Native Americans press Biden to designate three new national monuments in California

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A Native American-led coalition is pressing the Biden administration to designate three new national monuments in California, with some fearing the chance to protect these areas from mining, drilling and logging could be jeopardized after President-elect Donald Trump takes office Jan. 20.

The lands being sought for monument status encompass more than 1.2 million acres, the largest being the proposed Chuckwalla national monument on more than 620,000 acres stretching from the Coachella Valley near the Salton Sea to the Colorado River. Backers led by the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and other tribes also want neighboring Joshua Tree National Park expanded by nearly 18,000 acres.

In addition, the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe is seeking to establish the 390,000-acre Kw’tsán national monument on nearby desert lands in the southeast corner of California, abutting the Colorado River and hugging the border with Mexico. And the Pit River Nation is requesting designation for roughly 200,000 acres of their ancestral territory and spiritual sites in Sáttítla, or the Medicine Lake Highlands, which encompasses striking volcanic formations in Northern California.

Separately, some environmentalists are pushing Biden to set aside 1.4 million acres between Sequoia-Kings Canyon and Yosemite national parks — dubbed the Range of Light national monument.

The campaigns have assumed heightened urgency with Trump set to retake the White House with GOP majorities in the House and Senate. Trump downsized monuments in the West during his first term, and some conservative groups are calling on Congress to abolish the Antiquities Act, the 1906 law that allows presidents to designate national monuments.

“Time is running out,” Brandy McDaniels of the Pit River Nation said last month at COP 16, the United Nations biodiversity summit in Colombia, bringing the plea to a world stage.

Opponents contend that the lands are safeguarded by existing designations and that giving them monument status will unfairly choke off recreation, such as offroading, and small-scale mining. Some conservatives say the Antiquities Act has been misused as a tool for unchecked land grabs.

Supporters for the tribal-led proposals, which includes top California officials, conservation groups and businesses, say the lands at stake are home to unique but at-risk animals and plants, as well as spiritually and culturally significant areas. They also say the lands aren’t being adequately protected from those seeking to pillage natural resources and visitors who trash sacred sites.

The state Senate and Assembly passed resolutions urging Biden to act on the three new monuments.

The desert landscape comprising the envisioned Chuckwalla and Kw’tsán monuments connected tribes in the region, according to Lena Ortega of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe.

“It was through our ancient trail systems that we traveled to bring news of good harvest, war, death and celebration,” Ortega, project lead for Kw’tsán, said at the COP16 meeting.

Tribes consider these ancestral lands to be sacred. Pottery shards, cremation sites and rock art can be found throughout the region.

Wild inhabitants include vulnerable bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, as well as the stocky Chuckwalla lizard that enjoys basking in the sun. There’s also a rare, bizarre-looking parasitic plant, known as sandfood, found in the region’s sand dunes.

Donald Medart Jr., a Fort Yuma Quechan Indian tribal council member, said the tribe has long fought mining and mineral exploration in the area and felt current protections weren’t sufficient.

“Every 20 years, we were having to fight the same fight in order to protect these lands that are sacred to us and the objects that are contained within these lands and the landscape as a whole,” he said.

The starting point for the proposed Chuckwalla monument is Painted Canyon, an area near the eastern edge of the Coachella Valley where the mountainside is stained deep red, pink, green and gray. To the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, it represents the bleeding heart of their creator, Mukat.

Thomas Tortez Jr., tribal council chairman for the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, said that monument status will pave the way for better oversight, protecting the area from trash dumping and graffiti.

“It gets desecrated more and more every year,” Tortez said.

The area is also the home to a former World War II-era training center used by Gen. George Patton to prepare troops to fight in the North African deserts.

“There’s an immense amount of military history out there,” said Janessa Goldbeck, a former U.S. Marine and chief executive for the Vet Voice Foundation, who supports the designation. Remnants of that history include the altar of a church built for service members made out of rocks from the desert, she said.

Other veterans oppose the designation. James Gregory Herring, 65, a retired Marine Corps major who lives in Pioneertown, said the Chuckwalla proposal will wipe out more than 350 small-scale mining claims, which he said he and other disabled veterans “have found so helpful and therapeutic in our own ability to cope with various mental and physical disabilities.”

Herring said he and his wife have a small claim in the Eagle Mountains, which would be partially subsumed by Joshua Tree National Park under the Chuckwalla proposal.

The military camp remnants are already protected by wilderness or National Conservation Lands designations, he said. An online petition he started to oppose Chuckwalla has more than 2,200 signatures.

Ben Burr, executive director of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a nonprofit that focuses on preserving recreation access, said a trail included in Chuckwalla called Meccacopia is popular with off-roaders. And he also fears the Kw’tsán monument could curtail access to the heavily trafficked Glamis and Imperial sand dunes — even though they lie outside the envisioned boundaries — due to “spillover management effects.”

“The monument supporters will always say we will still allow recreation, but it’s only very limited forms of recreation that get allowed in these,” Burr said. “And that’s the part that’s never said out loud.”

Medart maintains that areas outside the monument won’t be impacted, and said tribal leaders want to work collaboratively with stakeholders to hammer out a vision for the area.

Near the Oregon border, another coalition is seeking monument status for an area known as Sáttítla that extends over parts of the Shasta-Trinity, Klamath and Modoc national forests. They say local tribes and numerous Californians depend on the area’s aquifers — which flow into the Fall River and beyond — for clean drinking water and renowned fisheries. The geologically unique area is a spiritual center for the Pit River and Modoc tribes and serves as habitat for protected species, including the bald eagle and northern spotted owl.

“We rely on the waters and the food and the medicines that come from this area, and we need it to be a healthy, whole and intact place,” the Pit River Nation’s McDaniels said. “But not only for us. It really serves as a headwaters of California.”

Industry groups representing loggers, mills, private timberland owners, biomass energy producers and others claim the designation would lead to heightened wildfire risk.

In a joint letter to Biden opposing the designation, the presidents of the American Forest Resource Council and California Forestry Assn. said the monument status would add management restrictions that could complicate and thwart existing initiatives, including the Wildfire Crisis Strategy.

Supporters of the monument have stressed that fire agencies retain their authority to battle blazes within monument areas.

The envisioned Range of Light monument — a nod to naturalist John Muir’s moniker for the Sierra Nevada — was endorsed by more than 50 state legislators in an August letter. But it’s faced pushback as well, including rejection from a county supervisor who represents areas being floated for protection.

Supporters and opponents say the designations are not necessarily the safeguard some believe in light of a fierce ideological debate over the power given to presidents to make them.

“I would say any monuments that Biden has already designated or is going to designate in the coming two months are at severe risk of being shrunken or eliminated by the Trump administration,” said Brendan Cummings, conservation director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which maintains that presidents do not have the authority to undo monuments.

Critics of the way the Antiquities Act has been used often point to a mandate for monuments to be limited to the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

Burr said that Biden setting aside vast swaths of land in the waning days of his term could lead to backlash from federal lawmakers — such as eliminating funding for the designations or enacting permanent changes to the Antiquities Act.

“Part of me is, like, if he goes big, that’s fine for what we want because then there will be the [momentum] to just settle this once and for all with unified control of the federal government by Republicans,” said Burr, who supports repealing the Antiquities Act.

Trump sharply reduced the boundaries of two monuments in Utah — Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase — and stripped protections from a marine monument off the coast of New England to allow commercial fishing. The Biden administration reversed the changes.

Biden has designated six monuments and expanded four, including enlarging the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument near Los Angeles by nearly a third earlier this year. That amounts to more than 1.6 million acres of public land, and granting the pending tribal-led proposals would tack on more than 1.2 million more. Setting aside such vast landscapes will bring federal and state officials closer to meeting their goals of safeguarding 30% of lands and coastal waters by 2030, supporters say.

Given Biden’s record, some think the president is highly likely to approve one or more of the monuments before Trump’s inauguration. Advocates for the designations say setting them aside now will provide a bulwark against potential attacks.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Indio) is confident Biden will act on Chuckwalla, which has an established campaign and widespread approval. He’s hopeful that a proclamation will arrive in November, which is Native American Heritage Month.

Trump could pose a threat, he acknowledged, “but once it’s confirmed, it’s going to be very difficult to reverse.”