President Joe Biden visited Arizona Tuesday to designate a new national monument spanning about 1 million acres over the state’s northwest region.
The new monument, named Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, will lock off an area larger than the state of Rhode Island surrounding Grand Canyon National Park from any potential for development. The national park itself is only 1.2 million acres.
“Preserving these lands is good not only for Arizona, but for the planet,” Biden said at the park on Tuesday, adding the Grand Canyon is “one of Earth’s nine wonders — wonders of the world.”
Except there are seven, and the Grand Canyon is not among them.
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With five new national monuments established during his presidency, Biden has made a habit of wielding the 1906 Antiquities Act to cut off federal lands from local use and development. In October 2021, President Biden also placed millions of acres under monument protection with the reinstatement of Obama-era boundaries at Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Together, the two monuments protect more than 3 million acres, a region larger than neighboring Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks combined.
The Antiquities Act, however, was never intended to authorize the president to establish quasi-national parks without congressional approval. The first monument preserved under the law was Devil’s Tower in Wyoming at the
