Gold Butte update from Friends of Nevada Wilderness

More and more people are falling in love with the beauty and special resources found in the Gold Butte region. Let's all work together in 2010 to ensure this unique region gets the long-term protection it deserves. We hope to see legislation that would create the Gold Butte National Conservation Area and designate a number of stunning wild places as wilderness. We also want to make sure that these designations allow for public access and are consistent with the BLM's travel management plan for the region.

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.

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.

Small red rock butte at Gold Butte vertical slot at Gold Butte

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.