refuge Complex (DNWRC), dedication to the Refuge System and his record of accomplishments, Robert was recently named the National Wildlife Refuge Association’s Employee of the Year.
The National Wildlife Refuge Association announced that Shaaron Netherton, Jose Witt and the Friends of Nevada Wilderness are the 2021 National Wildlife Refuge System Advocates of the Year. They are being honored for their efforts to develop support for protecting the Desert National Wildlife Refuge (DNWR) in Nevada. Mr. Witt and Ms. Netherton worked tirelessly to engage and inspire a diversity of people and organizations to support the Refuge, which generated 32,000 public comments that were submitted to the Air Force, opposing the expansion of the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), which encompasses over 2.9 million acres of federal land that has been withdrawn from public use and reserved for military use by the U.S. Air Force.
Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) introduced a bill that would designate 1.3 million acres of wilderness in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. Located just outside the city limits of Las Vegas, the Desert NWR protects 1.6 million acres of the largest contiguous Desert bighorn sheep habitat in the Lower 48. This refuge is also home to the threatened Desert tortoise.
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate voted in veto-proof numbers to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which protects the Desert National Wildlife Refuge in southern Nevada for the next 25 years. This bill is the result of several months of negotiations between the two chambers of Congress in conference, and keeps the previous military boundaries within the Desert NWR intact.
This week was a momentous week for wildlife conservation and wildlife refuges on Capitol Hill! From the protection of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge to funding for Refuge System Operations and Maintenance to the permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, we thank Congress for their hard work to support our nation’s public lands.
On July 9th, 2020 the National Wildlife Refuge Association, joined the Desert Coalition to provide a live update on the #DontBombTheBighorn campaign. Thank you to our many great partners especially Refuge Friends group, Friends of the Nevada Wilderness.
Since taking office in January 2017, President Donald Trump has made environmental deregulation and habitat destruction one of the hallmarks of his presidency. From the clear-cutting of national wildilfe refuge lands along the US/Mexico border, to the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas development, to the support for expansion of the military even further into the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, we have seen a constant and unrelenting disregard for long-standing conservation principles.
The National Wildlife Refuge Association applauds Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jackie Rosen, and the Nevada House delegation, Representatives Steven Horsford, Dina Titus, Mark Amodei, and Susie Lee, for their ongoing appreciation for and efforts to protect the unique wildlife habitat in the Desert National Wildlife Refuge in southern Nevada. Overall, we appreciate the delegation’s efforts to bridge the divide between the desires of the Air Force to expand the NTTR and the wildlife needs of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, but we do have significant concerns about several aspects of the bill.
