It’s exactly five years this week since President Clinton designated two new national monuments in Cascadia. On June 8, 2000, he created the Hanford Reach National Monument in Washington. On June 9, he designated the 53,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon.
Each monument is something of a curiosity. Hanford preserves valuable sage-steppe habitat and is home to a rich array of wildlife and endangered salmon, but it was also home of the plutonium that was used to bomb Nagasaki. Cascade-Siskiyou, on the other hand, is a treasure-trove of biodiversity. Here’s the White House press release:
The monument is home to a spectacular variety of rare and beautiful species of plants and animals… an exceptionally high diversity of fauna, including one of the highest diversities of butterfly species of any area in the United States… a globally significant center of fresh water snail diversity, and is home to three endemic fish species, including a long-isolated stock of redband trout.
