The Interior Department may have signaled the location of President Joe Biden’s next national monument designation.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland over the weekend visited the Southern California site where two Democratic lawmakers and Native American tribes have asked the president to use his authority to designate the Chuckwalla National Monument, which would protect 661,000 acres of federal land important to tribes, including the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians.
Haaland on Saturday met with local tribal and government leaders and hiked Painted Canyon in the area managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The proposed monument would include land in Imperial and Riverside counties.
Previous visits by Haaland in the past year to federal lands in Arizona and California have served as a precursor for two of Biden’s monument designations.
