Biden Administration protects additional 120,000 acres at two California National Monuments

If you can peer past the thousand-foot skyscrapers in the above picture of Los Angeles, the second largest metropolitan area in the United States with some 18 million residents in the region, you’ll get a good look at Mount San Antonio – known locally to those as Mount Baldy. It soars to over 10,300 feet above sea level, flanking the LA skyline to the northeast and doing its best to remind the residents of the region that there’s still some natural beauty within reach.

Baldy stands as the highest peak in the San Gabriel Mountains, a range that stretches nearly 70 miles east to west and serves as the northern barrier between the major population center and the Mojave Desert. Back in 2014, then President Barack Obama designated it as a National Monument, a designation that as of yesterday had been protecting 346,177 acres under authority of the Antiquities Act.

Yesterday, though, saw the Biden Administration add significantly to that total.

As part of his larger America the Beautiful Initiative that’s aimed at protecting a total of 30% of all US lands and waters by 2030, President Biden added nearly 106,000 acres to the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument yesterday, with the lands specifically targeted due to their impact on the watersheds of the San Gabriel River, Arroyo Seco, and ultimately the snowmelt runoff that helps give Los Angeles the water it needs to be as big as it is. As the press release states, the lands were also specifically picked to help add accessibility to outdoor recreation and help preserve lands historical to the Indigenous peoples of the region.

The additional protected lands are also vital to the likes of black bear, mountain lions, and the imperiled California condor, as Outside Magazine noted.

While the bulk of the newly-protected acreage is dedicated to the San Gabriels in southern California, the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument north of San Francisco might well have picked up the most significant new protection. As Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland pointed out, the 13,696 acre expansion now protects an 11-mile ridgeline that’s both sacred to the Patwin people and loops in what had previously been a boundary line between other already protected areas. “Walker Ridge,” as it had been recently called by those who never bothered to realize it had been named something else for years prior, will now be called “Molok Luyuk,” the Patwin phrase for “Condor Ridge.”

This latest pair of expansions means that the Biden Administration has proteced over 41 million acres, putting the President on-track to protect more acres than any other President in history.