Biden Designates Two National Monuments in Southwest

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday will designate two new national monuments ahead of remarks at the White House Conservation in Action Summit being held at the headquarters of the U.S. Interior Department.

In southern Nevada, Biden will bestow federal protection on about a half million acres around Spirit Mountain. 

Also known by the Mojave name Avi Kwa Ame, the site is the largest national monument the president has created to date.

In Texas, Biden will designate the 6,600-acre Castner Mountain Range a national monument on the site of a former artillery range outside of El Paso.

To make today’s moves, the president relied heavily on his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906.

By designating the areas as “monuments,” he’s effectively cordoned them off from energy or any other kind of development.

A portion of the Spirit Mountain area — roughly 33,000 acres — were already protected under the Wilderness Act of 1964.

However, the now greatly expanded monument will create a corridor linking the Mojave National Preserve and the Castle Mountains National Monument in California to the Sloan Canyon and Lake Mead national recreation areas in Nevada and Arizona.

Spirit Mountain/Avi Kwa Ame is considered the creation site for Yuman-speaking tribes like the Fort Mojave, the Cocopah, the Quechan‌‌ and the Hopi. 

Native tribes, environmental groups and local and state leaders have been seeking the designation for more than a decade.

Castner Range, located at the Army base Fort Bliss, served for decades as a U.S. Army training and testing site. 

Though those activities ended in the 1960s, the area continues to be littered with thousands of rounds of unexploded ordnance.

Once the area is made safe to the public, visitors will be able to visit a number of archaeological sites, some prehistoric, including some that feature cave etchings made by early Native Americans.

Until now, the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah has been the only one whose importance was predicated predominately by the indigenous roots of the Native Americans in the area. 

Biden will also use his remarks today to direct Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to consider initiating a new National Marine Sanctuary designation within the next 30 days to protect all U.S. waters around the Pacific Remote Islands.

At present, nearly 500,000 square miles of the area in the central Pacific Ocean southwest of Hawaii have national monument protection. These include Baker, Howland and Jarvis Islands, the Johnson, Wake and Palmyra atolls, and Kingman Reef.

The potential new National Marine Sanctuary identified in the memorandum would conserve 777,000 square miles, including the existing Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument and currently unprotected submerged lands and waters.

The region has rich ancestral ties to many Native Hawaiian and Pacific Island communities. The process for a potential sanctuary designation would allow the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to further explore the area’s scientific, cultural and ancestral linkages, and tailor its management accordingly.

The president is also directing the secretaries of the Interior and Commerce to conduct a public process to work with regional Indigenous cultural leaders to appropriately rename the existing Pacific Remote Islands National Monument, and potentially the islands themselves, to honor the area’s heritage, ancestral pathways and stopping points for Pacific island voyagers.

The process could also provide posthumous recognition for young Native Hawaiian men sent to secure U.S. territorial claims to the islands in the run-up to World War II, the White House said.

Meanwhile, the summit itself will highlight the Biden administration’s action to advance conservation, restoration, stewardship and access to nature in communities nationwide.

According to a handout distributed to reporters by the White House Monday night, in his first two years in office, Biden has already protected more lands and waters than any president since John F. Kennedy.

These include his using the Antiquities Act to restore protections for the Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monuments, and his designating his first new monument, Camp Hale — Continental Divide in Colorado.

The White House goes on to note that through the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, the administration has invested over $10 billion in conservation initiatives and launched the $1 billion America the Beautiful Challenge, an investment in land, water and wildlife protection.

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