‘It’s a place of reverence:’ Biden designates Avi Kwa Ame as a national monument

Following a multiyear campaign backed by tribal nations, conservationists and local governments in Southern Nevada, President Joe Biden used his executive authority on Tuesday to establish a new national monument encompassing roughly 500,000 acres across Southern Nevada. 

The national monument spans a biodiverse desert ecosystem but centers around Avi Kwa Ame, or “Spirit Mountain,” a sacred and significant landscape for Indigenous communities across the Southwest. In remarks at a conservation summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, the president called the landscape “a place of reverence. It’s a place of spirituality....