President Joe Biden on Tuesday will officially designate a new national monument in Southern Nevada at a conservation event, according to a White House official.
At more than 506,000 acres, the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument will be one of the largest tracts of land to come under federal protection so far during Biden’s presidency, and will act to preserve Nevada’s Spirit Mountain and the desert around it.
Biden’s proclamation will mark a major victory for the surrounding Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, which has been advocating for the monument’s creation for around three decades.
“Avi Kwa Ame is the point of Mojave creation; it’s a very important and integral part of our history and belief system,” Ashley Hemmers, the tribal administrator for Fort Mojave, told CNN. “For us, that mountain is a living landscape; it’s like a person. If something were to happen to it, it would be like losing a loved one.”
Biden will also designate the Castner Range National Monument in Fort Bliss in West Texas, the official said, which was a training site for the Army during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Together, the two monuments will protect close to 514,000 acres of new public lands. In addition, Biden will direct Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo to consider protecting all US waters around the Pacific Remote Islands as part of a new national marine sanctuary.
Biden will make the announcement at a Tuesday conservation summit for tribal leaders and elected officials that will be hosted by the White House and Interior Department.
As they meet, climate and youth activists will also be demonstrating outside the Interior Department’s headquarters, where Biden is set to speak on Tuesday, to protest the recently approved Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. The Biden administration approved the controversial…
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