Biden designates Camp Hale in Colorado as his first nationwide monument

President Joe Biden on Wednesday designated a World Warfare II-era navy web site in Colorado as a nationwide monument, a transfer that may shield the historic area’s uncommon wildlife and crops from growth.

Camp Hale is greatest generally known as the situation utilized by troopers of the U.S. tenth Mountain Division to coach for alpine warfare within the Forties, in keeping with a White Home reality sheet. The Camp Hale-Continental Divide Nationwide Monument will shield greater than 50,000 acres that present important habitat for wildlife comparable to elk, lynxes and songbirds.

“This motion will honor our nation’s veterans, Indigenous individuals, and their legacy by defending this Colorado panorama, whereas supporting jobs and America’s outside recreation economic system,” the White Home mentioned in a reality sheet. “The president is constructing on a collection of steps the administration has taken to guard a few of America’s most cherished lands and waters.”

Along with creating the brand new nationwide monument, the administration additionally introduced a proposed mineral withdrawal for Colorado’s Thompson Divide, a big area of mountains, lakes and forests. The withdrawal, which native officers and environmental teams have urged for greater than a decade, would shield over 200,000 acres from potential new mining or oil and gasoline drilling.

The Inside Division and the Forest Service will search public remark and conduct an environmental evaluation on the impacts of stopping power growth within the Thompson Divide for 20 years, the White Home mentioned.

“A coalition of hunters, ranchers, farmers, outside fans and neighborhood leaders have labored for many years to make sure the Thompson Divide space is protected,” Inside Secretary Deb Haaland mentioned in an announcement.

“Right this moment the Biden-Harris administration is taking an essential and wise step to make sure that we’ve got the science and public enter essential to make knowledgeable selections about sustainable administration of public lands within the Thompson Divide space,” Haaland mentioned.

The White Home mentioned Biden was signing the proclamation forward of a cease in Vail, Colorado, on Wednesday to announce the institution of the monument.

In a letter to the president in September, Home Republicans led by Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert argued that designating Camp Hale as a nationwide monument would “impose extreme land-use restrictions” on space that may very well be used for timber harvesting and mining.

Right this moment’s transfer comes after the president final yr restored protections to Utah’s Bears Ears Nationwide Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante Nationwide Monument after the Trump administration lowered these protections in 2019.

“It is a important step towards guaranteeing these public lands don’t succumb to the identical destruction that so lots of our different treasured locations have,” Michael Freeman, a senior legal professional at Earthjustice, mentioned in response to the administration’s announcement.