WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Tuesday he is creating a marine sanctuary in U.S. waters near the Pacific Remote Islands southwest of Hawaii. The dictum would turn the 777,000 square miles into “the largest ocean area on the planet with the highest level of protection,” Biden wrote on Twitter.
The presidential memorandum also would establish national monuments on more than half a million acres in Nevada and Texas.
The conservation measures are “protecting the heart and soul of our national pride,” Biden said.
Speaking at a White House summit on conservation action, Biden said the new monuments are among the “natural treasures” that “define our identity as a nation. They’re a birthright we have to pass down to generation after generation.”
Biden designated Avi Kwa Ame, a desert mountain in southern Nevada that Native Americans consider sacred, as a national monument, along with the Castner Range in El Paso, Texas. He moved to create a national marine sanctuary in U.S. waters around the Pacific Remote Islands.
Conservation and tribal groups praised Biden’s actions, but Nevada’s new Republican governor slammed the monument designation as “federal confiscation” of Nevada land and “a historic mistake that will cost Nevadans for generations to come.”
Gov. Joe Lombardo, who unseated the state’s Democratic governor in November, said the White House did not consult with his administration before moving to block clean-energy projects and other development in his state. “This kind of ‘Washington Knows Best’ policy might win plaudits from unaccountable special interests, but it’s going to cost our state jobs and economic opportunity,” Lombardo said in a statement.
“Our national wonders are literally the envy of the world,” Biden said in a speech at the Interior Department. “They’ve always been and always will be central to our heritage as a people and essential to our identity as a nation.
The Nevada site spans more than 500,000 acres (200,000 hectares) and includes Spirit Mountain, a peak northwest of Laughlin called Avi Kwa Ame (ah-VEE’ kwa-meh) by the Fort Mojave Tribe and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The rugged landscape near the Arizona and California state lines is home to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and a large concentration of Joshua trees, some of which are more than 900 years old.
In Texas, the Castner Range designation will protect cultural, scientific and historic objects, honor U.S. veterans and tribal nations, and expand access to outdoor recreation on public lands, Biden said. Located on Fort Bliss, Castner Range served as a training and testing site for the U.S. Army during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The Army ceased training at the site and closed Castner Range in 1966.
Together, the two new national monuments protect nearly 514,000 acres (208,000 hectares) of public lands. The Avi Kwa Ame landscape is sacred to 12 tribes and is home to rare wildlife and plants, while Castner Range is the ancestral homeland of the Comanche and Apache people, and its cultural ecology is considered sacred to several Indigenous communities.
“To the native people who point to Avi Kwa Ame as their spiritual birthplace, and every Nevadan who knows the value of our cherished public lands:
Today is for you, tweeted Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nevada, who sponsored a bill to protect the rugged region near the Mojave National Preserve from development, including solar farms and a proposed wind farm.
“Spirit Mountain will now be protected for future generations, Titus said.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said Avi Kwa Ame “holds deep spiritual, sacred and historic significance to the Native people who have lived on these lands for generations, adding that she was grateful to Biden “for taking this important step in recognition of the decades of advocacy from tribes and the scientific community.”
In the Pacific, Biden directed the Commerce Department to initiate a marine sanctuary designation to protect 777,000 square miles around the Pacific Remote Islands. If completed, the new sanctuary would help ensure the U.S. reaches Biden’s goal to conserve at least 30% of ocean waters.