Several years ago I noticed this somewhat blank area on the maps of the United States.
You can see how blank it is, in terms of roads and towns and just about anything else.
It turns out there are a lot of people that want to keep this area pretty blank on the map, by establishing a national monument. One good reason to do it is that it has a fairly large area of sagebrush prairie, which for many reasons is a declining ecosystem in the American West and Midwest.
But it isn't a sure thing.
Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands Is the Biggest Conservation Opportunity Left in the West. If Congress Won’t Protect it, Should Biden Step in?"In the Owyhee Canyonlands, Western sagebrush landscapes surround rock formations reminiscent of the Colorado Plateau, leading some to liken it to the Grand Canyon. It stretches across roughly 7 million acres of high desert in Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. Roughly a third of that landscape is high-quality wilderness—more land than in many existing national parks—with no roads or cell service.Here's more about it:
Some of the last pristine sections of the rapidly declining sagebrush habitat that once dominated much of the Western U.S., the Owyhee Canyonlands—named for the phonetic pronunciation of Hawaii after three island natives were lost in the wilderness and never found—have remained wild despite little federal protection. “Its remoteness protected it,” said Ryan Houston, the executive director of the Oregon Natural Desert Association, an environmental group leading efforts to protect the area."
And this is what can be protected; it looks like a pretty remarkable place. (Not easy to get to, even though there is a road there somewhere.)
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