I don't know how you're feeling, but I'm processing a lot right now. Despair, numbness, defiance, hope are all in the mix. So many people have asked, "What can we do in this moment to help?" Right now we have a unique opportunity to preserve and protect the outdoors, threatened species, our climate, and Indigenous heritage.
President Biden has the power to create national monuments setting aside land for conservation with the stroke of a pen. There is a fierce urgency to protect these lands for future generations. Over the coming weeks we'll be telling you more about each of them and why every one is special, but we need to let President Biden know this is a priority NOW. Read below about them all, but send President Biden a message TODAY to declare more national monuments before leaving office, and make sure you send him a personal note!
America's National Parks, Forests, and Monuments are some of our most popular areas for getting outdoors while conserving land and species for the future. They are widely supported throughout the country.
President Biden has already named many different monuments and put us on a path through his America the Beautiful plan to preserve 30% of our land by 2030– an important threshold scientists say is key to solving our climate and species/habitat loss crises. But we know under a second Trump Administration our public lands will be under attack, so we need to act quickly.
So many of our national monuments and parks are amazing places, unparalleled in their beauty and splendor. But sometimes the boundaries of these monuments have not included all the land needed to preserve important wildlife corridors. Expanding them or creating neighboring monuments can help preserve key species– from the golden eagle and bighorn sheep to desert tortoises and the iconic Chuckwalla lizard which would give one of the proposed monuments its name.
Even more importantly, many of these spaces represent irreplaceable and sacred history and cultural landscapes of America's Indigenous peoples. While much of the history of public lands has included displacing Native peoples, we can begin to right those wrongs now by preserving the areas they deem sacred and which contain centuries of history.
You can read more about each of these important proposed monuments. All of them have a unique story and reason why they deserve to be set aside for future generations, just as the parks and monuments of the past have been preserved for us.
If you'd like to come on a "tour" of these proposed monuments with us, send President Biden a message now, and then click over to the next blog post highlighting one of these places. You'll be able to multiply your impact by sending him an additional message on each one of these proposed monuments.
We know President Biden listens to people: he reads assorted letters and emails his staff prepare for him every day. And we know that when his staff is getting thousands of messages to preserve a special corner of America, that's the push they need to have him go ahead and designate them as monuments.
We hope to see you further down the trail as we continue our tour of these proposed national monuments.
First up on the tour is Owyhee Canyonlands, an amazing area of Eastern Oregon full of canyons and rivers which holds cultural significance for the Northern Paiute, Shoshone, and Bannock peoples, provides critical habitat for diverse species, and acts as an important carbon sink to fight climate change. Read more about it now.
Rafting the Wild and Scenic Owyhee River, Oregon - Photo by Vicki Fox, Sierra Club Outings