Oct 22, 2026
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Haleemah Atobiloye (she/her) | Program and Communications Strategist | haleemaha@cehn.org | (202) 350-1372
Chiricahua National Park, located in southeastern Arizona, land of the Chiricahua Apache peoples, is our country’s 64th national park, the fourth in Arizona, and the first new national park since New River Gorge in 2020.
WASHINGTON, DC — On Tuesday, October 20, 2026, the Chiricahua National Park Act (H.R. 6380) was signed into law. The bill passed the House by voice vote in March 2026 and the Senate by unanimous consent on September 30, 2026. With the signing, the 102-year-old Chiricahua National Monument was redesignated Chiricahua National Park, America’s 64th national park.
The America the Beautiful for All Coalition, comprising more than 300 organizations working to steward nature in a manner that upholds environmental justice and defends public health, celebrates this new national park. The park, roughly 12,000 acres in southeastern Arizona, sits within a sky island, a place where desert, grassland, and forest meet and where the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, the Rocky Mountains, and the Sierra Madre all leave their mark. Coatimundi, Apache fox squirrel, and more than 170 species of birds live here.
“We celebrate the Chiricahua Apache, the people of Cochise and Geronimo, who knew these canyons as the Land of Standing-Up Rocks before national parks existed. Their connection to this place did not begin with a proclamation and will not be defined by one. We celebrate every community, advocate, and lawmaker who insisted that this designation carry forward more than a name change, that it carry forward a commitment to the people and the place together. Chiricahua National Park will allow millions of people to experience the grandeur of its geologic formations and to learn about the Indigenous history of these lands,” says Priya Nanjappa, Co-Lead, Public Lands Workgroup, America the Beautiful for All Coalition; Vice President of Conservation Programs, National Parks Conservation Association.
“A (national) park is a health intervention. Emerging research shows parks are public health infrastructure. For people in Willcox, Douglas, Bisbee, and Tucson, and for the rural and borderland communities of Cochise County, Chiricahua is cool forest air in a warming desert, clean water from a protected watershed, dark skies, quiet, and a place to move, rest, and gather. Time in nature has been linked to lowering stress, encouraging physical activity, and strengthening mental and spiritual well-being. So for low-income households in these areas, where distance, cost, transportation, and language can stand between them and the outdoors, a national park next door provides more opportunity to be healthy. These are the conditions under which people thrive, and they are exactly what our coalition means when we say conservation is a matter of justice and health. We celebrate this milestone while keeping an eye out for accountability,” says Katie Huffling, Steering Committee Member, America the Beautiful for All Coalition; Executive Director, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments.
“In the 250th year since the declaration of the United States, Chiricahua shows what is possible, what the next 250 can hold: more places protected whole, more decisions made with the people closest to the land, and more communities who can see themselves in the story the country tells about its lands and waters,” says Kara Matsumoto, Co-Lead, Public Lands Workgroup, America the Beautiful for All Coalition; Senior Policy Director, Conservation Lands Foundation. “Our coalition exists so that wins like this one have a place to grow and a community ready to carry them forward. We celebrate this park, and we will keep working so that every designation comes with the people and resources to care for it, because conservation that lasts is conservation that is lived in.”
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About Us
The America the Beautiful for All Coalition unites 300+ organizations across missions, ecosystems, communities, and cultures to steward nature while upholding environmental justice and defending public health. We follow the leadership of the communities closest to the lands, waters, and wildlife under threat.
