President Joe Biden is facing a wave of campaigns to create new national monuments in his final weeks in office, but people both inside and outside the administration expect the outgoing president to select just a handful of key sites that have already been thoroughly vetted.
During his sole term in office, Biden has repeatedly used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to designate new national monuments, ranging from preserving sweeping natural landscapes to sites important to Native Americans to those that memorialize Black history in this country.
Earlier this week, he declared his seventh new national monument, recognizing the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, and acknowledging the government’s role in attempting to eradicate tribal culture through a boarding school system run by the Interior Department.
In the final weeks of his term, Biden is being pressed to enshrine a host of additional sites across the nation, with advocates touting the benefits of monuments from California to Maine. Some of the prospective monuments are ones advocates have been working on for years, while other campaigns are more recent.
In Biden, advocates believe they have a receptive audience, given the president’s pledge in 2021 to prioritize conservation — particularly reaching the goal of protecting 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. As crucially, conservationists and other proponents expect President-elect Donald Trump to be antagonistic to new monuments, as his most significant use of the Antiquities Act during his first term was to dramatically shrink two created by Democratic presidents.
“When the president is a lame duck and in the last days of his term, there’s not that many things you can do that have lasting effect,” said John Leshy, who served as the Interior Department’s solicitor during the Clinton administration. “Most presidents regardless of party or era, get down to the last few days and say, ‘What can I do to burnish my legacy?’”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Friday and the Interior Department declined to comment.
A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss ongoing considerations, warned that Biden is unlikely to sign off on a wide swath of would-be monuments, particularly those backed by newer campaigns.
“There is a dual challenge here. On the one hand, groups are coming out of the woodwork with requests that have not been fully vetted and don’t have the kind of community-led engagement that has been a standard for the Biden administration,” the official said.
The Biden administration must also weigh threats to the Antiquities Act, as Republicans who will now control both Congress and the White House have long questioned how it is implemented. Along with GOP governors, congressional lawmakers have criticized many monuments created by Democratic presidents as too expansive and cutting off valuable land from mineral development, grazing and uses like off-road vehicle recreation.
Utah state officials are also pursuing two lawsuits in federal court that would severely limit the the Antiquities Act, and cede control of a large portion of federal public lands to states.
“On the other hand, with threats from Trump and Congress, these could be the last areas considered under the Antiquities Act before the far right takes a hatchet to this bedrock and bipartisan law,” the senior administration official said.
A presidential tradition
Creating monuments during the lame-duck period is effectively a presidential tradition. AnE&E News analysis found that among the 18 presidents who used the Antiquities Act to issue nearly 300 proclamations, half issued at least one proclamation after Election Day, as they were preparing to leave office.
The 1906 law allows presidents to set aside existing federal lands to preserve areas of cultural, historic or scientific interest.
In total, nearly three dozen monuments have been established between Election Day and the next president’s swearing-in since the law’s enactment.
But while the process of establishing monuments is a comparatively simple one — versus the regulatory process, which can take years to complete — Leshy and other observers noted that the final action typically comes after extensive efforts from local groups and elected officials.
“You can gin up a monument pretty fast in terms of the paperwork, but most of the time the presidents like to have the groundwork laid,” he said.
That groundwork often includes public meetings organized by Interior or the Agricultural Department, because agencies such as the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service are tasked with ultimately managing the monuments.
Those agencies have been publicly vetting a few monuments in recent months.
In June, Interior hosted a community meeting on the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument in California, a 627,000-acre stretch of desert adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park. In August, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland attended a community meeting on the management of the Frances Perkins Homestead in Newcastle, Maine.
Earlier this month, USDA hosted a session on the proposed Sáttítla National Monument, a 200,000-acre site in northeastern California that includes lands in the Shasta-Trinity, Klamath and Modoc national forests.
“President Biden has a very strong record on conservation, and he has been supportive of many of these campaigns as they have progressed, as has Secretary Haaland,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association.
She added: “It’s not necessarily quantity, it’s quality, and making sure places waiting to get protected, get protected.”
Still, some advocates want to see Biden take a significantly more aggressive stance, particularly given his pledge to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters, officially known as “America the Beautiful.”
Rick Steiner, a retired marine conservation professor at the University of Alaska, noted that Biden has not established any new marine national monuments during his tenure.
“There’s been no marine monuments done by Biden, and particularly in Alaska we desperately need them, because we know what’s coming down the tube from the Trump administration both onshore and offshore,” Steiner said.
‘Potentially a target’
Justin Pidot, who recently stepped down as general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, noted that Biden has made use of the Antiquities Act more than any other modern president since Jimmy Carter.
“I would expect this remains a high priority for him in his remaining days,” said Pidot, now at the University of Arizona’s College of Law.
Despite the crush of requests, however, Pidot likewise said the Biden administration is unlikely to adopt proposals it has not had a chance to thoroughly review.
“Each monument is a huge amount of work. These are not things that are done lightly. These proclamations are long, they’re detailed, they’re careful,” he said. “It is a lot of work even though it is largely invisible to the public.”
Pidot said that Biden will also likely be focused on ensuring that any actions are difficult to unwind based on public perception.
“Anything the administration does at the moment is potentially a target for the Trump administration,” Pidot said.
During his first term, Trump rolled back protections for more than 2 million acres of national monument lands in Utah at the behest of GOP lawmakers in the state. Biden restored those lands, and a new management plan for the Bears Ears monument is nearing completion.
But Pidot offered an optimistic take, noting that the public record that is established when creating a monument is not erased simply because a site’s boundaries or status change.
“All of that work was not lost,” Pidot said, referring to the Bears Ears National Monument. “It was there for President Biden when he came into office to be able to pick up.”
He added: “It’s easy to think only about what happens in the next 100 days, or the next four years, but there will be another chapter.”
Here’s a look at some of the lands being proposed as monuments, organized by state:
Arizona
Great Bend of the Gila: The proposed 400,000-acre monument would protect a stretch of the Sonoran Desert between Phoenix and Yuma that is home to Native American sacred sites, petroglyphs and rock art.
California
Sáttítla: This 200,000-acre site in northeastern California, also known as the Medicine Lake Highlands, is supported by the Pit River Nation, which considers the lands a “spiritual center.” Native Americans assert the monument status would deter future efforts to develop these lands, pointing to past bids to establish large-scale geothermal energy development in the region.
Chuckwalla: The proposed 627,000-acre site in southern California is intended to protect biodiversity, wildlife habitat and habitat connectivity from the Coachella Valley to the Colorado River.
Kw’tsán: The Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe is seeking to designate 390,000 acres of tribal homelands in southern California’s Imperial County.
Colorado
Dolores Canyons: Proponents want to see Biden designate 400,000 acres of land in rural southwestern Colorado, arguing the site would protect ecological values and recreational opportunities.
Maine
Frances Perkins: The Frances Perkins Homestead became a National Historic Landmark in 2014 and is managed by the National Park Service. The Newcastle home of the nation’s first female Cabinet member and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary, would be elevated to national monument status.
Nevada
Bahsahwahbee: The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe and the Ely Shoshone Tribe want to establish a 25,000-acre monument in this eastern Nevada area known as “Sacred Water Valley.” Once the site of religious gatherings, the location is known for three massacres, including an 1859 incident in which the U.S. Army killed as many as 700 men, women and children.
New Mexico
Caja del Rio: A monument would protect more than 100,000 acres of land near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Advocates have opposed a proposed 14-mile transmission line that the Los Alamos National Laboratory wants to build across the same lands.
North Dakota
Maah Daah Hey: Native American tribes and conservation groups are seekig to conserve 140,000 acres across 11 noncontiguous sites in the Little Missouri National Grassland. The land borders the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
Oregon
Owyhee Canyonlands: Oregon Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have pushed to designate 1.1 million acres of land as wilderness and wild and scenic rivers. But with those efforts stalled, Biden could instead issue a proclamation to safeguard those lands as a monument.
