January was quite a rollercoaster.
From the designation of more than 840,000 acres of new national monuments by President Biden on Jan. 14, through to the rapid attempts to reverse bedrock environmental laws by the incoming President, devastating fires in Southern California and a threatened freezing of all federal grants and payments, the public has felt whipsawed and uncertainty is growing.
My heart goes out to the many families who have suffered losses in the wildfires. As someone whose home was within yards of the Tubbs Fire footprint in 2017, I understand the terror of wildfire and can only imagine the sorrow of those who have lost loved ones or homes. It is a time when compassion, empathy and generosity of spirit are the only things that can help people to get through and start to put things back together again.
The successful designations of the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands National Monuments were the culmination of years of organizing, advocacy and leadership by local Tribes, CalWild and our allied organizations. I could not have been prouder of our team as I stood beside President Biden in the Oval Office for a photo prior to the signing ceremony.
(Shown from left: Moises Cisneros, Sierra Club; Mark; President Biden; Jun Bando, California Native Plant Society; Laura Deehan, Environment California; Janessa Goldbeck, Vet Voice.)
But history moves on, sometimes abruptly, and now we at CalWild have pivoted to a defense mode, working to protect the precious wild places our efforts have helped to save over the past 49 years. With a hostile White House and Congress so narrowly split, our hope is to build support for public lands that crosses the aisle enough to stave off some of the worst of the proposals.
In times like these, every bit of CalWild’s caring community, organizing skills, extensive networks of relationships with officials, and deep historical knowledge about California’s lands and waters are needed to hold back the flood. We look to you—and to nature itself—as a guide to resilience and hope. There are good people in the world and good things can still happen. The story is not over; there is always a new chapter to be written.
Thanks for being a part of it.
Mark Green
Executive Director
