RENO, Nev. — Conservationists won their protest against the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) faulty final Environmental Impact Statement for the Greenlink North Transmission Project, halting the project’s progress and protecting open space and wildlife habitat. The proposed 525 kiloVolt (kV) transmission line would have spanned from Ely to near Yerington, NV, and included the construction of two new large substations to open the remote region to energy development.
This is the third phase of an energy transmission triangle that the Investor-Owned Unity NV Energy, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, has been planning and building for years. The first part of the project was completed in 2015, spanning from Las Vegas to Ely. The second phase, Greenlink West Transmission Project, was approved in 2024 and is now under construction with 180-foot-tall rust-colored steel towers going up using enormous cranes, despite destructive impacts to Joshua trees, Mojave desert tortoise habitat, and Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument. The third leg of this statewide transmission project is Greenlink North, proposed to connect the transmission network across central Nevada.
“The cost of this green energy and big data is thousands upon thousands of acres of bulldozed tortoise habitat and sagebrush landscapes being lost forever, and Nevada’s wild, open spaces criss-crossed by transmission lines,” said Paul Ruprecht, Nevada Director of Western Watersheds Project.
Currently there are over 100,000 acres of solar and wind energy applications along the Greenlink North project route as companies wait for the line to potentially be built. But fossil fuels are not being taken offline, and more natural gas generating facilities are being built to feed the hungry data center growth. Greenlink West starts at the Apex Industrial Park north of Las Vegas, which has four natural gas-burning power plants, and NV Energy is
proposing to add more there.Three parties, including ours, Lander County and another environmental group coalition, filed official protests with the BLM showing that Greenlink North violates sage-grouse plans. Our protest points include how Greenlink North would violate management standards for
transmission lines over 100 kiloVolts in the 2015 Greater Sage-Grouse Approved Resource Management Plan Amendment (ARMPA). Greenlink North is proposed at 525 kiloVolts. Greenlink North is proposed to slash through 162 miles of Priority Habitat Management Areas (PHMA) for greater sage-grouse, as well as General Habitat Management Areas (GHMA) and other areas key to the survival of sage-grouse. The ARMPA clearly states that if adaptive management responses have been triggered, GHMAs and PHMAs become exclusion areas for high-voltage transmission lines that are outside if designated utility corridors.
Because soft and hard triggers for sage-grouse management have been tripped here many times over multiple years, BLM has admitted that such a giant transmission project would not be allowed.
“Instead of conforming to the existing resource management plans across central Nevada, BLM is pushing to amend plans and ram this huge transmission project through important sage-grouse areas,” said Laura Cunningham, California Director of Western Watersheds Project. “Sage-grouse populations continue to drastically decline, just like with the desert tortoise, and mitigation measures have not been working to slow these declines.”
Additionally, Basin and Range Watch and Western Watersheds Project formally protested the decision because BLM approved the project although they had never evaluated the impacts to visual resources on 21,000 acres in central Nevada.
“The Greenlink North project would be built in one of the most unspoiled and stunning regions of the Great Basin and Western USA,” said Kevin Emmerich, co-founder of Basin and Range Watch. “BLM failed to fully evaluate the impacts the transmission line would have on visual resources.”
The National BLM Director remanded the decision back to the Nevada State Director “for consideration, clarification, further planning, or other appropriate action to resolve this protest issue.” There may be a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the project in 2026.
“We’ll continue to follow the review process for the Greenlink North Transmission Project to make sure the agencies adhere to the regulations that protect imperiled species and viewsheds,” said Cunningham.
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Basin and Range Watch is a nonprofit working to conserve the deserts of Nevada and California and to educate the public about the diversity of life, culture, and history of the ecosystems and wild lands of the desert.
The mission of Western Watersheds Project (WWP) is to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife through education, public policy initiatives, and legal advocacy.
