Friends of Nevada Wilderness

Nevada is blessed to be a state that is mostly public lands belonging to all Americans. It offers an outstanding range of outdoor recreation opportunities and vast tracks of quality habitat for wildlife. Friends of Nevada Wilderness focuses on protecting the remaining wildlands from development, keeping them wild for future generations. We accomplish this with three main focus areas.

Goal - Permanent Protection
Friends of Nevada Wilderness goal is to protect all deserving wildlands in Nevada through our legislative program. To accomplish this we work with our Nevada delegation, local elected officials, agency partners, ranchers, sportsmen, recreationists, etc., to find common sense boundaries for permanent protection of our deserving public lands. These are lands managed for the public by the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, National Park Service or US Fish and Wildlife Service. Generally, these are county-wide efforts that address conservation and economic development. Along with Wilderness protections we have worked on the creation of national conservation areas and national monuments within Nevada.

Goal – Caring for the land with our Volunteer Wilderness Stewards.
Friends of Nevada Wilderness believes that legislatively protecting an area is only the first step. Our goal is to ensure these areas are well cared for and in times on decreasing agency budgets that means our volunteers must step up. To accomplish this, we have agreements in place with the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, National Park Service or US Fish and Wildlife Service for our volunteer program. In a typical year our hundreds of volunteers give back about $250,000 of in-kind volunteer service to our wild public lands. Projects might include wildlife habitat restoration, removing unneeded fences that harm wildlife, removing invasive weeds, improving trail access, healing damage from illegal off-road use, spring monitoring, etc.

Goal – Wilderness Outreach and Education
Our goal is to increase the public’s knowledge about the beauty and importance of wild Nevada. We do this through our website, newsletters, events, social media, webinars, film festivals and Wild Nevada Calendar. We want the public to know about these wildlands and how to access them safely and responsibly. Through events like our Alternative Spring Break Program we bring college students out for spring break week to learn about wildlands, potential careers in natural resources, the safe use of tools and how to do a variety of restoration projects. Many of these students have never been out of the city and have limited camping experience. It is truly a life changing experience for them.

Friends of Nevada Wilderness will use the following strategies to help us accomplish our goals.

To meet our goals for permanent protection of deserving wildlands in Nevada we will continue to engage our supporters, the public, our local elected officials and members of the Nevada delegation about why these areas are important. We will work with coalitions of stakeholders to find common ground. We will design brochures, postcards, and other visuals to engage the public. We will use various social media platforms to tell the story of Nevada’s wild places. We will generate factual reports with maps and photos to document the resources found in these wild areas.

To meet our goals of on-the-ground stewardship we will continue to work closely with the public land managing agencies striving to be a committed partner. We will expand out outreach for reaching diverse communities to make our volunteer base reflective of our communities. We will find ways to leverage funding opportunities to maximize our effect on the ground. We will work in partnership with other organizations with similar goals.

To meet our education and outreach goals we will continue to find new ways to reach into our communities and make Wilderness protection relevant to people who may have never experienced Nevada’s wild backcountry. We will continue to do more virtual engagement with techniques we have honed during the COVID crisis. We will host more events that bring in diverse college age students to increase their understanding and activism. We will expand our partnership efforts with rural communities and the Nevada’s Division of Outdoor Recreation.

Friends of Nevada Wilderness has a talented and knowledgeable board of director and staff that collectively bring hundreds of years of experience about Nevada’s Wilderness and wild places. Our staff is passionate about Nevada’s wild public lands and they believe in their work.

We have excellent relationships with our Nevada delegation and agency partners and we are trusted as an organization.

We work collaboratively with many conservation organizations locally regionally and nationally. It is though these collaborative efforts that we increase our successes.

We have extensive experience working safely with volunteers and have a warehouse of tools, gear, protective equipment and camping equipment to loan volunteers. We help our volunteers fall in love with the beauty and wildness of Nevada and in turn they become avid champions of Wilderness.

In providing permanent protection for our Nevada Wildlands our successes are clearly laid out in legislation since only Congress can designate Wilderness.

In 1989 – The Nevada Wilderness Protection Act that established 13 new Wilderness areas totaling 733,400 acres across the state including Wilderness Forest Service managed gems like the Ruby Mountains, Mount Charleston, Mount Rose and Arc Dome.
In 2000 – The Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area Act that established 10 new BLM managed Wilderness areas totaling 752,00 acres along with the National Conservation Area.
In 2004 – The Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act established 18 new Wilderness areas totaling 452,000 acres in the beautiful Mohave Desert.
In 2004 - Lincoln County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act established 14 new Wilderness areas in eastern Nevada totaling 768,294 acres.
In 2006 - White Pine County Conservation, Recreation and Development Act established 13 new Wilderness areas totaling 558,133 acres in the high country of eastern Nevada.
In 2014 – The Pine Forest Range and Wovoka Wilderness areas were designated totaling 74,981 acres.
In 2015 - President Obama established the 704,000 acres Basin and Range National Monument in eastern Nevada and in 2016 the 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument.

In our Stewardship Program some examples of progress include the maintenance and reconstruction of hundreds of miles of Wilderness trails in partnership with the Forest Service. We removed over 300 miles of no longer needed fence along with over 100 tons of metal garbage completely re-wilding the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge making it truly a haven for wildlife and outdoor enthusiasts.

In terms of what is next we will continue working with our delegation to save places like the Desert National Wildlife Refuge, the Stillwater Range and working to see conservation legislation now in Congress passed for Pershing and Douglas Counties. We will continue to work with Washoe, Clark and Nye counties on public lands legislation in the coming years.

We will continue to grow our volunteer base and accomplish more on-the-ground projects. We will increase our efforts to help rural tourism with the growth of Nevada’s outdoor recreation industry including promoting Nevada as the Dark Sky State.