Biden announces new national monument in Arizona
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President Joe Biden designated a new national monument totaling nearly 1 million acres outside Grand Canyon National Park Tuesday.
“By creating this monument, we’re setting aside new spaces for families to bike, hike, hunt, fish and camp,” Biden said during his remarks at a historic abandoned airfield near Red Butte, a sacred site for the Havasupai Indian Tribe. “Preserving these lands is good, not only for Arizona but for the planet, it’s good for the economy, it’s good for the soul of the nation.”
The move was praised by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who both attended the signing alongside tribal and federal leaders. Hobbs called the Grand Canyon sacred and an important part of the Arizona economy and said, “I can think of no better use of the Antiquities Act,” which gives presidents the authority to declare national monuments out of existing federal lands.
Some of the state’s elected Republicans oppose the designation in part because it bans new uranium mining in the area.
Buster Johnson, a supervisor in Mohave County, which is home to the Grand Canyon, told the Deseret News a member of his office had a conversation Monday with the Utah attorney general’s office about joining Utah’s lawsuit against the Biden administration for restoring the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments after being shrunk during the Trump administration.
“This grab and the Utah grab are pretty similar,” Johnson said.
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., a freshman whose district includes the Grand Canyon, said in a statement the new national monument sabotages national security and energy independence.
“Uranium is critical to American energy and security, and this ridiculous political posturing only makes us more reliant on foreign nations such as China and Russia,” Crane said.
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In Utah, elected Republicans including Gov. Spencer Cox and Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney also came out against the designation.
The new monument, called Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, is named after the Havasupai phrase for “where Indigenous peoples roam” (“Baaj nwaavjo”) and the Hopi phrase “our ancestral footprints” (“i’tah kukveni”).
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It’s made up of three separate areas to the south, northeast and northwest of Grand Canyon National Park, and it contains 12 sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places and more than 3,000 cultural and historic sites, including some that are considered sacred by area tribes, according to the White House.
The push for a new national monument in the area was years in the making, including a failed 2017 attempt by then-President Barack Obama.
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The new national monument is Biden’s fifth since taking office. Earlier this year he announced the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada, the Castner Range National Monument in Texas and the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi and Illinois. His first, the Camp Hale — Continental Divide National Monument in Colorado, was designated last year.
