Biden announced the proclamations during a conservation summit held at the Interior Department, blocking a total of about 514,000 acres of public lands from development.
Avi Kwa Ame is part of the creation story of many tribes and is sacred to many Indigenous groups, while Castner Range, on Fort Bliss in El Paso, was a testing and training site for the Army during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
The president also said he’s issuing a memo to consider additional protections around a marine monument that’s southwest of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
Those protections would “encompass areas unaddressed by previous administrations so all areas of U.S. jurisdiction around the islands, atolls, and reef of the Pacific Remote Islands will be protected,” according to the White House.
Read more about the monument designations at TheHill.com.
