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WASHINGTON (AP) — In an announcement behind the Los Angeles wildfires, President Joe Biden on Tuesday designated two sites in California as national monuments that will honor Native American tribes, while scenic mountains and deserts protect mining and energy development.

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Biden made the designations at an event at the White House, a week after — and on the other side of the country from — how he’d originally planned to do so, with a speech in California’s Eastern Coachella Valley.

The president landed in California on Jan. 6 but went to Los Angeles before violent winds, which helped cause the Los Angeles fires, forced officials to cancel the event. A brutal reminder that, even if Biden uses the last days of his administration to look at the environment, climate already replaces controversies to exacerbate herbal disasters.

Look: “Everything we know is gone. ” People with fire face devastated communities, a doubtful future

Instead, Biden spoke along screens with towering peaks, desert views and a variety of plant and animal life.

“He was hoping we would do it instead,” the president said. “It’s as close as it gets. “

Biden has officially established the National Monument of Chuckwalla in southern California near the Joshua Tree National Park and the National Monument Settítla Highlands in northern California.

Clock: Biden creates a national monument in honor of Frances Perkins, first woman to serve in the US Cabinet.

The statements block the drilling of oil and Gas Herbal, as well as exploration and production initiatives, in the Chuckwalla of 624,000 acres (2,400 square kilometers) near the border of California-Oore.

The protected area encompasses natural wonders including the Painted Canyon of Mecca Hills and Alligator Rock, and is home to 50-plus rare species of plants and animals like the desert bighorn sheep and the Chuckwalla lizard — which the monument is named for, the White House said in a statement.

In the event, Biden talked about taking their young people to national monuments throughout the country every year and every year when they were young to “witness majesty, beauty. “

“Our national wonders are the center and soul of this nation,” he said. “It is a birth right that we go from generation to generation. “

Clock: Biden announces the creation of the National Monument of the American Native Residential School at the Tribal Nations Summit

The monuments becoming realities honor past tribal requests. Many Native American tribes and environmental groups have pushed for designation of the Chuckwalla National Monument, while the Pit River Tribe has worked to get the federal government to designate the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument.

Biden joked about being careful not to mispronounce Sáttítla, then still struggled to pronounce it. When he sat down to sign the formal acts, he simply referred to it as the “highlands” monument — meaning he didn’t have to give it another try.

The designations are of a bigger effort through the Biden management to conserve at least 30% of U. S. land and waters through 2030. They are following Biden’s recent resolution to ban new offshore and offshore fuel drilling in maximum U. S. coastal waters, adding California.

It was an attempt to frustrate the imaginable efforts of the new Republican Management to make a greater drilling on the high seas, but it is also an order that the president who chose Donald Trump promised opposite quickly.

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