Biden Signs Proclamations Creating Two California National Monuments: Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands Protect 848,000 Acres
The desert country of Riverside and Imperial counties in California is home to the new Chuckwalla National Monument. On January 14, 2025, President Joe Biden signed proclamations at the White House formally establishing the Chuckwalla National Monument and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, together protecting 848,000 acres of California lands.
The two monuments had been set for announcement and signing at a January 7 ceremony in the Eastern Coachella Valley, and the White House issued its fact sheet that day. But the ceremony was cancelled as dangerous Santa Ana winds swept Southern California and wildfire conditions worsened around Los Angeles, and the signing was rescheduled to January 14 at the White House.
The Chuckwalla National Monument protects more than 624,000 acres in Southern California, located just south of Joshua Tree National Park at the confluence of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts. Its landscape includes mountain ranges, canyons and washes, dramatic rock formations, palm oases and desert-wash woodlands, and the White House fact sheet highlights the Painted Canyon of the Mecca Hills. The monument is home to more than 50 rare species, including the desert bighorn sheep, Agassiz's desert tortoise and the chuckwalla lizard from which it takes its name. Managed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, the monument protects the ancestral homelands and cultural landscapes of the Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Mojave, Quechan and Serrano Nations, including sacred sites, ancient trails, petroglyphs and geoglyphs; the establishing proclamation directs meaningful engagement with Tribal Nations and the pursuit of tribal co-stewardship of the monument.
Establishing Chuckwalla is the capstone of the Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor, which stretches from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in southwestern Utah, through monuments in Arizona and Nevada, to the deserts of Southern California — approximately 600 miles and nearly 18 million acres, the largest corridor of protected lands in the continental United States.
The Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, in northern California's mountainous interior, encompasses over 224,000 acres, including parts of the Modoc, Shasta-Trinity and Klamath National Forests, and will be managed by the U.S. Forest Service. At its core sits the Medicine Lake Volcano, and the landscape is dotted with cinder cones, volcanic craters and hundreds of lava tubes. The highlands are the ancestral homelands of, and sacred to, the Pit River Tribe and Modoc Peoples, and rain filtering through the porous volcanic rock recharges aquifers essential to clean water for Northern California communities.
The White House said both monuments reserve only federal lands, not state or private lands, and that the proclamations do not affect valid existing rights. With these designations, the total U.S. lands and waters protected under President Biden reached 674 million acres, more than under any previous president.
(Source: The White House)
Source: The White House
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：查克瓦拉国家纪念地境内的梅卡山峡谷岩壁与沙漠冲积地，彩绘峡谷一带景观。（美国土地管理局 BLM California，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons） / Photo: Canyon walls and desert wash in the Mecca Hills, within the Chuckwalla National Monument near Painted Canyon. (Bureau of Land Management California, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
