US President Joe Biden on Tuesday designated two large areas of California as protected national monuments, after the initial ceremony was called off due to wildfires breaking out in Los Angeles.
Less than a week before Donald Trump is due to move into the White House, Biden established the Chuckwalla National Monument, a 624,000-acre (252,500-hectare) area near Joshua Tree National Park in southern California.
The move protects the land from drilling, mining, solar energy farms and other industrial activity, and comes after lobbying from Native American tribes who have used the land for millennia.
He also declared the establishment of the 224,000-acre (91,000-hectare) Sattitla National Monument in the state's far north, at the border with Oregon, offering that area the same environmental safeguards.
"Our outdoor treasures are the pride of our country, the bond between the physical and spiritual world, a bridge to our past and to our future," Biden, 82, said in a speech at the White House.
Biden originally traveled to California last week to hold the signing ceremony with a picturesque nature backdrop but was forced to call off the visit over extreme winds.
The winds contributed to the rapid spread of multiple wildfires in Los Angeles, which have since destroyed thousands of structures and killed at least 24 people.
As the wildfires continue to burn, Biden said Tuesday his administration was working with state leaders to "make sure California has every possible resource to fight these fires and help survivors."
Biden's four-year term in office has seen the creation of eight other national monuments and the expansion of four more.
"We have been carrying out the most aggressive climate agenda ever in the history of the world," Biden said, adding he was "proud" to have kept his commitment to protect more land and water than any other president.
Last week, he signed an executive order banning offshore drilling in an immense area of coastal waters, encompassing the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington, and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.
Trump reduced the size of national monuments during his first term in the White House, and environmentalists fear the next four years could see similar chipping away at the protected status of public lands, as the Republican seeks to expand fossil fuel extraction.
Biden's proclamations are the latest in a string of last-minute climate policy actions that seem intended to frustrate what environmentalists fear will be the wrecking ball of another Trump presidency.
In mid-December, the outgoing administration issued an ambitious new climate target under the landmark Paris accord, committing the United States to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 61-66% below 2005 levels by 2035, on the path to achieving net zero by 2050.
AFP