In a ceremony delayed by the Los Angeles wildfires, President Joe Biden announced that he was designating two areas in California as national monuments. The move will both honor Native American tribes and protect stunning mountains and deserts from mining and energy development.
Originally, Biden had planned to make the announcement in California’s Eastern Coachella Valley, but high winds, which fueled the devastating fires in Los Angeles, forced a change of plans. The president had arrived in California on January 6, but was only able to make it as far as Los Angeles before officials canceled the event. It served as a reminder that even as Biden takes action to protect the environment in his final days in office, climate change is already playing a role in worsening natural disasters.
Instead of the California desert, Biden spoke from the White House next to images of the region’s dramatic landscapes, including towering peaks and desert vistas. “I was hoping we were going to do this in place,” the president said. “This is as close as we could get.”
Biden officially designated the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California, near Joshua Tree National Park, and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument in Northern California. The new monuments will protect roughly 624,000 acres in Chuckwalla and 225,000 acres near the California-Oregon border from oil drilling, mining, and other forms of exploitation.
The Chuckwalla site is home to unique natural wonders like the Painted Canyon of Mecca Hills and Alligator Rock, and it hosts more than 50 rare species, including desert bighorn sheep and the Chuckwalla lizard, which the monument is named after.
At the event, Biden shared a personal story about taking his kids to national monuments across the country when they were young.
These designations reflect the requests of Native American tribes. Many groups, including local tribes and environmental organizations, had been pushing for the Chuckwalla monument for years. The Pit River Tribe, for example, had been advocating for the Sáttítla Highlands to be federally protected.
Biden, always careful with pronunciation, joked about getting the name of “Sáttítla” right—then still struggled to say it correctly. When it was time to sign the official documents, he simply referred to it as the “highlands” monument to avoid another attempt.
The new monuments are part of Biden’s broader goal to protect 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. They follow his recent ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters, including in California—an effort to block potential moves by the incoming Republican administration to expand offshore drilling. However, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to reverse that order once he takes office.
