Great Old Broads for Wilderness Applauds Designation of Avi Kwa Ame National Monument

Durango, Colorado—Great Old Broads for Wilderness is grateful for the Biden administration’s designation of the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. We would like to thank our many partners and our local Blue Diamond Broadband chapter for their tireless work toward this effort

“Great Old Broads for Wilderness is honored to support the protection of a landscape that is not only sacred to several Tribes in the region, it also creates a vital connection to other protected areas and creates continguous habitat benefiting wildlife, plants, and fragile ecosystems,” said Broads Executive Director Sara Husby.

Avi Kwa Ame, the Mojave name for Spirit Mountain, is sacred to 12 tribes and is at the center of Yuman creation stories and spiritual ideology. The new monument covers nearly 450,000 acres of rugged, high-desert land in southwestern Nevada, and includes petroglyphs, stands of endangered Joshua trees, and rare and threatened wildlife such as the Mojave Desert tortoise and desert bighorn sheep.

This designation as a national monument gives this culturally- and ecologically-vital land permanent protection from destructive mining and natural resource extraction activities. It also creates an unbroken series of protected landscapes stretching from Death Valley National Park in California to Lake Mead National Recreation Area in southern Nevada. Actions like this are important to achieving the administration’s goal of protecting 30% of America’s public lands by 2030 (the “America the Beautiful” campaign).

This monument is the result of the work by the Honor Avi Kwa Ame coalition, of which Broads is a proud member, and especially the leadership of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe—which has put in decades of tireless effort to protect this unique landscape from development and destruction.

“This monument designation, similar to Bears Ears, is another contribution to the current movement honoring Native American ancestral lands, and further preserves the unique beauty of the Mojave Desert,” said Husby.

To learn more, visit www.honoravikwaame.org.