By Gabby Birenbaum
After years of negotiation between the military, conservationists, tribal nations, and Nevada’s congressional delegation, the House last week passed an expansion of Churchill County’s Fallon Range Training Complex.
In exchange, the federal government will designate three new wilderness areas in Nevada and new funding and land holdings for two of the state’s tribes. The compromise – part of the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act – marks a moment of celebration for Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and, in the tradition of Nevada lands bills, sparked a mixed reaction among the conservation community.
Fallon expansion – long a target of the Navy, which trains high-level personnel there – had been years in the making. In 2020, Cortez Masto’s legislation to expand the Fallon Range Training Complex stalled out. This summer, Amodei, whose district contains the base, tried to amend the National Defense Authorization Act to include the expansion, but was ultimately voted down in committee.
But on Tuesday night, the Navy and the Nevada delegation finally succeeded. The FY2023 NDAA, which sets the budget and policies for defense agencies, will withdraw 558,535 new acres of land in Churchill, Lyon, Mineral, Nye, and Pershing Counties for Fallon expansion, and, in the tradition of Nevada lands bills, protect 581,887 acres of land for new conservation and wilderness areas.
The Navy will also transfer $20 million each to the Walker River Paiute and Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribes. More than 8,000 and 10,000 acres of federal land will be held in trust for each tribe, respectively. There are also more than 20,000 acres in land conveyances to Churchill County and 22,000 acres to Lander County for economic development.
The NDAA passed the House Thursday, with the support of all four representatives in the Nevada delegation, by a vote of 350-80. The bill will next head to the Senate, where it is expected to pass, before awaiting President Joe Biden’s signature.
“The responsible expansion of the Navy’s Fallon Range Training Complex has been a major priority of the Navy for years,” Cortez Masto said in a statement to The Nevada Independent. “I knew how vital this compromise was to both our national security and to the local economies and Tribal nations in Northern Nevada.”
The Fallon expansion is the first significant federal lands legislation in Nevada – though not a traditional lands bill – since the retirement of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
Members of the Nevada delegation celebrated the expansion – which also counts Gov. Steve Sisolak, Churchill County Chairman Pete Olsen, Fallon mayor Ken Tedford, and several tribal leaders and conservation groups as supporters – as a win for the military, conservationists, and tribes alike.
“This is bipartisan, bicameral, historic landmark legislation that’s been years in the making,” Rosen, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview. “What we’ve done by getting it in is we’ve brought everyone to the table.”
Currently, the Fallon Range Training Complex, comprising four training ranges, sits on 232,290 acres of land in the Dixie Valley. The complex is anchored by the Fallon Naval Air Station, which hosts the training of Navy SEALs and Topgun fighters. The Navy has long eyed Fallon expansion in order to enlarge its bombing ranges.
Given that the surrounding area, like most of Nevada, is federal land, Congress has the authority to transfer it to military control. Now, the total area of the complex will be 790,825 acres. The military designated 270,000 acres for the Dixie Valley Training Area, which will remain open to the public under the direction of the Bureau of Land Management, in consultation with the Navy – a status that Churchill County successfully challenged the military for.
“This critical legislation enhances our Nation’s security by allowing our Carrier Air Wings and Naval Special Warfare Teams to train in a more realistic environment and better prepare for strategic competition,” Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said in a release.
Conservation groups had mixed reactions to the bill. The NDAA authorizes the creation of three new wilderness areas, two national conservation areas and two additional protected areas. The wilderness areas will be designated in the Clan Alpine Mountains, the Desatoya Mountains and Cain Mountain.
Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said he will hike in the new wilderness areas and that their designation will protect the mountain lions, bighorn sheep, and mule deer, among other species, that live in those mountains. But he finds the concept of land swaps illegitimate.
“We really challenge the idea of the tradeoff – that somehow protecting these mostly remote mountain ranges compensates for the military taking over hundreds of thousands of acres of public land,” Donnelly said in an interview.
Donnelly also questioned how the Bureau of Land Management would run the Dixie Valley Training Area given that the Navy now has input on its land use.
“It’s going to be pretty weird, because it’s still public land – you can still go out there and recreate,” Donnelly said. “But there’s going to be guys driving tanks around and low-lying aircraft performing exercises. I kind of don’t want to be around when that’s happening.”
The Great Basin Water Network also opposed the legislation because it supports the Dixie Valley Water Project, a county proposal to pump water from the Dixie Valley Training Area into Churchill County. GWBN is worried that the project would dry up critical water resources and threaten endangered species.
The NDAA specifies that the Navy should work with the Department of the Interior and Churchill County on permitting “subject to the public land laws and environmental review,” which Cortez Masto’s office confirmed just clarifies that the Navy cannot block the project, and that any further action will still be subject to environmental compliance law.
Shaaron Netherton, the executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness, said that while the prospect of any military expansion is not exciting, the creation of the three new wilderness areas – as well as the tribal provisions – mark a win for the conservation community. Netherton was particularly proud that Fox Peak, the origin site of the Fallon Shoshone Paiute Tribe, is now permanently protected.
“It just provides certainty,” Netherton said. “These areas have been wilderness study areas since the late 1970 and 1980s. Now, stakeholders know what’s wilderness and what isn’t wilderness, and we can move forward with management plans and celebrating new wilderness areas.”
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