President Biden on Tuesday plans to create two national monuments in California that together will prevent mining and drilling as well as wind, solar and other energy development across more than 848,000 acres of desert and mountainous land in the state, a White House spokesman has confirmed.
The Chuckwalla National Monument will encompass about 644,000 acres south of Joshua Tree National Park and stretch from the Coachella Valley to the Colorado River in Southern California. It will include rock formations that are considered sacred by Native tribes. The new monument will protect critical habitat for millions of migrating birds, chuckwalla lizards and endangered desert tortoises, Mr. Biden said in a statement.
The other designation, in the woodlands north of Mount Shasta near the Oregon border, will be the Sáttítla National Monument. The roughly 200,000 acres are considered a spiritual center for the local Pit River Tribe and the Modoc Nation. The monument will consist of mountain woodlands, meadows and springs that nurture rare flowers and wildlife.
Mr. Biden had initially planned to announce the monuments last week in California but his schedule was changed because of windy weather. Subsequent wildfires in the Los Angeles area, spread by high winds, have killed at least 24 people and displaced about 100,000. Mr. Biden intends to announce the monuments from the East Room of the White House.
The designations cap a flurry of final environmental proclamations that Mr. Biden has issued in his final days in office. Last week, he barred new oil and gas drilling in more than 600 million acres of U.S. waters. His administration also barred oil, gas and geothermal development in the Ruby Mountains, Nevada, and prevented mining and geothermal 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 president.
President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to immediately repeal many of Mr. Biden’s policies.
Last week, Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden’s final actions “sneaky” and an effort to thwart his policies. He said the withdrawal of waters from oil and gas drilling “will not stand” once he takes office on Jan. 20.
“I will reverse it immediately,” Mr. Trump said. “It will be done immediately and we will drill, baby, drill.”
In creating the Chuckwalla monument, the Biden administration effectively carved out 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 others and restored three more. He used the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that authorizes 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 land of cultural significance to Native American tribes, property that also serves as biodiversity and wildlife corridors.
Both the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla monuments were created at the request of lawmakers and tribal organizations.
“The stunning canyons and winding paths of the Chuckwalla National Monument represent a true unmatched beauty,” Deb Haaland, the interior secretary and the first Native American to hold the post, said in a statement. Mr. Biden’s designation “will protect important spiritual and cultural values tied to the land and wildlife, she said.
About 750 miles to the north, the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument will encompass the Medicine Lake Highlands, which is considered the ancestral home for 11 bands of the Pit River Tribe. Sáttítla is considered to be central to the creation narrative of the Pit River people.
“For generations, my people have fought to protect Sáttítla, and today we celebrate the voices of our ancestors being heard,” Yatch Bamford, chairman of the Pit River Nation, said in a statement. He called the monument designation a victory for tribal nations as well as “every American who understands the value of clean water, healthy lands and preserving the true history of these United States of America.”
Many solar companies had wanted to build projects on the land around the Chuckwalla monument. The boundaries were drawn to avoid areas that would be suitable for clean energy and for the construction of electric transmission lines. That helped win support from several renewable energy groups.
Raisa Lee, the senior director of development for Clearway Energy Group, a renewable energy company, called the Chuckwalla designation “a testament to the reality that conservation and clean energy progress go hand in hand.”
Senator Alex Padilla, the California Democrat who sponsored legislation to create both sites, called the agreement for a transmission corridor “the biggest breakthrough” after months of negotiations.
“It’s not an either-or,” Mr. Padilla said. “We have plenty of locations, plenty of resource-rich regions of California that still have not been tapped to their fullest potential from a renewable energy standpoint. We also have very important areas of biodiversity that have to be protected as part of our climate goals.”
In his first term, Mr. Trump tried to shrink the size of national monuments that had been created by the Obama administration. Mr. Padilla said the state of California was prepared to defend Chuckwalla and Sáttítla in court.
“A lot of people have worked really hard for a lot of years to get to this point,” he said. “We’re going to celebrate these designations and do everything we can to protect them if necessary.”
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