Refuges for crime?

The Cooperative Alliance for Refuge Enhancement, a national lobby group, issued a report last week saying that the budgets of wildlife refuges have been cut sharply over the years. Subsequent national news reports referenced “methamphetamine labs in Nevada.” The reports said the nation’s 548 refuges and the 100-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System—about the size of California—is underfunded by at least $765 million a year.

Nevada has nine federal refuges and other private and state refuges. The report said that “on Nevada’s Sheldon Refuge, large herds of pronghorn antelope and scattered bands of bighorn sheep roam one of America’s last remaining areas of sage-steppe habitat.”