When the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) finalized the Western Solar Plan and created 17 Solar Energy Zones (SEZs) across the southwest, two of the primary goals were reducing project permitting times and decreasing impacts to wildlands and wildlife habitat.
It is past time to modernize how energy is developed in this country, particularly on our shared public lands. The policies and guidelines that govern where, when and how development should occur were written decades ago.
Deployment costs keep dropping, desperate legal challenges from the dinosaur fossil fuel industry continue to be dismissed, and for the first time ever more solar energy was brought online than any other energy source.
I’m a morning person, but even I’ll admit that sometimes it can take a minute or two for me to get going in the early hours. This was not the case one recent May morning in southern Nevada, where heatwave immersed my tent just a few quick minutes after the sun came over the horizon.
A new multi-state plan for the greater sage-grouse could include conservation measures to protect more than 50 million acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land that provides critical habitat for the species. Secretary Sally Jewell announced the plan on May 28 in Cheyenne, Wyoming.