Activist Catherine Daleo holds a sign and chants in front of the Bureau of Land Management office in protest of attempts by the BLM to expedite public land leases to oil and gas developers, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019.
Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2019 | 11:30 p.m.
Environmental activists on Tuesday marched to the Bureau of Land Management offices in Las Vegas to protest what they say is the continued environmental mismanagement of public lands in Nevada.
They were protesting the ongoing leasing of public lands for oil and gas exploration, including a lease sale held earlier Tuesday in which around 4,000 acres were leased. The next sale is Dec. 17.
Christian Gerlach, a representative with the environmental preservation organization Sierra Club, said the leases were environmentally destructive and had no benefits. They damage environments that are ecologically important and culturally significant to Native American groups, and used for recreation in the state, he added.
"We don't have oil resources in the state of Nevada," Gerlach said. "There have been lots of leases offered and most of the ones that have been developed end up as dry wells. They end up having to cap them and there's no oil recovered."
Gerlach said the Trump administration has hiked up the focus on these leases. "Under this current administration, they are full out for fossil fuel development," Gerlach said. "Whereas before, the Bureau of Land Management had an opportunity to say no to a lot of these parcels, they've actually been required now to treat them all as legitimate parcels and they're required now to move forward with those lease sales."
James Katzen, a volunteer with the Sierra Club, said the Environmental Protection Agency is not doing its job to protect lands around the country.
"We really don't have an EPA anymore ... (and) it's going to doom so many areas in the country because of it," he said. "Once you tear up something like, it never goes back to what it was. You can't put it back to what it was."
Alicia Lopez, a student at the College of Southern Nevada, said keeping lands safe and protected seems like it should be an obvious response, though it isn't to everyone.
"Protecting our lands is important because it gives us life," Lopez said. "Sometimes it's hard to dig deeper than that because it seems so basic you'd think people would get it."
