President Joe Biden has expanded two culturally significant California landscapes: the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument in Southern California and Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in Northern California. The move follows calls from tribal nations, Indigenous community leaders and others for the permanent protection of nearly 120,000 acres of important cultural and environmental land. The U.S. National Park Service notes that the action is allowed under the Antiquities Act of 1906. The act authorizes the president to legally protect cultural and natural resources on federal lands that are historic, prehistoric or of historic or scientific interest.
