Dec 16, 2024
President Biden is making a series of announcements in his closing days in office. The most recent were the creation of a monument for the nation’s first woman cabinet secretary, creation of a wildlife refuge in southern Maryland, final designation of a new national marine sanctuary, and a monument protecting the site of the Carlisle School, a federal Indian Boarding School that stole children from parents and moved them in an effort to erase their culture, tradition and language.
On December 16th, President Biden announced he will create a national monument remembering FDR-era Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, the first woman appointed to ever take a Cabinet position. She is credited with driving forward Roosevelt’s progressive New Deal social policies such as Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The monument will be established in Newcastle, Maine. Interpretation at the site, thanks to successful advocacy efforts, will tell her full story, including the troubling lack of awareness about the adverse impacts of racism on Black Americans.
Tribes and Native Americans push for awareness of “Boarding Schools.” The prior week, Biden established a national monument at the site of the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania and marked an important step in remembering the actions that forced assimilation, led to the deaths and abuse of hundreds of native children, and had cascading impacts of generational trauma on Native American, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian people. Forced Indian Boarding Schools persisted for more than a century and a half through the 1960s. This monument helps ensure we do not forget.
Earlier in the year, Biden formally apologized on behalf of the U.S. government for the policy of forced assimilation, calling it a “blot on American history.” The progress during this year is due to the interventions of native tribes working with the administration and Interior Department, and organized efforts such as the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which works on a national scale to bring greater awareness of this ugly and long chapter in American history.
Biden also designated the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary protecting coastal and ocean waters off the Central California Coast from offshore oil expansion and other threats. The sanctuary was nominated in 2015 by the Northern Chumash Tribal Council.
At the close of the week, six counties in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area celebrated Interior’s establishment of the Southern Maryland Woodlands National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge will ultimately conserve 40,000 acres of forest, wetland, and riparian areas to bolster crucial outdoor recreation opportunities for the more than 10 million residents nearby the refuge while stewarding habitat for endangered and threatened species. National Wildlife Refuges supported nearly 41,000 jobs in 2020; since then Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland have established six national wildlife refuges and expanded others, promoting a trifecta of economic output, outdoor access, and biodiversity in communities.
State-based initiative made the difference. Last spring, a dozen coalition leaders asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) to establish the Southern Maryland Woodlands National Wildlife Refuge as described in the Draft Environmental Assessment and Land Protection Plan (Draft EA/LPP) saying a draft land protection plan aligned closely with goals of the America the Beautiful for All initiative, which promotes the conservation of 30% of the Nation’s lands and waters by 2030. In fact, the state of Maryland has a Maryland the Beautiful Act passed in 2023 which sets an even higher bar for conservation with a goal of conserving 40% of its lands by 2040.
The Maryland law is emblematic of state initiatives that can advance progress over the next 4 years, as the federal government is expected to shift its focus away from urgent conservation efforts that will slow the impacts of nature loss.
Importantly, the draft plan incorporated elements of a federal executive order that would prioritize environmental justice for communities of color and low income populations, which have historically borne the brunt of pollution and other environmental harms. The population in the six counties in Maryland that will adjoin the refuge stands at 62.6 percent, well in excess of a 50 percent threshold laid out in the executive order.
Among the many benefits of the new refuge, hundreds of types of fish and wildlife including threatened species like sturgeon will be protected, and the 40,000 acres will help make the region more resilient to storm, floods and other problems that are being exacerbated by climate change. The protected area will also provide wildlife a greater area of connected landscapes to thrive as climate change continues to harm and degrade habitats.
