Protect Great Bend of the Gila!

Credit Dawn Kish, courtesy of TWS Woolsey Peak3 - Credit Dawn Kish, courtesy of TWS_sm.jpg

The Great Bend of the Gila is a volcanic landscape shaped by natural forces over millions of years. Today, it is part of the Sonoran Desert, which ranks first in biodiversity among the deserts of the U.S.

It is breathtaking to hike among these desert-adapted plants in the summer monsoon season, when ripening fruits and blooming flowers create a colorful mosaic on the desert floor.

The Gila River corridor is the primary riparian zone, and large and small washes also support riparian vegetation. Away from the washes, the landscape is more sparsely vegetated with typical low-desert plants such as ocotillo, palo verde, and creosote.

Vibrant communities flourished here, thanks to the Gila’s life-sustaining waters. The imprints people left behind are still visible—dwellings, canals, pottery, trail systems, geoglyphs, petroglyphs—and they can still be experienced today.

The descendants of these people include members of the Ak-Chin Indian Community, Cocopah Indian Tribe, Colorado River Indian Tribes, Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, Fort Yuma-Quechan Indian Tribe, Gila River Indian Community, Hopi Tribe, Pueblo of Zuni, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, Tohono O’odham Nation, Yavapai-Apache Nation, and Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe. These sovereign Tribal Nations maintain spiritual and cultural connections to this living landscape.

This remarkable landscape is threatened by the relentless expansion of the Phoenix metropolitan area, by insufficient management funding, and by vandalism and theft of cultural resources.

Permanent protection of the Great Bend of the Gila as a national monument will preserve the irreplaceable cultural, historic, and natural resource for the enjoyment and benefits of future generations.

Please fill out the form at right to ask President Biden to establish a national monument to protect the Great Bend of the Gila.

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Please Establish a National Monument to Protect Great Bend of the Gila

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I support permanent protection of the Great Bend of the Gila to ensure the cultural, historic, and natural resources are safeguarded for future generations. I ask that you take action to protect this area. Please permanently protect the Great Bend of the Gila as a national monument and utilize the Antiquities Act to swiftly protect this invaluable landscape. Located approximately 90 miles southwest of Phoenix, Arizona, the Great Bend of the Gila has been home to Indigenous Peoples for millennia.  At least 13 federally recognized Tribes have cultural, historical, and ancestral ties to the Great Bend of the Gila. These ties live on through oral and written history, story, song, ceremony, pilgrimage, and other traditions and ways of knowing. This remarkable landscape is currently threatened by the expansion of the Phoenix metropolitan area, by insufficient management funding, and by vandalism and theft of cultural resources. Administrative protections can limit destructive development of roads, withdraw lands from new mining, and require the development of new management plans to protect resources. It must enhance the role of Tribes and explicitly incorporate Tribal cultural resources protection and Indigenous uses as a core function of the Great Bend of the Gila. Thank you for your consideration.

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