Hundreds showed their support for protecting California’s desert

Triple digit temperatures didn’t stop hundreds of people from lining up outside the Riverside County fairgrounds at 9:00 am on Friday to support the proposed Chuckwalla national monument. The supporters collected blue shirts from the tent set up in front of the building before joining the line that snaked around the building, hugging the wall to stay in the shade. We know that at least 500 people turned out to the public meeting to speak in favor of the proposed monument, because organizers ran out of the 500 t-shirts they brought for supporters to wear. The room was a sea of blue, with a standing-room only crowd that lined the walls and the space behind the assembled folding chairs. 

For nearly three hours, staff from the Bureau of Land Management listened as speaker after speaker asked them to protect more than 600,000 acres of desert landscape in Southern California. From tribal leaders to elected officials, from business owners to environmental organizations small and large, nearly all supporters of the monument shared the same values: we must protect this land for the wildlife that live there. People cherish nature, and want future generations to experience the desert as we have. Even detractors of the monument proposal spoke about their love of the California desert, concerned that a monument might exacerbate rather than alleviate overuse of the land by visitors. At the end, BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning told the crowd that she had heard that everyone loves this place. Southern California’s desert is a special place not just for the hundreds of people who attended the public meeting, but for everyone in the region. 

We urge President Biden to act soon and respond to this community proposal to protect this beloved desert by designating it as a national monument.