Look West: Public lands and energy news from the Center for Western Priorities


** Tribe calls for new national monument in Southern California
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Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Ocotillo in the Indian Pass Wilderness, California. Bureau of Land Management, Flickr ([link removed])

The Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe is calling for ([link removed]) the permanent protection of over 390,000 acres of public lands in Southern California as the Kw'tsán National Monument ([link removed]) . The proposed monument area includes ancestral homelands of the Quechan people, as well as cultural objects and ancestral trails.

The national monument would connect to a greater cultural landscape that includes the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument ([link removed]) —a 700,000-acre landscape north of the proposed Kw'tsán National Monument—and Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, which President Joe Biden designated ([link removed]) using the Antiquities Act in 2023. The Quechan people once traveled ([link removed]) from Avi Kwa Ame to the Lower Colorado River Valley, which encompasses the proposed national monument.

Designating Kw'tsán National Monument would safeguard the landscape from ongoing threats ([link removed]) of mining, unregulated off-road vehicle use, and harmful development, all of which pose dangers to cultural resources and wildlife that rely on the landscape. The area provides habitat for desert tortoise, chuckwalla lizards, and numerous bird species. It also serves as a migration corridor for bighorn sheep and mule deer.


** Quick hits
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Quechan Tribe seeks protection of sacred lands with national monument at Indian Pass

Arizona Republic ([link removed]) | KPBS ([link removed])

White House celebrates $1B deal to restore salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest

E&E News ([link removed]) | San Francisco Chronicle ([link removed]) | Idaho Capital Sun ([link removed]) [opinion]

Climate change is erasing decades of air quality improvements. It’s also making Colorado’s air worse

CPR News ([link removed])

Federal prosecutors accuse a New Mexico woman of fraud in oil and gas royalty case

Associated Press ([link removed])

A long-sought deal around a little power plant might be a model for Colorado River cooperation

Denver Post ([link removed])

How Ute Tribes in Colorado resisted U.S. boarding schools

Colorado Sun ([link removed])

How to recycle the giant magnets inside wind turbines? These scientists have a few ideas

Grist ([link removed])

Wildfires are killing California's ancient giants. Can seedlings save the species?

NPR ([link removed])


** Quote of the day
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” We takes our kids to show them the footprints that made the trails. We take them to show them where we came from and where the songs came from.”

—Donald Medart, Quechan Council Member, Arizona Republic ([link removed])


** Picture This
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@grandcanyonnps ([link removed]) and @grand_canyon_conservancy ([link removed])
Today marks the 105th anniversary of the National Park Service’s work to help preserve and protect one of the world’s most awe-inspiring natural wonders and the ancestral home of the region’s tribal communities who have had cultural connections to the Grand Canyon since time immemorial.

#GrandCanyonFirstVoices ([link removed]) #GrandCanyonNationalPark ([link removed]) #NationalParkService ([link removed]) #NPSIndigenous ([link removed]) #IndigenousHistory ([link removed]) #Preservation ([link removed]) #Nature ([link removed]) #FindYourPark ([link removed])

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