An excerpt from this new analysis and reporting, as part of a collaboration with colleagues at the Center for American Progress (CAP), is below.
The Biden-Harris administration has used its executive powers under the Antiquities Act to establish, expand, or restore eight landscape-level national monuments. These new protections—totaling more than 3.7-million acres and including places such as Castner Range National Monument in Texas and Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada—have benefite communities across the American West. They have played a particular role in serving nature-deprived communities—those experiencing higher-than-average nature loss—and solving for the disproportionate impact that nature deprivation has on communities of color.
A new analysis by CSP and CAP finds that these monuments have played a significant role in closing the nature gap by providing more protected nature for nearby communities. In fact, more than 88 percent of communities near new, expanded, or restored Biden-Harris monuments are nature deprived, and one-third of these communities have higher proportions of people of color relative to their state.
The recently expanded boundary of San Gabriel Mountains National Monument increases access to nature-deprived communities in the region.
Read more about this work on Disappearing Parks.