"Avi Kwa Ame and Castner Range national monuments will span a combined 506,000 acres."

"President Joe Biden on Tuesday will designate two landscapes — Nevada’s Spirit Mountain, an area that is sacred to a dozen Native American tribes, and Castner Range, a former military weapon testing facility in West Texas — as America’s newest national monuments.

The move will bring more than half a million federal acres under a new set of protections that bar new mining, drilling and other development. It comes as Biden remains under fire over last week’s decision to approve a massive and extremely controversial fossil fuel drilling project on federal land in the Alaskan Arctic.

A White House official called Tuesday’s actions Biden’s “boldest steps to date to protect the power and promise of America’s extraordinary national wonders.” Along with establishing the two monuments, Biden will direct Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to consider establishing a new marine sanctuary protecting all U.S. waters surrounding Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, southwest of the Hawaiian Islands. "

Chris D'Angelo reports for HuffPost March 21, 2023. [2]