(AFP) – Joe Biden is set to designate two new US national monuments — sprawling parks — in California as he looks to secure his environmental legacy in the waning days of his presidency. Just before Donald Trump is due to move into the White House, the 82-year-old will proclaim the 624,000-acre (252,000-hectare) Chuckwalla National Monument, near Joshua Tree National Park in southern California, the White House said Tuesday. The move will protect the area from drilling, mining, solar energy farms and other industrial activity, and comes after lobbying from Native American tribes who have used the land for millennia.
Biden will also create the 224,000-acre Sattitla National Monument in the state’s far north, at the border with Oregon, offering that area the same environmental safeguards. Biden, who was in California on Tuesday, had been scheduled to announce the new designations during a side trip to the Coachella Valley, but high winds — fanning a major fire near Los Angeles — caused him to postpone. The announcement will now be made at a White House ceremony next week.
“The stunning canyons and winding paths of the Chuckwalla National Monument represent a true unmatched beauty,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. “It was my honor to visit this area to explore and meet with federal, state, tribal and local leaders to hear about the need to protect and conserve this sacred area.” The new designation “will protect important spiritual and cultural values tied to the land and wildlife. I am so grateful that future generations will have the opportunity to experience what makes this area so unique,” Haaland said.
Biden’s four-year term in office has seen the creation of eight other national monuments and the expansion of four more. The latest move will mean he has conserved more lands and waters than any other US president, the White House said. On Monday, he signed an executive order banning offshore drilling in an immense area of coastal waters, encompassing the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington, and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.
Trump reduced the size of national monuments during his first term in the White House, and environmentalists fear the next four years could see similar chipping away at the protected status of public lands, as the Republican seeks to expand fossil fuel extraction. Biden’s proclamations are the latest in a string of last-minute climate policy actions that seem intended to frustrate what environmentalists fear will be the wrecking ball of another Trump presidency. In mid-December, the outgoing administration issued an ambitious new climate target under the landmark Paris accord, committing the United States to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 61-66 percent below 2005 levels by 2035, on the path to achieving net zero by 2050.
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