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Today, President Biden will commit to protecting Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada as America's next national monument. The Washington Post reports that Biden will make the pledge at the White House Tribal Nations Summit and hopes to visit the area soon.
Twelve Indigenous tribes have led the effort to create the Avi Kwa Ame monument, which holds deep spiritual significance. The area, spanning approximately 450,000 acres near the southern tip of Nevada, also connects more than a dozen wilderness and conservation areas, providing continuous habitat and migration corridors for wildlife including bighorn sheep and desert tortoises.
Tim Williams, chair of the Fort Mojave Tribal Council, told the Post, “There’s a spiritual connection that makes us Mojave people. If it’s not protected, our generation will not have done our job.”
Avi Kwa Ame is threatened by encroaching development. Four large solar farms generate electricity along U.S. 95 north of Searchlight, which is located inside the monument boundary. A wind farm in Arizona is visible from higher parts of the proposed monument.
Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities, stressed that protecting Avi Kwa Ame will not hamper the nation's transition to renewable energy, calling those claims a “false dichotomy.”
“There are millions of acres of public land open to wind and solar development,” Rokala said. “Conservation and the green economy aren’t an ‘either/or’ proposition—it’s a ‘both/and’ situation.”
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