"Tribes and environmentalists are hailing President Joe Biden’s commitment to use the Antiquities Act to create a national monument in Nevada to protect tribal sacred sites, preserve wildlife and Joshua tree habitat, and block the approval of a wind farm.

But legal clouds are gathering in neighboring Utah, where federal litigation aimed at the US Supreme Court seeks to short-circuit the White House’s ability to use the 1906 Antiquities Act to set aside large tracts of environmentally sensitive public lands from development.

Biden said Nov. 30 he’d use the act to create the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument championed by southern Nevada local governments and area tribes—a 450,000 acre preserve that would be about five times the size of Las Vegas. The monument would protect land and imperiled wildlife habitat near Spirit Mountain, a peak already protected as wilderness that the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and nine other area tribes consider sacred."

Bobby Magill reports for Bloomberg Environment January 5, 2023. [2]