Bighorn sheep petroglyph Bridge Canyon Wilderness within the new Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner
Today President Biden used his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to create two new national monuments. The larger of the two, Avi Kwa Ame, in southern Nevada, encompasses 506,814 acres, while the Castner Range near El Paso, Texas, covers approximately 7000 acres.
Together these national monuments are the President’s second and third Antiquities Act declarations.
Avi Kwa Ame is the tribal name for Spirit Mountain, a granite outcrop that rises to 5,963 feet. Photo George Wuerthner
Avi Kwa Ame is the tribal name for 5,963 feet of Spirt Mountain. The highest peak in the new monument is 7,026 feet at the summit of the southern end of McCullough Mountain.
The Avi Kwa Ame monument is the more significant of the two designations, not only because of its size at a half million acres but also because it links several other large conservation tracts.
Avi Kwa Ame, located near Laughlin, Nevada, includes portions of Lake Mead National Recreation Area and adjacent BLM lands that border the Mojave National Preserve in California.
Joshua Tree in Wee Thump Joshua Tree Wilderness, now part of the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner
The Avi Kwa Ame NM includes several designated wilderness areas, including Spirt Mountain, Wee Thump Joshua Tree, Bridge Canyon, Ireteba Peaks, South McCullough, and Nellis Wash wilderness areas.
The area in blue is the new national monument. Yellow is Lake Mead NRA.
In addition, the western boundary of the new monument borders the Mojave National Preserve, the Castle Mountain National Monument, Mojave Trails National Monument, and the Dead Mountain Wilderness, all in California.
These protected landscapes are an excellent example of where the sum of the whole is greater than the individual designations. In addition, these specially designated federal lands represent millions of acres of the Mojave Desert now in conservation status.
Brittlebrush near the Colorado River within Lake Mead National Recreation Area but now part of the Ari Kwe Ame National Monument. Photo George Wuerthner
The dominant vegetation is typical Mojave plant communities that include blackbrush, Mojave yucca,buckhorn cholla, creosote bush, white bursage, banana yucca, bunch grass, matted cholla, and prickly pear cactus. At some higher elevations, there are juniper and shrub live oak.
Desert bighorn sheep. Photo George Wuerthner
The area sustains desert bighorn sheep, Arizona toads, desert tortoises, and Gila Monster, all sensitive species.
Other species within the new national monument include reptiles such as western chuckwalla, fence lizard, Great Basin gopher snake, leopard lizard, Southwestern speckled rattlesnake, large spotted leopard lizard, Great Basin whiptail, desert iguana, zebra-tailed lizard, yellow-backed spiny lizard, Great Basin collared lizard, Mojave patch-nosed snake, Mojave rattlesnake, desert banded gecko, Western long-nosed snake, Mojave shovel-nosed snake, red coachwhip.
Birds one can spot include spot-gilded flicker (known to occur in Nevada only in this location), northern flicker, ladder-backed woodpecker, black-throated sparrow, red-tailed hawk, crissal thrasher, golden eagle, loggerhead shrike, and cactus wren. Other wildlife roaming the new monument includes coyote, desert cottontail, black-tailed jackrabbit, valley pocket gopher, and desert wood rat.
Petrogryph at Grapevine Canyon. Photo George Wuerthner
The land within Avi Kwa Ame is part of the ancestral homeland of a number of tribal people, including the Southern Paiute, Mojave, and Chemehuevi. There are some significant petroglyph sites within the monument. The monument declaration provides for tribal co-management of the area.
No livestock grazing has occurred in the monument since 2006 and the new monument declaration prohibits any new grazing allotments.
The Castner Range is a former weapon testing site for the Department of Defense and an example of turning swords into plowshares. The Castner Range National Monument borders the 27,000-acre Franklin Mountains State Park, adding to their combined effectiveness in preserving biodiversity.
Yucca frames Spirit Mountain. Photo George Wuerthner
Given the significant biological and ecological importance of the Avi Kwa Ava National Monument, establishing this protected landscape is a positive action by the President. But he must get moving and designate many more national monuments to save 30 percent of the United States by 2030.
Among the better candidates are the Sutton Mountain and Owyhee Canyonlands in Oregon, Gila Bend in Arizona, Range of Light in the California Sierra Nevada, Pryor Mountains-Bighorn Canyon in Montana, an expanded Craters of the Moon in Idaho, an expanded Great Basin National Park in Nevada, the Gila in New Mexico, the White Mountains in New Hampshire, Bristol Bay and a significant portion of the Naval Petroleum Preserve in Alaska.
The most significant conservation achievement he could contemplate is expanding the protection of Yellowstone National Park by creating a national monument that would include much of the surrounding national forest and other public lands. A Greater Yellowstone National Monument would preserve the world’s most significant temperate ecosystem.