President Obama on Friday added more than one million acres to the national monuments list. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
President Obama announced on Friday that he was designating new national monuments covering more than a million acres in California, Texas and Nevada, his latest use of executive power to preserve public land.
Mr. Obama designated Berryessa Snow Mountain in California; a paleontological site in Texas known as Waco Mammoth; and the Basin and Range in Nevada, which includes rock art dating back 4,000 years, the White House said in a statement.
The designations, made under the Antiquities Act of 1906, bring to 19 the number of national monuments that Mr. Obama has established or expanded. They cover more than 260 million acres of public lands and waters. Republicans have criticized Mr. Obama, who has turned to that law more than any other president, for his expansive use of his authority to preserve sites of ecological, historical or cultural significance.
Mr. Obama on Friday invoked the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt as he signed the official designations in the Oval Office.
“One of the great legacies of this incredible country of ours is our national parks and national monuments,” he said. “It is something that we pass on from generation to generation, preserving the incredible beauty of this nation, but also reminding us of the richness of its history.”
The Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, which covers about 331,000 acres in Northern California, is a “biodiversity hot spot,” the administration said, and includes dozens of ecosystems. It also includes Native American cultural sites.
The Waco Mammoth National Monument includes the well-preserved remains of Columbian mammoths from more than 65,000 years ago, including the nation’s only recorded discovery of a nursery herd of mammoths. Remains of other Pleistocene-epoch animals, including the Western camel, the saber-toothed cat and the giant tortoise, have also been uncovered there.
The Basin and Range National Monument, less than two hours outside Las Vegas, covers about 704,000 acres that feature cultural sites, including petroglyph and prehistoric rock art panels. Also located there is “City,” a huge abstract sculpture that the artist Michael Heizer has been building in the desert since the 1970s. It is considered an important example of the American land-art movement.
Students at the Waco Mammoth site in Texas during a field trip in 2011. Credit Kye R. Lee/The Dallas Morning News, via Associated Press
On the surface this might sound like a good thing, 3 new national monuments, but when you realize that Obama has used national parks and national lands all over the United States as collateral to the Chinese for all the money he has printed and borrowed, it just sounds like another frightening land grab.
If China ever calls in their notes, we do have the ability to nationalize our land, but does anyone really think that Obama or anyone in our weak-kneed Congress or generally progressive Supreme Court would do that???
FreeRepublic: Pop on to the NYT article, press the Berryessa NM link, see the website that was already completed and ready to go at the time of the announcement, then see the thank you card thanking Obama come up (Seriously). Then click out of the thank you card, and scroll to the map.
One of those big parcels in white just above Clear Lake is (was) mine. Regards and thanks for caring!
askmarion 