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The White House is fueling speculation over plans to eliminate two large national monuments in California established by former president Joe Biden.
Less than a week before leaving office, Biden designated the 624,000-acre Chuckwalla national monument in southern California and the 224,000-acre Sáttítla Highlands national monument in northern California. Native American tribes consider these lands sacred and had urged Biden to protect them from drilling, mining, clean-energy development and other industrial activity.
But questions about the monuments’ status arose on 15 March when a White House fact sheet dated 14 March removed references to them. When initially released, the fact sheet listed a bullet point stating: “Terminating proclamations declaring nearly a million acres constitute new national monuments that lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production.”
By Saturday, that line had disappeared.
The plan to repeal the proclamations, first reported by the New York Times, comes amid Trump’s increasing efforts to dismantle Biden’s environmental legacy. The Environmental Protection Agency also began rolling back Biden’s key climate regulations this week, including rules promoting electric vehicles and reducing power plant emissions.
During his first term, Trump significantly reduced two national monuments in Utah, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, cutting more than 1.9m acres from their boundaries.
But it remains unclear whether he has the legal authority to revoke Biden’s proclamations outright. The Antiquities Act of 1906 allows presidents to designate or expand national monuments but does not specify whether they can rescind those protections without congressional approval.
The Chuckwalla national monument is south-east of Joshua Tree national park, which was the ninth-most-visited US national park in 2023, with over 3.2 million visitors. The Sáttítla Highlands national monument, located in the Medicine Lake Highlands north-east of Mount Shasta, plays an important role in supplying clean water from volcanic aquifers to communities and farms across California.
Biden used the Antiquities Act to create 10 new national monuments and expand four others, protecting more public land than any president since Jimmy Carter. Meanwhile, the US interior department has raised fears among conservationist groups about how national monuments will be affected during the Trump administration.
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Trump’s interior secretary and energy czar, Doug Burgum, recently completed a review of national monument boundaries, but the results, finalized on 18 February, have not been made public.
A review from Burgum last month instructed federal officials to reverse Biden-era regulations on oil and gas industries and boost drilling.
