Snwa-Water-Grab

Protect Pinyon-Juniper Forests Campaign Photo Credit: Ray Bloxham/SUWA showing the aftermath of treatments in the Modena Canyon Wildlands. Deep Green Resistance and WildLands Defense are advocating for a moratorium on all pinyon-juniper deforestation in the Great Basin and we need your help. Pinyon-juniper forests are being wantonly killed as weeds while their inherent ecological value is summarily ignored. These forests store carbon dioxide, dampen climate change, provide crucial wildlife habitat, protect watersheds, and have helped humans survive in the Great Basin for millennia. A moratorium gives us time to marshall our resources to put this destruction to a permanent end. ...

Protect Pinyon-Juniper Forests Campaign Will Falk in a Pinyon-Juniper clearcut (Photo by Max Wilbert) Deep Green Resistance and WildLands Defense are advocating for a moratorium on all pinyon-juniper deforestation in the Great Basin and we need your help. Pinyon-juniper forests are being wantonly killed as weeds while their inherent ecological value is summarily ignored. These forests store carbon dioxide, dampen climate change, provide crucial wildlife habitat, protect watersheds, and have helped humans survive in the Great Basin for millennia. A moratorium gives us time to marshall our resources to put this destruction to a permanent end. ...

We hope you enjoy the first edition of our DGR Southwest news roundup. Protect Pinyon-Juniper Forests Campaign Image: Will Falk surveying the devastation of Pinyon-Juniper deforestation (Photo: Max Wilbert) WildLands Defense are advocating for a moratorium on all pinyon-juniper deforestation in the Great Basin and we need your help. Pinyon-juniper forests are being wantonly killed as weeds while their inherent ecological value is summarily ignored. These forests store carbon dioxide, dampen climate change, provide crucial wildlife habitat, protect watersheds, and have helped humans survive in the Great Basin for millennia. A moratorium gives us time to marshall our resources to put this destruction to a permanent end. ...

Editor’s note: This first appeared on Great Basin Water Network’s Water Gab newsletter. Read Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition’s analysis of the proposed SNWA groundwater pipeline project here. Nevada’s Great Basin consists of pinion and juniper covered mountain ranges that run North/ South like wooly worms with long, wide, mostly arid valleys in between. However, Spring Valley is an exception. Traveling East/West on Hwy 50, one will notice that the floor of Spring Valley is tree covered. These trees, Rocky Mountain Junipers, were pushed there by Ice Age conditions. Their root system is very shallow. Consequently the trees are in extreme danger from groundwater drawdown from the Southern Nevada Water Authority groundwater pipeline and exportation project. ...

Max Wilbert, Susan Hyatt, Katie Wilson, and Michael Carter, Deep Green Resistance Southwest Coalition In late May 2014, members of Deep Green Resistance (DGR), Great Basin Water Network, the Ely-Shoshone Indian tribe, and others toured the valleys of eastern Nevada and western Utah targeted by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) for groundwater extraction. [1] The region is part of the Great Basin, a cold desert named for its lack of any drainage to an ocean. What rain falls in the Great Basin remains there in a few streams, ponds, lakes, springs, and aquifers. It is these aquifers that SNWA wants to pump into a central pipeline and bring to the cities of Las Vegas and Henderson. The Goshute and Shoshone tribes and many groups, local individuals, businesses, and governments oppose the project, now stalled by lawsuits. DGR initiated the Sacred Water Tour to help familiarize potential opponents with the land and the water conflict. ...

This is a pond on the Goshute Reservation, below the Deep Creek Mountains. This place will be turned to barren desert if the SNWA pipeline project goes through. Photo via Stop the SNWA Water Grab. ...

This is a pond on the Goshute Reservation, below the Deep Creek Mountains. This place will be turned to barren desert if the SNWA pipeline project goes through. Photo via Stop the SNWA Water Grab. ...