APNewsbreak: Desert race through Nevada monument under fire

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 3:13 p.m. ET

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RENO, Nev. (AP) Conservationists are asking the White House Council on Environmental Quality to put the brakes on plans to allow a popular off-road, desert race from near Las Vegas to Reno to run through a newly established national monument in Nevada.

The critics say the U.S. Bureau of Land Management jumped the gun by at least tacitly approving a ''massive off-road race course running directly through'' the Basin and Range National Monument about 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Jeff Ruch, executive director of the Washington-based Public Employees for Environmental Ethics, says the move threatens to circumvent President Obama's designation of the 1,100-square monument last June.

He says it also violates the National Environmental Policy Act.