President Joe Biden added to his administration’s aggressive bid to conserve the nation’s natural lands Thursday by expanding a pair of national monuments in California.
In a private ceremony at the White House on Thursday morning, Biden signed proclamations to expand both the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument near Los Angeles and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument north of Sacramento.
The expansions, encouraged by Democratic lawmakers as well as tribal nations and environmental organizations, will add 120,000 acres to the 41-million-acre tally touted by the administration.
That total includes Biden’s use of the Antiquities Act of 1906 to create five monuments in his first term, as well as restore more than 2 million acres of lands to a pair of monuments in Utah that had been excised by the Trump administration.
