As background, here’s a longish quote from the Facebook page of our friends at Basin and Range Watch:

Not long ago, joining an environmental organization seemed like a rational thing to do if you had a busy schedule and didn’t have the time to be an activist. The idea was that you could trust qualified individuals to make decisions that would promote conservation of open space, scenic vistas as well as natural and cultural resources.

In an attempt to promote solar energy sprawl, The Wilderness Society has come up with a report called “In the Zones” which promotes the development of about 112,000 acres of utility scale solar energy on public lands in 5 different states. They are coming out in support of some of the BLM’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement which would designate large tracts of public land as sacrifice zones for development that would receive hardly any environmental review. The largest zone they support is called Afton which is 77,000 acres of undeveloped land in southern New Mexico.

They are also supporting a site in Arizona called Brenda which is 3,800 acres of Sonoran Desert habitat. Saguaros, smoke trees and palo verdis are common in this landscape. In their report seen here they are attempting to say this habitat is insignificant. They are claiming that only 30 percent of the site supports vegetation. Those who have seen a spring bloom in Death Valley or Anza Borrego know that even the most barren looking desert pavement can explode with wildflowers covering over 95 percent of the site. They claim that a Sonoran habitat like this “has relatively low use from animals and birds”. Any desert that supports microphyll trees supports wildlife. They claim that all of the saguaros, ocotillos and palo verdis can be transplanted. Ocotillos have great difficulty after transplanting and palo verde trees have almost no success.

Please research an organization before supporting it.

Emphasis is mine.

All this by way of saying I’m heading to Brenda tomorrow to look around, take some photos, and share them with you so that you can decide for yourself whether The Wilderness Society is selling out valuable habitat just because it doesn’t meet their standards for Wilderness Quality. Watch this space.