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of the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), which encompasses over 2.9 million acres of federal land that has been withdrawn from public use and reserved for military use by the U.S. Air Force.