#RethinkGreen: Camp Yellow Pine and the Act of Witness

Update September 2024: The activist project continues to evolve. I am no longer stationed at the Rabbit Camp (aka Camp Yellow Pine) but the project of bearing witness and public campaign continues. While I am not living there, I am certainly alive there, and the place is alive in me. The  campground is a state of mind. 

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This is an ongoing vigil at the Yellow Pine Solar Site in the South Pahrump Valley. We are maintaining a constant presence in this valley and staying with it as Nextera Energy begins “moving ground” at the Yellow Pine Solar facility site. We will witness the needless destruction and advocate to #PutSolarInTheCity instead of destroying wild land.

There are 93,000 Mojave Yucca on the 3000 acre Yellow Pine Solar site and an estimated 500,000 on the entire 30,000 acres at stake in the South Pahrump Valley. The land is pristine, untouched Mojave habitat for desert tortoise, kitfoxes and all manner of flora and fauna both known and unknown. This land has an ancient soil crust with networks of bacteria and fungus running through it. The soils themselves along with the robust plant-life are storing carbon. Killing this valley is like cutting down a forest, and we will lose all of this carbon sequestration. This is not “green.” This is ecocide. This is business-as-usual. We have hundreds of square miles of parking lots where people could enjoy beneath solar-shade canopies, but the bottom line is that destroying vast swaths of wild land is more profitable for energy developers. 

If you want to join or visit our camp, please contact MojaveGreen8@gmail.com for more info.

You can support us by donating to our crowdfunding campaign: 
https://givebutter.com/ProtectPahrumpValley

Click on “In the News” to read more about Camp Yellow Pine and poetic action in the LA Times, Desert Companion, and other publications.

Follow us on X (Twitter) at MojaveGreen8.

Below are photos of the Yellow Pine Solar site before it was destroyed: flowering cactus and plants, Mojave Yucca, tortoise burrows, ancient desert pavement, as well as photos from the adjacent Purple Sage solar site which is slated for destruction. Here you can see the giant yucca with snow-capped Mount Charleston in the background, and dense Mojave Yucca landscape. Here are also photos of the beloved Rabbit Camp.