Tribes that have long pushed for the protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of California land they consider sacred are on the cusp of having their wish fulfilled.
President Biden is expected this week to sign proclamations creating the new Chuckwalla and Sáttítla national monuments, after a Tuesday ceremony at Chuckwalla south of Joshua Tree National Park was canceled because of fierce winds.
At 624,000 acres, Chuckwalla will become the fifth-largest land-based national monument in the continental U.S., stretching from the Coachella Valley to the Colorado River. The region is the ancestral homeland of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and other tribes, who led the push for safeguarding the land.
Sáttítla will encompass more than 224,000 acres of lush forests and pristine lakes near the Oregon border. The Pit River Nation, which spearheaded the campaign for the designation, considers the Medicine Lake Highlands area near Mt. Shasta their place of creation.
Read more: Native Americans press Biden to designate three new national monuments in California
The move bears the mark of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary, who has been credited with elevating tribal voices in land management decisions.
At a reception following last week’s canceled event, Haaland recalled visiting what would become Chuckwalla last year. She recounted hearing firsthand from diverse stakeholders about the importance of the landscape — and how they were resolved to ensure it was “preserved and respected for current and future generations.”
“Well, you did it — almost,” she said, nodding to the delay.
“Today isn’t the finish line for more than one reason,” she added. “This monument and this landscape, it still needs you. It needs champions to share why protected lands strengthen the local economy. It needs stakeholders to make sure we get the land-management planning right. It needs friends to reach its full potential for the plants and animals and the visitors.”
The planned designations protect a combined 848,000 acres of lands in California. With the new proclamations, Biden will have designated 10 national monuments using his executive authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 and has enlarged or modified several more, including expanding two in the Golden State.
He also will have protected more land and waters than any president in history, according to the White House. On Monday, Biden took action to protect the East and West coasts and the Northern Bering Sea from offshore oil and natural gas drilling, a measure President-elect Donald Trump said he would move to reverse “on Day One.”
Supporters had pressed Biden to create the monuments before Trump takes office Jan. 20. During his first term, Trump slashed the footprint of two national monuments in Utah — Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — and stripped protections in a marine monument. Biden reversed the changes.
A male Chuckwalla lizard in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Chuckwalla National Monument is named for the stocky reptiles. (Ernie Cowan / For the San Diego Union-Tribune)
A coalition led by tribal leaders says the forthcoming California monuments will protect a plethora of wildlife and culturally significant sites while staving off resource extraction — including of clean energy — and housing development.
Near the site where the signing ceremony had been scheduled, California’s Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot hailed the cooperative effort that led to the designations as a paradigm shift.
“It represents a new model of conservation where environmental groups are actually working in support of tribal leaders that are driving this conservation forward,” he said.
Opponents of the newest monuments, including small-scale miners, off-road enthusiasts and some local representatives, fear the designations will stifle recreation as well as economic and energy opportunities. Detractors believe Biden has misused his executive power and hope the incoming administration will roll back the president’s actions.
Greg Smith, 40, parked along the road leading to where Biden had been scheduled to speak, planted an American flag atop an RV amid furious winds. “Biden leave our desert alone” was written in blue tape on the back of the vehicle.
Smith, a Palm Desert resident, said he worries monument status means he’ll be cut off from the land.
“We’re going to lose our favorite family camping spot,” he said, flanked by his 11-year-old daughter Katherine.
Three California Democrats, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and former Sen. Laphonza Butler, along with Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Palm Desert), introduced legislation in April to designate the Chuckwalla National Monument. Then in September, Padilla and Butler introduced legislation to establish the Sáttítla National Monument. Neither bill advanced in a divided Congress.
The Chuckwalla monument begins in the west around Painted Canyon, an area where the mountainside is stained deep red, pink, green and gray. To the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, the red color of the hills and canyon walls is a sign of the bleeding heart of their creator god, Mukat.
“We are happy to see the designation protect this area that contains thousands of cultural places and objects of vital importance to the history and identity of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians,” said Joseph DL Mirelez, chairman of the tribe.
Ruiz said the monument, crafted by a diverse coalition, shows that land conservation and renewable energy expansion can go hand in hand. In negotiations, the monument boundaries were reduced to “allow for growth potential and maintenance and upgrading of the grid pipelines,” ultimately winning over renewable energy and utility groups, he said.
Some area politicians opposed the designation. Johnny Rodriguez, vice mayor of Blythe, a community of about 18,000 on the eastern end of the monument, fears it will smother economic development in the area.
He said natural gas lines and heavy utility lines that serve the area are inside the boundaries of the new monument, which could limit future expansions of those lines and make it more difficult and expensive for the developers of any big projects built in Blythe to access them.
Blythe’s City Council put out a statement opposing the designation over the summer.
But other nearby communities are on board. Palm Desert, a city of more than 50,000 near Palm Springs, passed a resolution in support of the monument.
Evan Trubee, a Palm Desert City Council member, said the designation would put the area on tourists’ radar — drawing them and their dollars.
Money raised through taxes helps provide local services, he said, adding that low-income areas in the eastern Coachella Valley could use the infusion of funds.
“If we could get some tourism dollars spent in those communities, I think would make a huge difference,” he said.
Read more: Chuckwalla National Monument would protect swath of California desert and preserve a sacred land
Besides its namesake, the Chuckwalla lizard, the area is home to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, kangaroo rats, burrowing owls and jackrabbits. A Center for American Progress analysis found the area to be one of the most ecologically connected in California, meaning its protection enables wildlife to traverse a giant amount of land unbothered.
The designation will create a nearly contiguous swath of protected land stretching from the state’s southern border to southern Nevada and the eastern Sierra Nevada, the analysis noted.
However, off-roaders, rockhounders and prospectors who mine small claims in the area have expressed concern that the protections will impede their use of the land.
Greg Herring, a retired Marine Corps major who has a small mining claim in the Eagle Mountains, called the move “an atrocity” and said he plans to join others in asking Trump to reverse the designation. Herring maintains the land is already adequately protected by existing designations and fears the status will disrupt recreation activity he and other disabled veterans have found therapeutic.
Some 750 miles to the north, the newly created Sáttítla National Monument will also protect a land linked to an Indigenous creation story.
“For the Pit River people, it’s the actual place of our creation and is a very sacred place for us in the narrative of our peoples,” said Brandy McDaniels of the Pit River Nation.
The monument extends over a landscape of jaw-dropping natural beauty in parts of the Shasta-Trinity, Klamath and Modoc national forests. There are rich, green forests, abundant wildflowers, intricate cave systems and drinking water that can be sipped on site.
It is often referred to as the headwaters of California because its lakes and aquifers help provide clean drinking water to the rest of the state.
The Pit River Tribe has long been involved in litigation to prevent geothermal development in the area, and monument status will prevent similar efforts from moving forward in the future, McDaniels said.
Some renewable-energy advocates, however, say the designation will result in the loss of an important clean-energy source that would advance the Biden administration’s agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Jenny Rowland-Shea, director of public lands policy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said the timing of Biden’s designations was key, given that Trump’s record on public lands left many doubtful that monument campaigns would advance during his second term.
Still, it’s not a given that Trump will seek to unwind these protections, or that he’ll refrain from protecting more land, Rowland-Shea said. Conservation has historically been a bipartisan issue that’s popular with a broad range of voters, and presidents on both sides of the aisle, including Trump, have set aside public lands in the past.
On the other hand, the conservative Project 2025 playbook, which Trump publicly distanced himself from during his campaign but whose contributors he’s tapped for administration roles, describes a “pretty grim” scenario when it comes to conservation, Rowland-Shea said.
“It all comes down to who the Trump administration decides to side with: these insider special interest groups pushing him to un-protect these areas so industry can drill and mine all of these places? Or with the American public who, poll after poll shows, really likes national monuments?” she said.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
