Sierra Club's California’s campaign to conserve 30 percent of our lands and waters by 2030–with the goals of protecting biodiversity, stabilizing the climate, and improving equitable access to nature for everyone–began the year 2025 with a bang!  A grand victory was the proclamation in the final weeks of the Biden Administration of two brand new, large, landscape-scale California national monuments, together amounting to nearly a million acres of land conserved.

In the far north, a broad coalition of partners successfully advocated for the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument: 224,000 acres of national forest land in the Medicine Lake Highlands east of Mount Shasta  in Siskiyou and Modoc counties near the California-Oregon border. The Pit River Tribe and also the Modoc Tribe spearheaded the campaign to protect the Highlands’ volcanically formed aquifers that send pure water far south and to protect their ancestral homelands from geothermal energy development.

And in far southeast California, the Chuckwalla National Monument was proclaimed to protect a 624,000-acre area of mostly Bureau of Land Management lands in the desert south of Joshua Tree National Park, extending east to the Arizona border. The Monument was sought by the Quechan Tribe, and the proclamation provides for Tribal stewardship.  Senator Alex Padilla and Congressman Raul Ruiz had introduced bills in the 118th Congress for this monument, and when Congress did not act, they urged President Biden to use his power under the Antiquities Act. 

Not all the area in the Chuckwalla National Monument is new protection for 30x30 purposes.  Inside the new monument are five wilderness areas, established in 1994–--– Chuckwalla Mountains, Little Chuckwalla Mountains, Mecca Hills, Orocopia Mountains and the Palo Verde Mountains.  But by giving connectivity to these existing separate wilderness areas, the new monument increases their habitat value. 

Although the outgoing president did not have time to designate the Kw’tsán national monument in far southern California--another tribally-led California proposal –- the Ft. Yuma Quechan Tribe did secure a co-stewardship agreement with the Bureau of Land Management for the Quechan Ancestral Landscapes area of traditional Tribal lands within the proposed monument boundaries.  And the campaign for eventual monument status continues.

As we celebrate our monumental newly protected lands, we remain on the alert against potential federal attacks. Stay tuned in this newsletter for ways to engage on 30x30 with the Sierra Club’s statewide task force. To find out what’s going on in the Redwood Chapter and how you can be part of the campaign, contact Dan Mayhew (drmayhew@comcast.net) or Teri Shore (teri.shore@gmail.com).

--Vicky Hoover, Co-chair CA 30x30 task force