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COACHELLA VALLEY, Calif. — With less than two weeks left in his presidency, President Joe Biden designated two new national monuments in the West.
Biden signed proclamations Tuesday creating the Chuckwalla National Monument and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, both in California, covering 848,000 acres of land.
The new Chuckwalla monument will protect the ancestral homelands and cultural landscapes of the Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Mojave, Quechan and Serrano Nations, and other Indigenous peoples, totaling 624,000 acres just south of Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.
In Northern California, the Sáttítla Highlands monument encompasses over 224,000 acres of varied habitat, including parts of the Modoc, Shasta-Trinity and Klamath National Forests as well as the sacred ancestral homelands of the Pit River Tribe and Modoc peoples.
"These national monument designations honor the history and cultural connections that Native peoples have always had to these places. A national monument designation provides greater protection of sacred landscapes and helps ensure that generations to come, native and non-native, will learn the actual history of the United States," Judith LeBlanc, executive director of Native Organizers Alliance and NOA Action Fund, said in a statement Thursday.
Biden has created or expanded 12 national monuments while president and restored three others, including two in Utah.
Controversial monument creations
The Biden administration called the Chuckwalla National Monument its "capstone" to create the largest corridor of protected lands in the continental United States, covering nearly 18 million acres stretching approximately 600 miles.
The Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor runs from Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southwestern Utah through the Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona and Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada, both established by Biden in 2023; and now reaches to the deserts and mountains of southern California.
Some of those designations have stirred controversy, especially in Utah.
Biden restored Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase Escalante to their original sizes shortly after taking office in 2021. President Donald Trump drastically reduced the acreage of both monuments, created during the Obama and Clinton administrations, respectively, in 2017 at the urging of Utah state and local government leaders.
In 2023, a federal judge dismissed lawsuits by the state of Utah and others challenging Biden's use of the Antiquities Act to restore the boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears. They appealed the decision to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral arguments last September. A ruling is expected in the coming months.
Monument management plans praised, criticized
The Bureau of Land Management this week signed off on the final resource management plan for the 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument.
"The BLM's final plan takes meaningful and important steps to protect one of the most treasured public landscapes in America. Once again, the monument will be managed to protect what makes it like nowhere else — remarkable paleontological discoveries and cultural connections, jaw-dropping scenery, and outstanding intact and diverse natural ecosystems," Kya Marienfeld, Southern Utah Wilderness Association wildlands attorney, said in a statement. "Sadly, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and other public land opponents continue their attacks on Grand Staircase-Escalante, which is managed for the benefit of all Americans."
In a statement Thursday, Utah's all-Republican congressional delegation condemned the decision it said was made in the "midnight hours" of the Biden administration.
"The BLM's plan ignores Utah voices, limits access to grazing and recreation and disregards the economic impacts that this decision will have on local communities. The administration has also failed to provide a complete inventory of the objects it wishes to protect, a requirement of the Antiquities Act," according to the statement.
"When the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was created in 1996, it was promised to be friendly to local use and management. We will continue to fight to return our land to local control and against future federal overreach," they said.
Meantime, how to manage the 1.6 million-acre Bears Ears monument has been the subject of an ongoing debate among federal, state and local leaders. The Bureau of Land Management released a final proposed management plan last fall that also drew praise and criticism, including groups raising the possibility of a court challenge.
Utah governor finds Arizona monument designation 'frustrating'
Utah leaders also took issue with Biden's 2023 designation the 917,000-acre Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona, bordering nearby Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument but also encompassing lands south of Washington County.
"This monument designation is frustrating news, especially for residents of Utah along the Arizona strip. As I've said many times before, massive, landscape-scale monuments like this are a mistake. These designations increase visitation without providing any additional resources for law enforcement and infrastructure to protect sensitive areas," Gov. Spencer Cox said at the time.
A number of Native American tribes sought the monument creation to protect cultural resources in the region. Those tribes include members of the Havasupai, Hopi and Hualapai tribes, as well as the Kaibab Paiute Tribe, the Las Vegas Band of Paiute, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, the Navajo Nation, the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the Pueblo of Zuni, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes.
