[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 3 (Monday, January 22, 2001)]
[Pages 143-145]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Proclamation 7393--Establishment of the Carrizo Plain National Monument
January 17, 2001
By the President of the United States
of America
A Proclamation
Full of natural splendor and rich in human history, the majestic
grasslands and stark ridges in the Carrizo Plain National Monument
contain exceptional objects of scientific and historic interest. Since
the mid-1800s, large portions of the grasslands that once spanned the
entire four hundred mile expanse of California's nearby San Joaquin
Valley and other valleys in the vicinity have been eliminated by
extensive land conversion to agricultural, industrial, and urban land
uses. The Carrizo Plain National Monument, which is dramatically
bisected by the San Andreas Fault zone, is the largest undeveloped
remnant of this ecosystem, providing crucial habitat for the long-term
conservation of the many endemic plant and animal species that still
inhabit the area.
The monument offers a refuge for endangered, threatened, and rare
animal species such as the San Joaquin kit fox, the California condor,
the blunt-nosed leopard lizard, the giant kangaroo rat, the San Joaquin
antelope squirrel, the longhorn fairy shrimp, and the vernal pool fairy
shrimp. It supports important populations of pronghorn antelope and tule
elk. The area is also home to many rare and sensitive plant species,
including the California jewelflower, the Hoover's woolly-star, the San-
Joaquin woolly-threads, the pale-yellow layia, the forked fiddleneck,
the Carrizo peppergrass, the Lost Hills saltbush, the Temblor buckwheat,
the recurved larkspur, and the Munz's tidy-tips. Despite past human use,
the size, isolation, and relatively undeveloped nature of the area make
it ideal for long-term conservation of the dwindling flora and fauna
characteristic of the San Joaquin Valley region.
The Carrizo Plain National Monument also encompasses Soda Lake, the
largest remaining natural alkali wetland in southern California and the
only closed basin within the coastal mountains. As its name suggests,
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Soda Lake concentrates salts as water is evaporated away, leaving white
deposits of sulfates and carbonates. Despite this harsh environment,
small plant and animal species are well adapted to the setting, which is
also important to migratory birds. During the winter months the lake
fills with water and teems with thousands of beautiful lesser sandhill
cranes, long-billed curlews, and mountain plovers.
The Carrizo Plain National Monument owes its existence to the
geologic processes that occur along the San Andreas Fault, where two of
the Earth's five great tectonic plates slide past one another, parallel
to the axis of the Plain. Shifting along the fault created the Plain by
rumpling the rocks to the northeast into the Temblor Range and isolating
the Plain from the rest of the San Joaquin Valley. The area is world-
famous for its spectacular exposures of fault-generated landforms.
Stream valleys emerge from the adjacent mountains, only to take dramatic
right-angle turns where they intersect the fault. Ponds and sags form
where the ground is extended and subsides between branches of the fault.
Benches form where the fault offsets valley walls. Many dramatic
landscape features are products of the interplay between very rapid
fault movement and slower erosion. The dry climate of the area produces
low erosion rates, thereby preserving the spectacular effects of fault
slip, folding, and warping. On the Plain, these fault-related events
happen intermittently, but with great force. In 1857, the strongest
earthquake in California's recorded history ripped through the San
Andreas Fault, wrenching the western side of the Carrizo Plain National
Monument thirty-one feet northward.
The area is also distinguished for its significant fossil
assemblages. The Caliente Formation, exposed on the southeast side of
the Caliente Range, is host to abundant and diverse terrestrial fossil
mammal remains of the Miocene Epoch (from 13 million to 25 million years
ago). Fossils of five North American provincial mammalian ages
(Arikareean, Hemingfordian, Barstovian, Clarendonian, Hemphillian) are
represented in sedimentary rocks in that formation. These terrestrial
fossil remains are interlaced with marine sedimentary rocks bearing
fossils of mollusks, pectens, turitellas, and oysters.
In addition to its geologic and biological wealth, the area is rich
in human history. Archaeologists theorize that humans have occupied the
Carrizo Plain National Monument area since the Paleo-Indian Period
(circa 11,000 to 9,000 B.C.). Bedrock mortar milling features, village
middens, and elaborate pictographs are the primary manifestations of
prehistoric occupation. Some of these, such as the Painted Rock and
Sulphur Springs rock art sites, are recognized as world class. European
expeditions through the area date back to the late 1700s, with
settlement beginning in the 1850s. Livestock ranching, farming, and
mining activities in the last century and a half are evidenced by
numerous artifacts and historic ranch properties within the area.
Section 2 of the Act of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. 431),
authorizes the President, in his discretion, to declare by public
proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures,
and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated
upon the lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United
States to be national monuments, and to reserve as a part thereof
parcels of land, the limits of which in all cases shall be confined to
the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the
objects to be protected.
Whereas it appears that it would be in the public interest to
reserve such lands as a national monument to be known as the Carrizo
Plain National Monument:
Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United
States of America, by the authority vested in me by section 2 of the Act
of June 8, 1906 (34 Stat. 225, 16 U.S.C. 431), do proclaim that there
are hereby set apart and reserved as the Carrizo Plain National
Monument, for the purpose of protecting the objects identified above,
all lands and interests in lands owned or controlled by the United
States within the boundaries of the area described on the map entitled
``Carrizo Plain National Monument'' attached to and forming a part of
this proclamation. The Federal land and interests in land reserved
consist of approximately
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204,107 acres, which is the smallest area compatible with the proper
care and management of the objects to be protected.
All Federal lands and interests in lands within the boundaries of
this monument are hereby appropriated and withdrawn from all forms of
entry, location, selection, sale, or leasing or other disposition under
the public land laws, including but not limited to withdrawal from
location, entry, and patent under the mining laws, and from disposition
under all laws relating to mineral and geothermal leasing, other than by
exchange that furthers the protective purposes of the monument. For the
purpose of protecting the objects identified above, the Secretary shall
prohibit all motorized and mechanized vehicle use off road, except for
emergency or authorized administrative purposes.
Lands and interests in lands within the proposed monument not owned
by the United States shall be reserved as a part of the monument upon
acquisition of title thereto by the United States.
The Secretary of the Interior shall manage the monument through the
Bureau of Land Management, pursuant to applicable legal authorities, to
implement the purposes of this proclamation.
The Secretary of the Interior shall prepare a management plan that
addresses the actions, including road closures or travel restrictions,
necessary to protect the objects identified in this proclamation.
The establishment of this monument is subject to valid existing
rights.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to enlarge or diminish
the jurisdiction of the State of California with respect to fish and
wildlife management.
There is hereby reserved, as of the date of this proclamation and
subject to valid existing rights, a quantity of water sufficient to
fulfill the purposes for which this monument is established. Nothing in
this reservation shall be construed as a relinquishment or reduction of
any water use or rights reserved or appropriated by the United States on
or before the date of this proclamation.
Laws, regulations, and policies followed by the Bureau of Land
Management in issuing and administering grazing permits or leases on all
lands under its jurisdiction shall continue to apply with regard to the
lands in the monument.
Nothing in this proclamation shall be deemed to revoke any existing
withdrawal, reservation, or appropriation; however, the national
monument shall be the dominant reservation.
Warning is hereby given to all unauthorized persons not to
appropriate, injure, destroy, or remove any feature of this monument and
not to locate or settle upon any of the lands thereof.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this seventeenth day
of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand one, and of the
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-
fifth.
William J. Clinton
[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., January 19,
2001]
Note: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on
January 22.