The fate of two newly named national monuments in California that stretch across roughly 850,000 acres of scenic lands — an area 28 times larger than of the city of San Francisco — remained unclear Monday after President Trump issued a statement saying he was rescinding their protections, but then deleted it the next day.
Former President Joe Biden established the two monuments in January during the final days of his administration.
Chuckwalla is 624,000 acres of federal land, mostly overseen by the Bureau of Land Management where the Colorado and Mojave Deserts come together in a mix of scenic mountains and canyons that is home to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and chuckwalla lizards. Sáttítla is 224,000 acres of national forest land in the remote landscapes of Siskiyou and Modoc counties, a landscape rich with bald eagles, black bears and salmon. Together, the two areas are larger than Yosemite National Park.
Both places are sacred to native tribes, who pushed for monument status, which limits logging, mining and other extractive uses, such as energy development. Late Friday night, their fate was called into question.
Just before midnight in Washington, D.C., Trump issued an executive order overturning 19 previous executive orders and presidential actions that Biden had put in place during the past four years. The list included a requirement that businesses that contract with the federal government pay workers a minimum wage of $17.75 an hour, and that federal agencies urge other countries to reduce discrimination against gay people.
Included with Trump’s executive order was a fact sheet. It said Trump’s order would also be: “Terminating proclamations declaring nearly a million acres constitute new national monuments that lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production.”
But by Saturday, that line had been deleted from the fact sheet.
Asked Monday to clarify if Trump was revoking the monuments or not, Jennifer Peace, a Department of Interior spokeswoman, referred questions to the White House. White House officials did not answer questions on the record, referring journalists to the original executive order.
Environmental groups blasted the actions Monday.
“It’s poor planning and communication,” said Kate Groetzinger, a spokeswoman for the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group based in Denver that advocates for public lands across the West.
“We are in the dark,” she added. “It seems like the White House got their wires crossed. Nothing has been published in the Federal Register. As far as we are concerned the monuments still stand. If they try to reduce or rescind these monuments they should prepare for a strong backlash from the public.”
Asked if they could clarify the issue for the public, representatives of U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Redding, whose district includes the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument, did not respond.
Last summer, when the idea of a Sáttítla monument was first gaining momentum, LaMalfa said he was opposed because the designation would mean more regulations and limits on the federally owned land, which has been eyed at times for possible geothermal development.
“They just want to lock everything up so nobody can access it hardly at all,” LaMalfa told the Redding Record Searchlight in July. “These aren’t the friends of rural California here.”
Only Congress can establish new national parks. But Under the 1906 Antiquities Act, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt, presidents can establish national monuments by proclamation on existing federal land, without approval from Congress.
Monument designation often brings new conservation rules that limit mining, oil drilling, or other development. Nearly every president has used the law to establish monuments. In many cases Congress has eventually upgraded them to national parks.
Roosevelt used the law to set aside the Grand Canyon, and also Pinnacles in San Benito County; Bill Clinton set aside Sequoia National Monument and George W. Bush used it to protect expansive areas of the remote Pacific Ocean, including the world’s deepest location, the Marianas Trench.
Whether a president can revoke a monument is legally unclear. The 1906 law says nothing about it.
During Trump’s first term, he shrank the boundaries of two national monuments in Utah. Environmentalists sued, and the case was still pending when Biden took office and restored their original boundaries.
