This article is part of a series from the Center for American Progress exposing how the sweeping Project 2025 policy agenda would harm all Americans. This new authoritarian playbook, published by the Heritage Foundation, would destroy the 250-year-old system of checks and balances upon which U.S. democracy has relied and give far-right politicians, judges, and corporations more control over Americans’ lives.
The Biden-Harris administration has used its executive powers under the Antiquities Act to establish, expand, or restore eight landscape-level national monuments. These new protections—totaling more than 3.7 million acres and including places such as Castner Range National Monument in Texas and Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada—have benefited communities across the American West. They have played a particular role in serving nature-deprived communities—those experiencing higher-than-average nature loss—and solving for the disproportionate impact that nature deprivation has on communities of color.
A new analysis by Conservation Science Partners (CSP) and the Center for American Progress finds that these monuments have played a significant role in closing the nature gap by providing more protected nature for nearby communities. In fact, more than 88 percent of communities near new, expanded, or restored Biden-Harris monuments are nature deprived, and one-third of these communities have higher proportions of people of color relative to their state.
But Project 2025 threatens to remove protections from these new monuments under a potential conservative administration. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is an extreme, far-right playbook that seeks to unravel many core American principles and policies, including the conservation of the country’s natural wonders. It explicitly calls for the removal of much of the Biden-Harris administration’s conservation and climate progress, including actions taken through long-established and bipartisan tools such as the Antiquities Act. This conservative agenda could mean rolled back or even expunged protections for national monuments. Project 2025 poses a risk to conserved nature and threatens the families and communities who rely on the benefits of nature.
Biden-Harris national monuments are at risk
The Antiquities Act of 1906 grants the president authority to protect public lands of scientific or historic value as national monuments. In more than 118 years, it has been used by 18 presidents—both Democrats and Republicans. Project 2025 threatens this tool by suggesting that “the new Administration must seek repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906.” This historically popular and bipartisan tool has helped the president respond to community-led calls for increased conservation for more than a century and has been used to protect 164 places of ecological, cultural, historic, or scientific importance across the United States.
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The Project 2025 policy mandate promises “review” of Biden-Harris monument designations. In 2017, the Trump administration demonstrated its commitment to downsizing, removing, and selling off protected public lands through its own “review,” which led to the downsizing of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. Project 2025 called these actions “courageous,” though Tribes represented by the Native American Rights Fund filed lawsuits questioning their legality.
Project 2025 claims that “the result of that review was insufficient in that only two national monuments in one state (Utah) were adjusted” and proposes revisiting “past monument decrees and new ones by President Biden.” This puts a direct target on rolling back protections for Biden-Harris national monuments. The extent of conservation rollbacks that a conservative administration could undertake could be unimaginably destructive.
National monuments are a tool to close the nature gap
Since 1906, national monuments have been a critical executive tool for actualizing community-led conservation. Often, advocacy for proposed monuments spans decades prior to their designation. National monument designations are one of few ways that communities can appeal directly to the president for new conservation measures near their homes. The resulting increase in local access to protected natural areas has proved to have positive mental and physical health impacts. Having better access to nature is also increasingly important for helping communities regulate the impacts of climate change. For example, protecting and expanding tree cover can help combat extreme heat, and restoring and safeguarding natural floodplains can provide improved flood risk reduction.
Despite these benefits, many communities across the country are nature deprived, meaning that they experience higher-than-average nature loss. Communities of color are three times more likely to live in nature-deprived places than white communities, and low-income communities are 20 percent more likely to live in nature-deprived places than individuals of other income statuses. The uneven and inequitable distribution of natural places within communities of color and low-income communities is often referred to as the nature gap and is caused by a history of discrimination and dispossession on public lands.
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CSP and CAP conducted an analysis identifying the communities most significantly affected by Project 2025’s suggested rollbacks to Biden-Harris national monuments. The analysis identified almost 4,000 census tracts—referred to here as communities—located within 25 miles of the administration’s eight landscape-level monuments. They were then examined for their demographic characteristics including race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family status, and nature deprivation.
Biden-Harris landscape national monuments
This analysis examined the following national monument designations, restorations, and expansions:
- October 7, 2021: Restoration of Bears Ears National Monument, Utah
- October 7, 2021: Restoration of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah
- October 12, 2022: Designation of Camp Hale-Continental Divide National Monument, Colorado
- March 21, 2023: Designation of Castner Range National Monument, Texas
- March 21, 2023: Designation of Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, Nevada
- August 8, 2023: Designation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, Arizona
- May 2, 2024: Expansion of Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, California
- May 2, 2024: Expansion of San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, California
This analysis does not include all 11 Biden-Harris monument designations. Sites with smaller acreage such as Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument and Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument were not included because Project 2025 specifically seeks to downsize landscape-level monuments of more than 100,000 acres. The restoration of the Trump-era rollback of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was not included because it is located more than 100 miles from the shore.
Monument rollbacks threaten nature access for underserved communities
According to CSP and CAP’s analysis, communities across the West would be negatively affected by Project 2025’s potential reversal of national monument protections. There are approximately 15.6 million people living in the areas surrounding national monuments established or expanded by the Biden-Harris administration. This means that within four years, nearly 5 percent of the U.S. population has gained greater access to protected nature through Biden-Harris monuments, which could be at risk.
Eighty-eight percent of communities living near new national monuments are nature deprived. Many of these people reside in urban areas such as the San Francisco Bay Area; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; and El Paso, Texas.
Race and ethnicity
The disproportionate impact of nature loss by race and ethnicity is prevalent in the communities surrounding the recently designated monuments in this analysis. More than one-third of nearby communities have some of the highest proportions of nonwhite residents compared with other communities in their state. Nonwhite communities near these new monuments are almost 30 percent more likely to be nature deprived than white communities. New monuments have played a critical role in helping provide access to protected nature for thousands of nature-deprived communities of color across the West.
Some of the most racially and ethnically diverse states in the country also contain some of the highest rates of nature deprivation. In Nevada, 100 percent of Black communities within 25 miles of a Biden-Harris national monument are nature deprived. In Texas, in an area where the majority of the population is Latino, 9 in 10 Latinos are nature deprived.
Income
Low-income communities are disproportionately affected by nature deprivation across the country. About 11 percent of communities near new monument protections have average household incomes in the bottom 10 percent of all communities in their state. New monuments in Utah, Arizona, and Texas have benefited the greatest proportions of low-income communities relative to their state, when compared with all new monument protections.
Household composition
There are 1.7 million families with children under age 18 living in the areas surrounding the eight national monuments in this analysis. Nature access is especially important for children because it has proven correlations to improved motor skills, social skills, and cognitive function. When compared with all new designations, monuments in New Mexico, Texas, and California benefit nearby communities with the greatest proportions of families with children.
Recent designations are critical for nature-deprived communities
Previous CAP analyses of specific national monument protections confirm the threat that Project 2025 poses to nature-deprived communities.
San Gabriel Mountains National Monument
The San Gabriel Mountains National Monument expansion in California increased the total number of people within 5 miles of the monument’s boundaries by 90 percent, extending access to nearby protected nature for 757,000 people. A majority of people benefiting from this expansion are nonwhite. This expansion resulted in a significantly decreased drive time to protected nature for nonwhite, low-income, and nature-deprived communities, from more than 1 hour to 30 minutes.
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Avi Kwa Ame National Monument
The new national monument at Avi Kwa Ame positively benefited a community where 93 percent of people of color are nature deprived. In this area, communities of color are nearly twice as likely to be nature deprived as white communities. Despite other public lands in the region, communities of color within 25 miles of Avi Kwa Ame experience heightened nature deprivation. Nearly 7 in 10 American Indian or Alaska Native communities in the greater Las Vegas area are more nature deprived than the national average. Families with children around Avi Kwa Ame experience 26 percent more nature deprivation than families without children.
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Castner Range National Monument
The Castner Range National Monument designation in Texas played a significant role in closing the nature gap in the El Paso area. Nine in 10 Latinos and almost 95 percent of low-income communities were identified as nature deprived in the 25-mile radius around Castner Range. Latinos and low-income communities are among the most concentrated census tracts in the El Paso area. Additionally, around Castner Range, about 80 percent of families in poverty with children experience higher-than-average nature deprivation. The area saw significant nature loss due to new development, so the designation of Castner Range was a significant step in addressing high rates of nature deprivation in the area.
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Conclusion
Across the West, Biden-Harris national monuments have given nature-deprived communities the refuge of nearby nature. Without them, communities stand to lose their right to clean air, water, and land. The threat that Project 2025 poses to American conservation should not be understated. Revoking or downsizing protections for popular public lands sets a dangerous precedent that no iconic landscape is ever truly safe and in the community’s hands.
The author would like to thank Jenny Rowland-Shea, Sharon Ferguson, Nicole Gentile, Bill Rapp, Meghan Miller, Audrey Juarez, Patrick Freeman, Caitlin Littlefield, Vincent Landau, Justin Suraci, Elissa Olimpi, Lise Comte, Conservation Science Partners, and the local and national conservation leaders who are building impactful and equitable conservation solutions every day.