Biden wants to designate the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments in California

Biden wants to designate the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments in California

President Biden will travel to California’s Coachella Valley on Tuesday to announce the creation of two national monuments that together will protect more than 848,000 acres of land in the state from drilling and mining, as well as the development of wind, solar and other energy sources.

A site in the mountains near Joshua Tree National Park will be designated Chuckwalla National Monument, according to the White House. The other, in the forests north of Mount Shasta near the Oregon border, will be Sáttítla National Monument.

The proclamation caps a series of final environmental statements issued by Mr. Biden in his final days in office. On Monday, he banned future oil and gas drilling in more than 600 million acres of U.S. waters. Last week, the government banned oil, gas and geothermal energy development in Nevada’s high-altitude Ruby Mountain and also blocked geothermal mining and leasing in 20,000 acres of the Black Hills National Forest in South Dakota.

With Tuesday’s announcement, Mr. Biden will have protected more than 674 million acres of public lands and federal waters, more than any other president. With the creation of the Chuckwalla Monument, the government has effectively created a 600-mile wildlife corridor of protected lands along the Colorado River and into the deserts of California.

Mr. Biden has established 10 national monuments, expanded two more and restored three more. He took advantage of the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that empowers the president to protect lands and waters for the benefit of all Americans.

Elsewhere in California, he expanded the San Gabriel Mountains and Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monuments to protect lands of cultural significance to Native American tribes that also serve as biodiversity and wildlife corridors.

Both the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla monuments were constructed at the request of legislators and tribal organizations.

“The breathtaking canyons and winding trails of Chuckwalla National Monument represent truly unparalleled beauty,” Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior and the first Native American to hold the post, said in a statement. Mr. Biden’s appointment “will protect important spiritual and cultural values ​​associated with the land and wildlife,” she said.

About 750 miles north, Sáttítla National Monument will include the Medicine Lake Highlands, considered the ancestral home of 11 bands of the Pit River Tribe.

“This landscape, inhabited by Indigenous peoples for more than 5,000 years, continues to be an integral part of tribal religious and cultural practices despite a history of forced dispossession,” said Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture. “The creation of this monument is a step toward recognizing the history of exclusion of Indigenous nations in these lands.”

Many solar companies wanted to use the land surrounding the Chuckwalla Monument for renewable energy development. Ultimately, the boundaries were drawn to avoid areas that would be suitable for clean energy and power transmission line construction. This helped the designation gain the support of several renewable energy groups.

Sen. Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, who sponsored legislation creating both sites, called the transmission corridor agreement “the biggest breakthrough” in months of negotiations. He said the Chuckwalla monument shows that protected areas can live side by side with clean energy.

“It’s not an either/or,” Mr. Padilla said. “We have a lot of locations, a lot of resource-rich regions in California that have not yet reached their full potential in terms of renewable energy. We also have very important areas of biodiversity that need to be protected as part of our climate goals.”

President-elect Donald J. Trump has said he intends to reverse virtually all of Mr. Biden’s environmental policies, a move that could include attempting to roll back national monuments.

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