PRESIDENT Barack Obama on Friday, Feb. 12, designated three new national monuments over a land area of 1.8 million acres that will protect Southern California deserts.
The move will create three national monuments — Castle Mountains, Mojave Trails and Sand to Snow — and will connect Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and the Mojave National Preserve to create the second-largest desert preserve in the world, coming after Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia.
The designation was requested by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has been seeking the protection for seven years
“The effort to preserve the California desert has been a long one, and today is a major milestone,” Feinstein said. “This kind of landscape is so much a part of what the West once was, and these monuments are icons of our cultural heritage. Simply put, the California desert is a national treasure. This designation only reaffirms that fact.”
Mojave Trails National Monument covers 1.6 million acres of federal land and protects wildlife corridors connecting Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. The Sand to Snow National Monument, located approximately 45 miles east of Riverside, covers about 154,000 acres of federal land between Joshua Tree National Park and the San Bernardino National Forest.
Castle Mountains National Monument covers nearly 21,000 acres of land that includes a historic mining camp, Hart, which is about 10 miles away from the Nevada border.
Supporters of the designation include groups such as the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, the Mojave Desert Land Trust, the Center for Biological Diversity and the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
Obama made the designation under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which grants presidents the authority to establish national monuments on federal land that have historic, cultural or scientific interest.
The act, however, is interpreted differently by Republicans, who have been trying to limit Obama’s authority to act. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) made an amendment that was considered by the Senate last week, which would have reversed national-monument designations if Congress and lawmakers in those affected states did not approve them explicitly and within three years of designation, The Washington Post reported.
“Most people do not understand what Antiquities does, or can do,” Bishop said, according to the Post. “At some point, we have to realize this is a process that is out of control. Whether that actually occurs before Obama leaves is irrelevant.”
The new designation will nearly double the amount of public land the president has designated as national monuments since taking office, the White House said, making this potentially among the most expansive environmental and historic preservation-legacies in presidential history.
