The Trump administration has sparked confusion over the future of two national monuments in California that President Biden designated before he left office. Biden established Chuckwalla National Monument and Sáttítla Highlands National Monument on Jan. 14, protecting land considered sacred by area tribes.
The confusion started on March 14 when President Trump issued an executive order rescinding several Biden-era actions. That order did not mention the monuments, but on the same day, the White House issued a fact sheet that called for terminating nearly a million acres that "constitute new national monuments that lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production." That language was later removed.
When asked to clarify the monuments' status, the White House pointed to the president's executive order from March 14, which makes no mention of changes to the monuments.
Presidents do not have the authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to revoke national monument designations, although they have modified boundaries in the past. Trump significantly reduced the boundaries of two national monuments in Utah during his first term in office. Conservationists and tribes worry something similar could happen in California.
For now, Chuckwalla — named after a wide-bellied lizard — remains protected from new development and critical mineral mining as a national monument.
Ancestral land
Chuckwalla National Monument spans roughly 710,000 acres where the Mojave and the Sonoran desert meet. It's home to chollas and saguaros cacti, and the endangered desert tortoise. At least six tribes have a cultural tie to the land, including the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians.
Gary Resvaloso, who is a Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla tribal member, drives his truck down a sandy road in Chuckwalla, pointing out red rock canyons. The color, he explains, comes from the story of coyote, who grabbed the heart of Mukat, one of the Cahuilla Tribe's creators, from a burning funeral pyre. "As he ran with it, the blood dripped on the mountains out here and on the area," Resvaloso says. "It's called Quawish-Ulish — that means red rock."
The bloodstains can still be seen on the canyons in Chuckwalla that are tinged beige, purple and red.
The footprints of the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe are also found in this desert.
Fort Yuma Quechan tribal member Donald Medart Jr. says he takes his kids to the area to show them the history of their creation.
"[Some] cremation sites are subsurface and some of them are still undisturbed," Medart says. "For us, it's a burial ground. It's an area of trade. It's an area where we left artifacts from village sites."
Those artifacts, he says, are what the tribe hopes to safeguard now that Chuckwalla is a national monument. The monument doesn't have a visitor center yet and a makeshift dirt lot now serves as a parking area. Now comes the task of tribes working with the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees much of the land, to figure out how to co-steward the monument.
Nada Wolff Culver signed the interim management plan for the monument before she left the BLM in January. She says a future plan involves co-stewardship through a possible tribal commission.
" If one is established by the tribes, it leaves it up to the tribes to decide how they would like to create that, not to tell them what to do as sovereign nations," Wolff Culver says.
The tribes are close to forming a tribal commission, according to Medart. Once that's established, he says, that will dictate how the tribes do business on these lands and how they will incorporate traditional and cultural knowledge into caring for Chuckwalla.
A shrinking town's worry
Not everybody's thrilled with the monument. Blythe, a town of around 18,000 people, is about an hour east of Chuckwalla. City officials have eyed some of the land for development and job opportunities.
Blythe's population has declined nearly 20% in the past decade and city leaders fear worst is to come after one of the city's main employer s— a state prison — closed last year.
Mayor Joey DeConinck has called Blythe home for more than 50 years, and Vice Mayor Johnny Rodriguez was born and raised in the area. They say the new monument takes up too much land.
They were hoping parts of what is now Chuckwalla National Monument could open the door for future energy production. They look to their neighbors near the Salton Sea, where lithium deposits could be developed to mine the critical minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries. DeConinck and Rodriguez wonder if something similar could be discovered at Chuckwalla.
"It's all BLM land already. It's already all protected," Rodriguez says. "Yet, if this monument status is not adjusted, at least on the eastern end of it [where Blythe is], all it's going to do is kill any future potential development that could help our area, our grandchildren."
In February, Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum issued an executive order to look into removing obstacles for developers in areas filled with natural resources. That could make the exploration for critical minerals in places like Chuckwalla easier.
Interior Department spokesperson Elizabeth Peace denied that there's a plan to review national monuments.
"The Department of the Interior is currently conducting an internal review of the reports submitted to the Secretary," Peace said in an email. "At this stage, we are assessing these reports to determine if any further action is warranted, and we remain dedicated to ensuring that all items are thoroughly evaluated as part of our internal management process."
Rodriguez and DeConinck hope the Trump administration will adjust Chuckwalla's boundaries, to make way for any future energy production.
Concern for public lands
The confusion and speculation over public lands have left the tribes and conservationists worried about the fate of Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands National Monuments and other public lands.
In 2017, Trump shrunk the boundaries of Bears Ears in Utah from roughly 1.3 million acres to around 228,000. He then reduced Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by nearly half, taking the nearly 2 million acres designation to about 1 million. As NPR reported at the time, the reduction of both monuments marked the largest reversal of national monument protections in U.S. history.
At that time, Trump called the original designation of the monuments "abuses of the Antiquities Act," which allows presidents to establish legal protections on federal lands that are culturally, historically or scientifically significant. During a December 2017 press conference, Trump said the act gave "enormous power to faraway bureaucrats at the expense of the people who actually live here, work here and make this place their home."
The move was largely seen as a way to open up mining for uranium and coal, as well as oil and gas drilling. Biden restored both monuments to their original size in 2021. Now there's worry after recent communication from the White House that Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands in California could have boundaries reduced or even be eliminated.
Davina Smith is Diné (Navajo Nation) and the co-chair for the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition. She says tribes are fearful that Bears Ears could be taken back once again.
" But we continue to move forward — knowing of why we continue to advocate and do what we can to protect these lands," she says.
Public lands weren't always a contentious issue, according to Paul Sutter, who specializes in U.S. and global environmental history at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
He says the economic decline of the 1970s started to push people on the political right against laws like the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, "as getting in the way of economic development, getting in the way of property rights."
Ranchers, county commissioners and some of Utah's congressional leaders wanted to get rid of regulations on public lands as part of what became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion. They wanted more control over grazing rights, and state control over federal lands, so they could ultimately drill for more oil and gas on public lands. Sutter says by the 1980s, public land and environmental politics started to become intensely partisan.
The Wise Use Movement also developed in the 1980s. Farmers, miners and the timber industry called for more access to logging, mining and oil extraction on public lands.
But Sutter says public lands have become more popular than ever since the COVID-19 pandemic. That's why he's hopeful that, over time, the public will really come to see these lands as part of their history.
And he says seeing tribal interests increasingly reflected "in those public lands is also a really hopeful thing."
Medart shares that sentiment. He says the Quechan people have roamed the deserts since time immemorial.
" We've not only survived within these deserts, but we've thrived within this region," he says. " And we're going to continue to do that no matter what happens today or tomorrow or next week. We will always thrive within this region."
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