Maintain our state’s beauty

There aren’t many places in the country where there’s an opportunity to set aside 2 million acres of land for public recreation, like at Lake Mead and Red Rock Canyon, and to protect native plants and animals like in the Desert National Refuge. We are lucky we live in one of those places.

As a guide on the Colorado River, I’ve seen how many more people have been getting out to enjoy the outdoors over the past year.

We have to balance the need for people to get outdoors with preserving these spaces. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.,and Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., recently introduced the Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, which would do just that, setting aside more public lands to give us more places to go.

Now is the time to expand protections for the places that make Southern Nevada unique.