Letters to the Editor
Five years fighting for the future of Ash Meadows
By Mason Voehl
Five years ago, when I became Executive Director of the Amargosa Conservancy, I knew Ash Meadows and the Amargosa River were extraordinary places. I knew their springs supported species found nowhere else on Earth, and that the Amargosa was one of the few free-flowing rivers in the Mojave Desert.
What I did not yet understand was how much these places would teach me about community.
This fall, I am stepping away from my role at the Amargosa Conservancy. As I prepare to leave, I have been thinking about five remarkable years working alongside the people of Nye County, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, conservation partners, scientists, public-land managers and many others who care deeply about this landscape.
Perhaps no fight illustrates those years better than what happened when Rover Critical Minerals arrived in Amargosa Valley.
In 2023, Rover proposed drilling for lithium on public lands near Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. The proposal raised serious questions because Ash Meadows is connected to a vast regional groundwater system: the same groundwater upon which homes, farms, businesses, wildlife and communities depend.
The concern was never simply about a few drill holes. In a place where virtually every living thing depends upon groundwater, the central question was how much risk are we willing to accept, and where?
Amargosa Valley answered forcefully.
Residents packed town halls. Local leaders asked hard questions. Scientists helped us understand the groundwater system. The Timbisha Shoshone Tribe brought its own deep knowledge and responsibility to this landscape. People who might disagree about plenty of other issues stood together around a simple proposition: our water is too important to gamble with.
The community’s voice, and a strategic lawsuit, ultimately convinced Rover to abandon the project. But the experience exposed a larger problem: nothing prevented another company from staking claims across the same vulnerable groundwater basin.
That led to the campaign for a mineral withdrawal, an effort to temporarily remove roughly 309,000 acres of federal land around Ash Meadows from new mining claims while the federal government considered longer-term protection.
The coalition was remarkable. The Amargosa Valley Town Board, Beatty Town Advisory Board, Nye County, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, Nevada’s congressional delegation, conservation organizations and other stakeholders supported the effort. In January 2025, the Department of the Interior formally initiated consideration of the withdrawal, temporarily segregating the lands from new mineral entry.
It was an extraordinary accomplishment. But it was also temporary.
Meanwhile, the pressures facing Amargosa Valley continued to evolve. Mining is only one piece of a larger transformation underway across the Mojave Desert. Utility-scale solar energy is expanding rapidly. New transmission infrastructure is being built. Data center developers are eyeing public lands near rural communities with hunger. Decisions being made now regarding all of these industries will determine what Amargosa Valley and Ash Meadows look like for decades to come.
That is what has brought us to the proposal for an Ash Meadows National Conservation Area (NCA).
An NCA is a congressional designation for Bureau of Land Management lands that protects important conservation and cultural values while providing a framework for compatible uses. Here, it could provide a durable way to stop energy and mining development from harming Ash Meadows.
The intent of the NCA is to protect our precious groundwater while preserving existing uses like recreation. After all, you can’t ride a side-by-side through a solar farm.
There are legitimate questions about boundaries, access, recreation, existing rights and economic development. Those questions deserve real answers, and the proposal should continue to evolve as local residents and other stakeholders participate.
But at its heart is a question we cannot avoid: what do we want this place to look like in fifty years?
Do we want the lands surrounding one of the world’s most extraordinary groundwater-dependent ecosystems to remain available for whatever industrial proposal arrives next? Do we want to sacrifice the community’s water supply for solar panels and data centers? Or can we agree together, as we have before, that some places are too special to destroy with development?
This is not about freezing Amargosa Valley in time or opposing every mine, solar project or economic opportunity. Communities need room to grow and build prosperous futures. But some places are so deeply interconnected by water, wildlife, culture and community that we should exercise greater care. The lands surrounding Ash Meadows are such a place.
Over the last five years, I have watched residents show up after long days of work because they care about their wells and their neighbors. I have watched people who disagree profoundly about national politics sit beside one another because they agree that water matters more than ideology. I have watched Tribal leaders, county commissioners, town board members, scientists, conservationists, recreationists and landowners find unexpected common ground.
Those experiences have forever changed how I understand conservation.
The fight that began over a handful of proposed lithium exploration holes has become something much larger: a conversation about what kind of future Amargosa Valley wants, what we owe the water beneath our feet, and what we are willing to leave intact for our children.
To every person who has shown up and raised their voice alongside us in defense of the Amargosa River and Ash Meadows, I say thank you. I will never forget it.
Mason Voehl is the outgoing executive director of the Amargosa Conservancy, and lives in Las Vegas.
