The push to preserve a grove of sacred swamp cedar trees and commemorate the site of several massacres perpetrated against Indigenous communities in eastern Nevada reached a new milestone last month. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) introduced legislation to establish Bahsahwahbee National Monument in Congress on July 29. The legislation is a long-awaited accomplishment for the Bahsahwahbee campaign, and brings the sacred landscape one step closer to permanent protection.

With Congress unlikely to act this year, the campaign is calling on President Joe Biden to use the Antiquities Act to designate the area a national monument. Drawing on his extensive Senate experience, Biden has traditionally awaited the introduction of legislation before using this authority to establish national monuments.

The Duckwater Shoshone Tribe, Ely Shoshone Tribe and Confederated Tribes of the Goshute have been advocating for Bahsahwahbee to become Nevada’s newest National Park Service-managed monument for years. Situated 8 miles north of Great Basin National Park, the soon-to-be Bahsahwahbee National Monument would benefit all Nevadans. Safeguarding public lands not only shields us from the most severe effects of climate change but also preserves the unique characteristics that define our state for future generations.

A poll of 602 Nevadans conducted last year reported that 77 percent of respondents support the tribes’ efforts to designate Bahsahwahbee. In 2021, the Nevada Legislature passed a resolution supporting the designation, including unanimous bipartisan support in the state Senate. The tribes are asking for the National Park Service to tell their story — a story of deep connection to the land, tragedy and resiliency.

Nevadans have shown how much they value public land and its protection. Nevada has the highest percentage of public land of any state in the nation. Conservation is part of the culture across the state, transcending party lines and rural-urban divides. Nevadans are more likely to support candidates that protect public lands, and invest in national parks and monuments. Nevada is also the ancestral home of 21 federally recognized tribes spanning 28 reservations, with Indigenous people inhabiting the Great Basin since time immemorial. Thanks to recent efforts to expand voting access, issues important to Native communities matter more than ever in determining our elections.

Intact wetlands and forests such those found at Bahsahwahbee continue to sequester carbon and protect climate-cooling biodiversity, fighting climate changes that have led to Reno and Las Vegas being named the two fastest warming cities in the country. This summer is shaping up to be the hottest on record in Nevada. Indigenous communities have known for millennia what others are only starting to reckon with: Land protection and community protection are inextricably linked.

Nevada, holding true to its purple nature, is projected to be one of the key states that will determine the results of the presidential election and if the Democratic majority in the Senate holds. Registered Independents in Nevada now outnumber registered Democrats and registered Republicans. Polls have shown that 72 percent of Nevadans believe that public land protection benefits our economy, and 78 percent of Independent voters (joined by 73 percent of GOP and 80 percent of Democratic Party voters) believe that conservation is important in selecting a candidate to vote for. All the signs point toward public lands and conservation efforts being a deciding factor in how Nevadans vote this November.

Bahsahwahbee becoming Nevada’s newest National Park Service-administered national monument is not narrowly a conservation issue for eastern Nevada, but one that impacts all Nevadans. The ball is in your court, President Biden.

Olivia Tanager is the director for the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club, focusing on Nevada, the Tahoe Basin and the eastern Sierra Nevada. It is a grassroots fueled group that advocates for increased access to renewable energy, public transportation and land, water and wildlife conservation.

The Nevada Independent welcomes informed, cogent rebuttals to opinion pieces such as this. Send them to [email protected].

WILLIAMSPORT, Penn. – Lake Mary on Thursday triumphed 6-3 over Henderson, Nevada during its sixth game of the Little League World Series — meaning the team is now headed to the U.S. Championship.

The Lake Mary All-Stars started strong in the first inning, scoring four runs. However, Nevada rebounded with three runs of their own at the bottom of the inning.

After a scoreless second inning, Lake Mary scored again in the third thanks to a solo home run by JJ Feliciano, putting the scoreboard at 5-3.

Garrett Rohozen sealed the game with another solo home run in the top of the sixth inning, cementing the score at 6-3. This means the team has hit five total home runs throughout the World Series, which is the most of any team this August.

[MEET THE TEAM: Lake Mary All-Stars at the Little League World Series]

News 6′s Justin Warmoth asked the boys whether they’re looking forward to playing Texas again.

“Yes,” they all said.

“Back for revenge,” Teraj Alexander added.

In his first action on the mound at the Little League World Series, Alexander came in relief, allowing just three hits while striking out five Nevada hitters in 3.2 scoreless innings.

“It was a great experience to pitch in front of all these people,” the 12-year-old said. “It just made me super happy and excited.”

It was Lake Mary’s fourth game in as many days and their third win in a row. The resiliency, the fight, the grit – all worth it after the team moved the Southeast placard onto the Championship game. Lake Mary head coach Jonathan Anderson was quick to praise his unflappable team.

“To do what they did in four days and to win all those games and bounce back from that loss to Texas is amazing,” Anderson said. “This is what we’re here to do. This is what we wanted to do. We said it all along that the job is not done. We are where we want to be, and now, we just need to finish the job.”

[STORY CONTINUES BELOW VIDEO]

Last week, Lake Mary was off to a strong start, winning their first two games against Sioux Falls and Puyallup. However, the team was taken down by Texas on Monday night — the first loss of the season for Lake Mary.

The tournament is double elimination, meaning that teams can only lose twice before they’re out of the running. But after Tuesday’s conquest over New York and Wednesday’s win against Hawaii, the Lake Mary All-Stars were still raring to go.

After coming out on top against Nevada, Lake Mary will take part in the U.S. Championship at 3:30 p.m., which will see the team take a second swing at Texas.

As a result, Lake Mary has also become the third team from Central Florida to ever make the U.S. Championship game in the 77-year history of the World Series.

Twenty teams are competing in the Little League World Series: 10 regional champions in the U.S. and 10 international champions from across the world.

U.S. teams:

International teams:

Sierra Nevada Corporation has won a U.S. Army contract to serve as the lead system integrator for the service’s future long-range spy plane.

The award for the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, integration work covers a 12-year period worth $93.5 million initially and potentially up to $994.3 million, the Army announced Thursday.

Choosing a lead integrator is a major step in the service’s effort to overhaul existing fixed-wing aircraft that perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. The service plans to retire roughly 70 aircraft – its entire ISR fleet – as it brings on the HADES aircraft that will be able to rapidly deploy and provide deep-sending capabilities.

“HADES is the centerpiece of the Army’s long-promised aerial ISR transformation strategy,” Lt. Gen. Anthony Hale, deputy chief of staff for Army intelligence (G-2), said in a statement announcing the deal. “HADES allows the Army to fly higher, faster and farther, which directly impacts our ability to see and sense deeper, delivering an organic capability in line with the Secretary of the Army’s number-one operational imperative – deep sensing.”

For the first time, the Army is using a large-cabin business jet – the Bombardier Global 6500 – to serve as the airframe for the spy plane. The service awarded Bombardier a contract in December for one aircraft, with an option to buy two more over a three-year period.

A L3Harris Technologies, MAG Aerospace and Leidos team was competing against Sierra Nevada for the integration contract. All four companies are involved in ISR fixed-wing prototype efforts with the Army.

The Army has spent more than five years assessing ISR fixed-wing prototypes using high-speed jets to inform the HADES program. It began with the deployment of Artemis – or Airborne Reconnaissance and Target Exploitation Multi-mission System – which has flown in the European theater near the Ukrainian border. Leidos built Artemis using a Bombardier Challenger 650 jet.

Then the service deployed Ares – or Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System – to the Pacific region in April 2022. L3Harris built the aircraft using a Bombardier Global Express 6500 jet.

Combined, Artemis and Ares had flown more than 1,000 sorties by April this year, according to Andrew Evans, who leads the Army’s ISR Task Force. They fly roughly 10-hour missions and average 20 sorties a month, he added.

The Army is also preparing to take on four more prototypes that will inform the requirements for the HADES program. The service chose a pair of companies to deliver two jets each with spy technologies to advance long-range targeting plans.

MAG Aerospace and L3Harris will outfit a Global 6500 with ISR sensors for the Army’s radar-focused Athena-R effort.

And Sierra Nevada is providing its RAPCON-X, based on a converted Bombardier business jet, for the service’s signals intelligence-focused Athena-S project.

Now that the Army has picked a team to integrate sensors onto the jet, the process will take 18 months before the aircraft can deploy for a user assessment, the Army has estimated. That assessment moves the aircraft from a controlled test environment in the United States to operational environments to stress test the systems.

The Army will deploy HADES for a limited period of time and then start building more aircraft as the early prototype remains deployed.

The service plans to field 14 HADES aircraft by 2035, according to a slide Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, then-director of Army aviation, displayed during a speech at the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference in Denver in April.

While industry officials said they anticipate the Army will continue to award the same team subsequent contracts to build all of the HADES aircraft, Andrew Evans, who leads the Army’s ISR Task Force, noted earlier this year that “the guidance to our acquisition teammates was to ensure that we give ourselves as much flexibility as possible in the process.”

Using 70 “very capable” Beechcraft King Air and De Havilland Canada Dash-8 aircraft, the Army, “has done some enormous and powerful work in support of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan” Evans said. But the existing fleet won’t be able to fulfill long-range missions off the coast of China — which the U.S. government considers its top threat — “or really almost any other place in the world if you’re talking about extended geographic ranges with limited basing and access,” he added.