Pentagon to lawmakers: Let Interior keep wildlife refuge (bill also delists lesser prairie chicken))

The Defense Department is asking lawmakers to strike language in the House defense authorization bill that would give the Air Force sole jurisdiction over almost half of the Desert National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada, according to a Defense Department official. The Fish and Wildlife Service is the current manager of the refuge, while the military has secondary jurisdiction over 850,000 acres in the western half of the preserve that are used by the Air Force. The House version of the defense authorization bill would change that, transferring primary jurisdiction over the 850,000 acres to the Air Force. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell also sent a letter Friday to the House and Senate Armed Services committees currently in conference on the defense authorization bills, requesting that they clarify the language. In her letter, Jewell wrote that the refuge language would have "serious effects" on management, and "would give the Air Force authority to conduct any defense related activity in a majority of the refuge's 1.6 million acres." The letter also criticizes a number of other provisions in the House bill, including one that would prevent Interior from listing the greater sage grouse as endangered and others that would delist the lesser prairie chicken and American burrowing beetle...more