President Joe Biden on Tuesday established two new national monuments in California, the latest in a flurry of major environmental initiatives affecting the Golden State as his presidency comes to a close.

Biden designated the Chuckwalla National Monument in Southern California, south of Joshua Tree National Park, and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument in Northern California, east of Mount Shasta near the Oregon border.

Chuckwalla is 624,000 acres of federal land, mostly overseen by the Bureau of Land Management where the Colorado and Mojave Deserts come together in a mix of scenic mountains and canyons that is home to bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and chuckwalla lizards. Sáttítla is 224,000 acres of national forest land in the remote landscapes of Siskiyou and Modoc counties, a landscape rich with bald eagles, black bears and salmon.

Together, the two areas are larger than Yosemite National Park.

Both places are sacred to native tribes, who pushed for monument status, which limits logging, mining and other extractive uses, such as energy development.

“The stunning canyons and winding paths of the Chuckwalla National Monument represent a true unmatched beauty,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. “I am so grateful that future generations will have the opportunity to experience what makes this area so unique.”

The Sáttítla monument, which includes parts of Shasta-Trinity, Modoc and Klamath national forests, was a top priority of the Pit River Tribe, based in Burney, northeast of Redding.

“For generations, my people have fought to protect Sáttítla, and today we celebrate the voices of our ancestors being heard,” said Yatch Bamford, chairman of the Pit River Nation.

Not everyone supports the new monuments, however.

Last summer, when the idea of a Sáttítla monument was first gaining momentum, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Yuba City, whose district includes the area, said he was opposed because the designation would mean more regulations and limits on the land, which has been eyed for geothermal development.

“They just want to lock everything up so nobody can access it hardly at all,” LaMalfa told the Redding Record Searchlight in July. “These aren’t the friends of rural California here.”

City leaders in Blythe, a town of 18,000 people near the Chuckwalla monument area, opposed it because they worried it could limit large scale solar development.

“Solar development is off limits in so much of the desert,” said Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-Scale Solar Association, Tuesday in Sacramento. “I understand their concern. But right now we don’t share that concern. We don’t think the monument is going to hamper solar development.”