Diverse support for Gold Butte Monument crosses party lines

The Gold Butte National Monument is truly a spectacular landscape. It is a treasure of natural and historic antiquity.

Our collective human heritage is written across this landscape — in the rock stories etched into the walls, the pioneer-era corrals and the mine equipment scattered throughout the land. The human story is continuous, dating from 12,000 years ago until the present time. It is an outdoor museum.

Gold Butte has significant scientific value. Its geologic history spans over 500 million years and offers glimpses into worlds of the far distant past when the land was covered by ancient seas or towering sand dunes. Today, five life zones thrive along the elevation gradient within the monument, each with its own rich biodiversity and including habitats that are critical to the survival of threatened and endangered species. In Gold Butte, we can learn how our natural world came to be and observe how it is now. It is a natural laboratory.

The significance of Gold Butte to Southern Paiute (Nuwuvi) people cannot be understated. Gold Butte is the ancestral territory of the Moapa Band of Paiutes and remains a traditional lifeway for contemporary tribal members. In fact, the entire area of Gold Butte was included in the original reservation boundaries that was established in 1873. The Nuwuvi heritage and culture are deeply connected to the land. In preserving Gold Butte, we also preserve the indigenous cultural diversity of our nation.

Gold Butte National Monument is an amazing place open to multiple uses where people can experience the great outdoors through hiking, hunting, birding, camping, OHV riding on legal roads and routes, and traditional tribal uses. The monument designation will enhance the visitor experience for the many uses this land supports and at the same time provide management considerations for the natural and cultural treasures found there.

Without protection, we will lose these treasures. And they will be gone forever.

Because of this, the Friends of Gold Butte oppose any effort to rescind or reduce the size of Gold Butte National Monument. It must remain protected, in its entirety. We are joined by tribes, businesses, elected leaders at all levels, and thousands of citizens who, for the past 15 years, have expressed their support for Gold Butte National Monument through letters, petitions, phone calls, polls and public statements. Over the years, residents in southern Nevadans demonstrated consistent and overwhelming support for protecting Gold Butte. Polls conducted in 2012 and 2017 reported that over 63 percent of Nevadans across party lines supported a National Conservation Area or National Monument designation for the area.

These efforts motivated our elected leaders to act. Legislation to establish a National Conservation Area was introduced in Congress five times between 2008 and 2015. Each time, the proposed bills reflected community negotiations and compromise. But Congress failed to move the legislation forward and by 2016, the need to protect Gold Butte became increasingly urgent. Between 2014 and 2016, our organization documented extensive damage to the natural and cultural resources on the land including vandalism to rock walls, looting of historical sites, vandalism to signs and fences, vehicle incursions across pristine desert near sacred cultural sites, and a non-permitted water system that trenched across 22 miles of pristine desert tortoise habitat.

So we asked President Barack Obama to designate it a national monument. In 2015 and 2016, over 100,000 Americans added their name to a petition addressed to President Obama asking him to make the designation. We are grateful and relieved that President Obama acted on our request on Dec. 28, 2016, by designating the Gold Butte National Monument with a presidential proclamation.

The designation was celebrated by many people. Most of Nevada’s congressional delegation have expressed support, including Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Reps. Ruben Kihuen, Dina Titus and Jacky Rosen. In May 2017, the Nevada Legislature passed a resolution in support of Gold Butte and Basin and Range National Monuments and the Antiquities Act. Most recently, Gold Butte supporters collected 90,000 petitions that supported protecting Nevada’s national monuments during a 60-day comment period in the Department of Interior’s review of 27 national monuments.

In addition to protecting priceless antiquities, the Gold Butte National Monument is an economic development opportunity for Nevada. Gold Butte National Monument is a chance to develop a sustainable ecotourism market that reflects our unique state character; one that we can share with our fellow Americans and visitors from around the world.

The economic benefits are lasting. People will always want to visit our beautiful place and experience its special treasures. The monument designation is an assurance that these antiquities (and the economic benefits that result from people visiting them) will always be there for us to enjoy, so long as we have the foresight to keep the protections in place.

When Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visits Nevada, he will be welcomed with a common sentiment shared by most Nevadans; that Gold Butte needs and deserves permanent protection and the national monument designation for Gold Butte is appropriate and necessary to achieve this goal. We agree with Nevadans who long sought to protect Gold Butte — it should remain a National Monument, in its entirety.

Jaina Moan