The lands around Spirit Mountain will be designated as protected territory.

Today, United States President Joe Biden is scheduled to appear at a conservation event in Nevada’s Mojave desert, where he is slated to officially designate the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument. This monument will encompass the Mojave’s Spirit Mountain and its surrounding deserts as a protected and preserved location, a major win for the Fort Mojave Native American tribe.

Biden set to designate Nevada's Spirit Mountain a national monument pic.twitter.com/g9WOgcPNzm

— CNN (@CNN) March 19, 2023

“Avi Kwa Ame is the point of Mojave creation; it’s a very important and integral part of our history and belief system,” Ashley Hemmers, the tribal administrator for Fort Mojave, told CNN. “For us, that mountain is a living landscape; it’s like a person. If something were to happen to it, it would be like losing a loved one.”

Alongside another monument that will be designated at Fort Bliss, Texas, the Castner Range National Monument, these proclamations will place roughly 514,000 acres of land under governmental protection.

President Biden will create two new national monuments in the U.S. Southwest. The Spirit Mountain area in Nevada, which is revered by Native Americans, and Castner Range in Texas, once admired by the writer Jack Kerouac, will be off limits to development. https://t.co/OECXRCY8aI

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 21, 2023

“When it comes to Spirit Mountain and the surrounding canyons and regions in southern Nevada, I’m committed to protecting this sacred place that is essential to the creation story of so many tribes that are here today,” Biden said in a speech on the matter back in November. “And I look forward to being able to visit Spirit Mountain and experience it with you as soon as I can.”