On August 10, Joshua Tree National Park celebrated a birthday – 83 years ago the area was designated a national monument by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That original effort was almost single handedly championed by the original desert defender – Minerva Hoyt, who used her generational wealth and passion for the desert to have the 825,000 acres protected as a monument in 1936. It took her over 20 years, and there was talk about naming the park after her. Instead, she has the Miernva Hoyt trail right by the Hidden Valley picnic area, a short 4 mile loop that explores a fraction of the land she loved.
Then, on October 31st, 1994 – Joshua Tree National Monument was elevated to National Park status when the Desert Protection Act was signed in by then President Bill Clinton. The change was slightly semantic in nature – monuments tend to be land reserved by the Department of the Interior because they contain objects of historic, prehistoric, or scientific interest – whereas a National Park probably contains those things but also has a large amount of recreational and educational value. With Joshua Tree National Park topping over 3 million visitors a year, the park has become one of the most popular out of the 63 total national parks.
Chuckwalla National Monument (maybe)
Now – a similar swath of land adjacent to the park is hoping for the same treatment. The proposed Chuckwalla National Monument is 627,000 acres south of Interstate 10 and north of the Chocolate Mountains, butting up against Joshua Tree National Park and stretching east almost to the Colorado River.
The proposed national monument is relying on President Biden to use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate the new National Monument. That law grants US Presidents the power to use a presidential proclamation to designate federal lands as protected. It was originally used by Roosevelt to designate Grand Canyon National Park amongst 16 others back at the turn of the century.
Senators, conservationists, scientists and nature loving citizens have urged the President to designate the monument, and time is running out. President-elect Donald Trump’s policies in his first term were notoriously unfriendly to public lands and the federal policies protecting them. During his first term, one of President Trump’s first actions in public land policy was to reduce Bears Ears and Grand Staircase National Monuments in Utah – largely seen as a retaliatory measure since Barack Obama had proclaimed Bears Ears a National Monument in 2016.
While the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument doesn’t appear to have natural resources that would be of interest to the gas, oil or energy industries, the monument could still be in the crosshairs of the new administration if President Biden declares it a monument. Those are two big “ifs” – and supporters of the nascent national monument can only wait and see if President Biden will designate the land for protection, only to see it undone in the first few weeks of President Trump’s second term.
