Great Basin National Park, Nevada

In the shadow (click here) of 13,063-foot Wheeler Peak, 5,000 year old bristlecone pine trees grow on rocky glacial moraines. Come to Great Basin National Park in Nevada to experience the solitude of the desert, the smell of sagebrush after a thunderstorm, the darkest of night skies, and the beauty of Lehman Caves. Far from a wasteland, the Great Basin is a diverse region that awaits your discovery. 

Photo: National Park Service 

A Fragile Environment (click here)The Lehman Cave ecosystem is easily affected by our presence and actions. Please help us in our effort to maintain its integrity by following these important rules: You may bring a jacket, a hand-held camera, and a flashlight into the cave. All other items, including food, water, other beverages, purses, backpacks, camera cases, and tripods are not allowed. Touching or collecting of cave formations is strictly prohibited.

Great Basin National Park (click here) is very historic and has great biological diversity due to it's drastic change in elevations across the park.


Far further southwest of this magnificent park there are wildfires. As much as everyone would like to say forests are the cause of wildfires that is not the case. Forests mitigate fire danger when they are healthy with plenty of moisture within the trees and soil. 

Drought causes wildfires, not forests!

The current Arizona fires are exactly where the D3 (red area), Extreme Drought Condition exists. 

May 23, 2014
By Paresh Dave

...By Friday morning, (click here) the Slide fire had burned 7,500 acres of timber and chaparral through about 10 miles of a red-rock canyon north of Slide Rock State Park in Sedona. Authorities have contained about 5% of blaze, which erupted Tuesday afternoon. Now, the forecast of thunderstorms and growing humidity through the weekend has given them hope they can quickly gain the upper hand....

Besides the obvious danger to people, their pets and their property, southeast Arizona has productive agricultural land. The fires are in Yavapai County. The county is home to crops such as apples, to greens such as spinach and swiss chard to wheat. (click here)

The most urgent focus of the climate crisis is always the safety of people. But, the one true reality that relates to people is the loss of productive crop land due to the drought that accompanies the climate crisis. Southeast Arizona is valuable to more than the residents that live there. It is valuable as an agricultural economy that adds to the state GDP.