"President Joe Biden plans to expand two national monuments in California – one, a mountainous wilderness area east of Los Angeles, and another with tree-covered rolling hillsides north of Napa – in the coming weeks, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN." https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/11/climate/national-monuments-expanding-biden/index.html
A view of the village of Tyuonyi and cliff dwellings (left).
"Bandelier National Monument protects over 33,000 acres of ruggedly beautiful canyon and mesa country. Petroglyphs, dwellings carved into the soft rock cliffs, and standing masonry walls pay tribute to the early days of a culture that still survives in the surrounding communities.... The Ancestral Pueblo people lived here from approximately 1150 CE to 1550 CE. They built homes carved from the volcanic tuff and planted crops in mesa top fields." from: https://www.nps.gov/band/index.htm
I have visited this ruin, that sits on the rimrock of a small canyon, several times and there is usually a raven perched on top. I love how the raven's mournful croak rides on a lonely wind that hauntingly echoes down the canyon as if searching for a sign of the long lost tribes who once lived there. (Four Corners area, 4/26/20215.)
Today the Pit River Nation and their allies asked others to unite in calling on President Biden to work with California’s federal delegation to protect their homelands from the relentless threats from industrial energy development by designating a little more than 200,000 acres of US Forest Service managed public land in an area known as Sáttítla in the Medicine Lake Highlands as a #NationalMonument.
What good is a national monument if we allow toxic #mining to spoil it?
That's what we want to know, as federal officials decide whether to allow new #drilling and ultimately #mining for #uranium on the edge of #BearsEars National Monument in #Utah.
Less than two years ago, President #Biden restored #NationalMonument#protections to Bears Ears and its red rock #canyons, high desert #wildlife and ancient remains of #Indigenous cultures. Why on earth would we now allow disruptive and damaging uranium mining right next door?