California Democrat lobbies Biden for 2 new monuments
By Scott Streater, E&E News
Proposals to establish two new national monuments in California and to expand a third monument in the state are gaining momentum.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) announced Monday that he's leading an effort to convince President Joe Biden to designate two new national monuments near Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.
Also Monday, the Interior Department revealed that Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Sunday visited with lawmakers and Native American tribal leaders who have asked Biden to expand the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in Northern California.
Ruiz said during a press event Monday in Coachella, Calif., that he was asking Biden to establish the 661,000-acre Chuckwalla National Monument on federal land south of the national park and the Joshua Tree National Monument on roughly 20,000 acres on the eastern side of the park. He has also sponsored legislation to designate both monuments.
The lands proposed as national monuments in the eastern Coachella Valley are overseen by the Bureau of Land Management and include sections considered culturally significant to the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe, the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians.
Ruiz said during the announcement that his request to Biden and his legislation is for local residents and Native American tribal leaders "who for too long have been forgotten and marginalized, dismissed."
"And this is also exciting to me because of the tribal leadership that's involved here," he said. "There's nothing that inspires me more than when our Indigenous, original people say, 'This has always been Indian land, this is Indian land, ... and we will always be the stewards of this Indian land.'"
The announcement comes a week after Ruiz introduced a bill, the "Chuckwalla National Monument Establishment and Joshua Tree National Park Expansion Act of 2023," that would establish both national monuments.
Biden is being asked to step in and use his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to protect the sensitive areas in case the legislation, like other national monument bills in the past few years, fails to advance in Congress.
"Now, we have a lot of work to continue to do," Ruiz said.
Ruiz's announcement follows the visit by Haaland and BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning on Sunday to the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in Northern California.
The Interior Department announced Monday that Haaland and Stone-Manning visited with members of California's congressional delegation as well as with Native American groups to discuss management of the 330,000-acre national monument, including potentially expanding the boundaries of the site established in 2015 by then-President Barack Obama.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) in March filed S. 683, the “Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument Expansion Act, ”which would expand the national monument to include about 4,000 additional acres of federal land. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), filed a companion bill, H.R. 1396, in the House.
Padilla, Garamendi and seven other members of California's congressional delegation last year sent a letter to Biden asking him to expand the national monument's boundaries.
Haaland and Stone-Manning met with Garamendi and fellow California Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson as well as Native American, state and local leaders who have proposed expanding the Berryessa monument by as much 13,000 acres, according to agency press materials.
"We are humbled and excited to have our nation’s leaders visit our ancestral lands, particularly Molok Luyuk, an area of sacred and historic importance to Patwin tribes," Anthony Roberts, who chairs the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, said in a statement.
"Tribes have stewarded this area for millennia and welcome deeper collaboration with the Department of Interior and local stakeholders to protect Patwin culture and heritage."
Biden's monuments
Biden has shown a willingness to designate new national monuments when Congress has failed to act on bills that would do so.
Biden last October established the Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado, which protects a World War II Army camp and surrounding peaks in the Tenmile Range. Both areas were included in stalled legislation championed by Colorado Democrat Sen. Michael Bennet.
Biden in March also designated the 506,814-acre Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada and the 6,672-acre Castner Range National Monument in Texas at the request of Democratic lawmakers who had sponsored unsuccessful legislation on both.
And in August, Biden designated the 917,618-acre Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni—Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in northern Arizona. Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-Ariz.) had sponsored legislation to do so just weeks prior to the presidential designation.
There are several national monument proposals awaiting Biden's review that have been requested by Democratic lawmakers or conservation groups, including a push this month by conservation groups to convince Biden to designate the Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument on federal lands in southeastern Oregon.
Oregon Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley in June introduced S. 1890, which seeks to designate 1.1 million acres of the canyonlands area as new wilderness and a small section as wild and scenic rivers. The bill has been introduced twice prior, failing to advance each time.
At 661,000 acres, the Chuckwalla National Monument proposal would be the second-largest Biden has designated to date, behind only the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni—Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.
Ruiz's bill states that the Chuckwalla National Monument would be designated "to conserve, protect, and enhance for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations the ecological, scenic, wildlife, recreational, cultural, historical, natural, educational, and scientific resources of the Monument."
It would also call for the "collaborative management" of the site between the Native American tribes and BLM.
Supporters say the goal of the 20,000-acre Joshua Tree National Monument is for the National Park Service to eventually add these lands to the national park. The park service, according to supporters, has expressed an interest in adding this area to the Joshua Tree park.
The overall plan to designate both new national parks will have broad positive impacts, Ruiz said.
He called it his bill "historic" in nature, mostly because of the nearly 700,000 acres of lands that would be protected.
"Protect the animals, some of which are endangered; protect the plants, some of which are endangered; and more importantly for many of the folks here, protect the sacred sites," he said.
"That's also very important for a people who are preserving their culture so they don't go extinct, so they can teach their children about the traditions and the cultural relevance and spiritually and the relationship that we have with our earth and our responsibilities to take care of her."
Controversial hydro project
The proposal to establish a 20,000-acre national monument on the eastern side of the Joshua Tree National Park is in an area where developers have proposed building the Eagle Mountain pumped storage hydropower project, which would pump out about 35 billion gallons from an already stressed aquifer over the 50-year life of the project.
Some conservation groups and California lawmakers have blasted the project since it was first proposed more than a decade ago, saying it would drain groundwater supplies in the arid region and negatively affect the nearby park, as well as habitat for the threatened desert tortoise and other wildlife.
But the proposed Joshua Tree National Monument boundaries would not include the Eagle Mountain project, which has been proposed on about 2,700 acres of private and public lands next door to the national park.
The project has become a political issue over the years. The National Parks Conservation Association this month filed a federal lawsuit challenging the BLM's approval five years ago of a transmission and water line needed to build the Eagle Mountain project.
Chris Clarke, who works with NPCA's California desert program, which helped draw the boundaries of the monument, said the project footprint and the federal lands needed for the transmission and water lines were excluded, in large part to avoid creating potential partisan opposition to the designation.
"We do not want this national monument to infringe on other proposed projects, whether solar or wind in the area," Clarke said in an interview.
Rather, he added, "We want to protect lands where there's a consensus among stakeholders that saving these lands is important."
