A quickly-scheduled event from the White House was expected to be the announcement of both the Chuckwalla National Monument just south of Joshua Tree national Park and the Satittla (SA-TIT-LA) Highlands National Monument north of Lake Shasta. Together both monuments will protect 848,000 acres of California wilderness, with the majority of that belonging to the land surrounding the area where the announcement was scheduled to take place.
Originally scheduled for an early afternoon, the hastily put-together announcement was then bumped up an hour to noon.
Anyone familiar with the mecca hills knows Box Canyon Road – if you are coming out of the Cottonwood entrance to Joshua Tree National park you cross the 10 and drop into a two-lane road that leads into the canyons and round rock formations of the mecca hills wilderness. The Riverside County Sheriff’s department and the Secret Service had multiple mobile command vehicles set up in the soft sand of a wash about 8 miles in.
National and state representatives for the Bureau of Land Management were ready to handle check-in for the event, but winds began to increase and at one point a microburst picked up one of the large white tents intended for guests of the event and overturned it on the road, toppling a fence with it.
A few raindrops began to fall and when the low-altitude surveillance planes that had been circling disappeared, it was anticipated that the small crowd of Journalists and event organizers would see Air Force One appear over the painted hills. Instead, news of the cancellation came swiftly as spotty cell phone coverage in the canyon kept most people in the dark about the high winds hitting southern california and the wildfire that had been kicked up in Los Angeles.
The Chuckwalla National Monument is over 600,000 acres – and the White House said in their Press Release that the giant swath of land adds to the “Mojave to Moab Conservation Corridor” which reaches from the western edges of the new Chuckwalla National Monument all the way to Grand Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments in Utah. President Biden restored those latter two conservation areas in Utah after President Trump set the tone for his public land policy by immediately reducing the amount of protected land in Utah when he first took office in 2017.
The two new National Monuments will add to the 674 million acres of US Land and Water that the Biden Administration has protected in this term as well as when he served as Vice President under Barack Obama.
Speaking with BLM volunteers and White House liaisons at the event, most were optimistic about the announcement, however the uncertainty of an incoming president that has demonstrated an opposite approach to conservation and public lands leaves supporters of the new National Monument wondering if the long-awaited and fought for federal protection will be undone after Trump takes office on January 20th.
While the White House sent out an official Press Release confirming the Monuments, an official announcement in Washington D.C. will be scheduled for next week.
