President will create 3 new desert monuments on Nevada’s doorstep

Desert lovers are getting an early valentine on Friday, when President Barack Obama will designate three new national monuments in California, including two on Southern Nevada's doorstep.

Obama is using his authority under the Antiquities Act to create the three Mojave Desert monuments on almost 2 million acres originally proposed for protection by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

One of them, the roughly 21,000-acre Castle Mountains National Monument, borders Nevada about 80 miles south of Las Vegas. Searchlight is the nearest town and provides the most direct access on an unpaved ranch road that crosses through a Joshua tree forest and into California.

Obama also is establishing Sand to Snow National Monument on 154,000 acres at the western edge of Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave Trails National Monument on about 1.6 million acres, including a stretch of historic Route 66, along the southern edge of Mojave National Preserve.

According to the National Parks Conservation Association, the three monuments complete landscape connections between existing national park sites in the region: Mojave National Preserve, Joshua Tree National Park and Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

The White House announced the designations Thursday night, before the president was slated to travel to Palm Springs, California, ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in nearby Rancho Mirage.

Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, called it a "powerful, landscape-level conservation action."

"For more than two decades, local communities and park visitors and supporters across the country have called for the protection of this landscape, which connects important wildlife corridors and critical habitat surrounding our desert national parks," Pierno said in a written statement. "These national monuments will play a vital role in the long-term sustainability and health of the region, and the protection of our beautiful, diverse deserts."

The new monument in the Castle Mountains will be managed by the National Park Service, joining a system of parks that is celebrating its centennial this year.

The move preserves a diverse landscape of plants and animals, ancient rock art, sweeping vistas and the remnants of an early 20th century mining camp. It also fills in a wedge of federal land that was left out of Mojave National Preserve in 1994 to accommodate an open-pit gold mine.

A Canadian company is working to reopen the mine. Feinstein and others have said the new designation should not interfere with those plans.

It could also expand recreation and tourism in Southern Nevada, said Lynn Davis, senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association in Nevada.

"Even though the new national monument stops at the California-Nevada border, Nevadans benefit greatly," she said. "The designation highlights the exceptional natural and historic resources of the area, from Mojave Preserve to Lake Mead National Recreation Area, from Searchlight to Laughlin. The new monument and the surrounding countryside offer all sorts of exploration."

— Contact Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350. Follow him: @RefriedBrean