Geologic wonders

Biden moves to protect one of California's most unusual geologic wonders

Chuckwalla National Monument will protect over 600,000 acres of desert landscape

By Erin Rode

A prominent piece of California desert between Joshua Tree National Park and the Salton Sea is finally set to become a federally protected national monument this week. 

President Joe Biden will officially designate Chuckwalla National Monument while on a confirmed trip to the eastern Coachella Valley region on Tuesday. Once official, the national monument designation will provide additional protections for over 620,000 acres of existing public lands across a broad swath of the desert that starts just south of Joshua Tree National Park and Interstate 10, stretching eastward nearly to the Colorado River. 

Chuckwalla National Monument will protect culturally important landscapes of several Native American tribes in the area, provide much-needed outdoor recreation opportunities in a region with limited park space, and safeguard habitats for desert wildlife and plants. These protections come as the inland Southern California desert is increasingly seeing large-scale solar development; supporters of the national monument say the protections are complementary to renewable energy development in the region. 

"By designating this new national monument, President Biden is enhancing outdoor access for nearby communities, preserving critical habitat for imperiled and rare species, and ensuring the ancestral homelands and sacred cultural legacies of the region’s Tribal Nations endure for generations to come – all while demonstrating that clean energy and conservation can go hand in hand," reads a statement from the White House confirming the long-expected monument designation.

A broad coalition of supporters spent the past few years calling on President Joe Biden to designate the national monument, and he’s finally doing so just two weeks before leaving office, at a time of uncertainty over public lands in the U.S. ahead of the presidential transition. Earlier this year, Biden expanded the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument and the Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in California by a combined 130,000 acres. 

Native American tribes have led the monument campaign, including the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, the Cahuilla Band of Indians, the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, and the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians.

“Some may see the desert as desolate and uninhabited, but this place encompasses our origins, history, ancient sites, trails, and more. The desert is a rich tapestry of our heritage; it’s a living, breathing testament to our people’s resilience, our history, and our spiritual connection with nature. Our footprints have been etched into the landscape since the beginning of time and we continue to provide stewardship over these lands and advocate for their protection,” wrote Thomas Tortez Jr., chairman of the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians, and Jordan D. Joaquin, president of the Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, in a September 2024 opinion piece for Indigenous news outlet ICT.

In addition to this cultural significance, supporters say the designation will protect public lands and outdoor recreation opportunities for communities in the eastern Coachella Valley and surrounding the deteriorating Salton Sea, which is technically a state recreation area but offers little in the way of hiking opportunities. 

Currently, one of the most popular hikes in the new national monument is Painted Canyon within the Mecca Hills Wilderness, a colorful geologic wonder that requires climbing several ladders to hike. Other popular recreation sites include the Corn Springs campground, “located deep in a canyon of the Chuckwalla Mountains” and “adjacent to a stand of California fan palms,” according to the Bureau of Land Management. The area also includes the Bradshaw Trail, a 70-mile dirt road that represents “the first road across Riverside County to the Colorado River” and is popular for folks with four-wheel-drive vehicles. 

The Chuckwalla National Monument will also provide enhanced protections for desert wildlife and biodiversity, with the monument itself named for the stocky Chuckwalla lizard, which has evolved into a separate subpopulation in each desert mountain range.  

There are two paths to creating a national monument. Either Congress can act by passing legislation, or the president can designate land under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Once a national monument is designated, it can be managed by a variety of different federal agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service or the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The Protect Chuckwalla National Monument coalition is proposing that the Bureau of Land Management “continues as the lead federal agency overseeing the lands within the Chuckwalla National Monument and that Tribes who are interested in co-stewardship of the monument have the opportunity to do so.”

The national monument encompasses existing federal lands under the Bureau of Land Management, with existing private inholdings left alone. National monument designations typically provide permanent protection of public lands from potential development. 

In the case of Chuckwalla, solar energy is the main development pressure in the surrounding desert. The Protect Chuckwalla National Monument coalition says the national monument “does not conflict with the development of renewable energy in the desert” and instead follows the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a 22.5 million-acre plan that identifies what areas of the desert should be used for renewable energy development and which should be left alone for conservation. The Chuckwalla National Monument’s boundaries were designed to avoid the areas that the plan deemed suitable for renewable energy development. 

Still, the city of Blythe, near the eastern edge of the monument, has opposed the designation, calling for redrawn boundaries that leave out an area from Desert Center to the Colorado River that’s been a particular hotspot for solar energy development in recent years. At the same time, the proposal has garnered support from major renewable energy companies and trade groups. Other supporters include several Coachella Valley cities, including Palm Springs, over a dozen local elected officials, and dozens of community organizations and environmental groups. 

While the Chuckwalla National Monument designation represents a last-minute win for these supporters, the future of national monuments in the U.S. remains uncertain. During his previous term, incoming President Donald Trump notably cut down the size of national monuments, a tactic that many public lands advocates worry could return during his second term.