“Not only has America achieved stronger protections for wild places … but our parks and public lands today are a better reflection of the diverse humanity at the core of America’s strength” – President Barack Obama
In what may be the last push for preserving our national lands we’ll see for at least a decade, President Obama protected three national monuments and expanded two more. On his last full week in office, he has cemented his legacy as ‘conservationist’.
President Obama marked the end of his presidency by preserving what makes America so great. The strengths at the core of what makes America a great country, that lesson is preserved by expanding the California Coastal and Cascade-Siskiyou national monuments and declaring five new cultural monuments saluting civil rights history, in Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument, Freedom Riders National Monument and Reconstruction Era National Monument. These sites are now protected so that future generations of Americans grow up knowing the lessons of the past, understanding the strength in diversity, and the road to where we are headed.
I applaud President Obama in designating these sites and I look forward to visiting them myself in the near future.
More on this: Wilderness.org
More on Civil Rights National Monuments: Civil Rights
Nomad Advocate 