Nevada Episodes

Laura Cunningham and Kevin Emmerich trace Greenlink West from the Amargosa Valley toward northern Nevada, arguing that the transmission line will accelerate utility-scale solar, gas generation and hyperscale data-center development across intact desert.

Mandy Culbertson explains how state wildlife agencies and commissions govern most American wildlife, why special interests often outrank biodiversity and how public participation can make wildlife policy more democratic.

Cameron Mayer reads poems about honey mesquite, Mojave aster and travels through the Great Basin, showing how botany, photography and language can deepen attachment to overlooked desert places.

Mason Voehl celebrates Rover Critical Minerals' withdrawal from lithium exploration near Ash Meadows and explains how local residents, conservation groups and legal advocacy produced a rare desert-protection victory.

Basin and Range Watch co-founder Kevin Emmerich explains how Nevada's Greenlink West transmission project threatens desert tortoise habitat, rare plants, cultural sites and intact landscapes while serving industrial growth.

Kyle Paoletta discusses American Oasis and the histories of Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas and El Paso, arguing that understanding the desert Southwest requires understanding its cities.

Field recordings from Amargosa Valley and Joshua Tree capture residents defending Ash Meadows from mining and protesting cuts that threaten National Park Service staff and visitor safety.

Mason Voehl explains how community organizing and scientific advocacy produced an interim halt to new mining claims near Ash Meadows—and what must happen to secure a 20-year mineral withdrawal.

Season Four opens with the Los Angeles fires, the designation of Chuckwalla National Monument, and the emerging Moab-to-Mojave network of protected lands across the Southwest.

Chris Clarke talks with journalist Jimmy Tobias about apparent coziness between Nevada BLM staff and renewable-energy interests, focusing on Greenlink transmission projects, environmental impacts, and concerns from conservationists and the National Park Service.

Chris Clarke talks with botanist Naomi Fraga about Tiehm's buckwheat at Rhyolite Ridge and Tecopa bird's beak, exploring how rare endemic plants collide with lithium mining and rapid industrialization.

Utility-scale solar development can carry substantial ecological costs when projects are built across intact desert habitat. Chris Clarke talks with Kevin Emmerich of Basin and Range Watch about a proposal to protect thousands of acres in Nevada's Pahrump Valley as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. They discuss threats to desert tortoises, habitat connectivity, and the cumulative effects of industrial development—and how an ACEC designation could give federal land managers another tool for directing damaging projects away from sensitive landscapes.

Must protecting the climate require sacrificing intact desert landscapes? Chris Clarke examines that argument through the controversy over Rover Critical Minerals' proposed lithium exploration near Ash Meadows and Amargosa Valley. After a company representative suggested mining opponents might be aligned with fossil-fuel interests, Chris challenges the assumption that opposing destructive renewable-energy development means opposing climate action. The episode asks a larger question: can society address climate change without simply reproducing the extractive economic model that helped create the crisis?

Some landscapes become part of who we are. Chris Clarke reflects on his relationship with Avi Kwa Ame, the southern Nevada landscape protected as a national monument in 2023 after years of Indigenous-led advocacy. Personal stories of desert exploration mingle with excerpts from the monument's designation celebration and voices from the campaign to protect it. The result is both a portrait of an extraordinary place and a meditation on how loving a landscape can change the course of a life.

Groundwater and surface water may have different names, but ecologically they're often the same resource. Chris Clarke talks with Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity about a major Nevada Supreme Court decision involving Coyote Springs, a proposed desert city whose groundwater pumping could damage the Muddy River and endangered wildlife. The ruling affirms Nevada's ability to consider interconnected groundwater and surface-water systems together, with potentially important consequences for water management throughout the state's arid landscapes.

At a demonstration in the Nevada Mojave, environmental advocate Shannon Salter discussed the growing pressures facing the desert Southwest and the campaigns working to protect public lands and wildlife. Together we explore grassroots organizing, effective advocacy, and why individual voices continue to make a difference.