Permanent protection of special cultural, ecological, iconic, and recreational lands and waters in the Southwest is necessary to preserve American heritage. The Southwest’s richness of history and culture has far-reaching social and economic benefits including: fostering connections between people and the outdoors, improving mental and physical health, providing new opportunities for people to enjoy recreational activities, and increasing economic growth for regions surrounding these spaces. The designations that protect these spaces vary – national monuments, national parks, national wildlife refuges, wilderness areas, national recreation areas, national conservation areas, and national scenic areas are just some of the many designations that offer protections to the rich spaces that are core to the Southwestern United States.

Because energy production on public lands accounts for almost 25% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, we must do more to strike a balance on federal lands to protect places that should be set aside for conservation. The expansion of our nation’s protected public lands helps strike that balance and protects critical wildlife, water, and other natural resources from further development. The long-held concern that using the executive authority to make these designations on federal public lands is an “overreach,” looks past the fact that these designations are made on existing federally-managed land.

HECHO currently supports the permanent protection designations of Great Bend of the Gila as a national monument or other protected area and Chiricahua National Monument as a national park These landscapes in the West are varied in their importance to our history, their ability to protect critical wildlife species, watersheds, and other antiquities important to diverse communities, and they deserve protection.