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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA — President Joe Biden may expand the perimeter of Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, if the rumors are true.

Reports by The Washington Post and CNN indicated Biden would expand the national monument by over 13,000 acres. Currently, it is 330,000 acres, with about 197,000 administered by the U.S. Forest Service and 133,000 administered by the Bureau of Land Management.

The possible expansion would have an "immense positive impact on the region," U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson said last week.

"I worked to designate the Berryessa Snow Mountain region as a national monument in 2015, and I've worked to expand it ever since," Thompson said last week in an email to Patch. "The Monument's designation has played a crucial role in protecting the biodiversity of Northern California and an expansion of the Monument would have an immense positive impact on the region."

A formal presidential announcement about the expansion is not happening this week but could come sometime in the next few weeks, a source told Patch on Monday.

The initial presidential proclamation to create Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument was signed on July 10, 2015, by then-President Barack Obama. The monument's lands are within seven Northern California counties: Napa, Colusa, Glenn, Lake, Mendocino, Solano and Yolo counties.

"Dense with cultural resources, the Berryessa Snow Mountain area contains a range of ancient settlements from mineral collection sites, and seasonal hunting and gathering camps in the high country, to major villages with subterranean, earth-covered round buildings in the lowlands," the president proclaimed.

In addition to trade routes winding through the hills and mountains, the area is rich with sites that tell the story of early Native peoples. Many tribes, including the Yuki, Nomlaki, Patwin, Pomo, Huchnom, Wappo, and Lake Miwok, and Wintum all played a role in the history of this region, one of the most linguistically diverse in California.

Native populations were displaced by the European-American settlement and development of the region in the early to mid-1800s. Many traditional hunting and gathering grounds were converted to grazing and logging and new diseases brought into the area spread to the Native people, greatly impacting the local Native populations and pushing them off of their homelands. Nevertheless, the region's landscape and resources retain deep cultural significance for modern Native communities, including roughly two dozen federally recognized tribes.

Serpentine, California's State rock, can be found in significant quantity in the area, Obama wrote in his presidential proclamation. The region's serpentine soils which arise from frequent seismic activity and influence from ancient oceans lack the nutrients most plants need and often contain heavy metals toxic to many plants, resulting in plants that are unique and endemic to this region, including the Lake County stonecrop, coastal bluff morning glory, Cobb Mountain lupine, Contra Costa goldfields and Napa western flax.

Cache Creek, a California Wild and Scenic River, provides an exceptional, intact riparian habitat and one of the largest wintering populations of bald eagles in the state, Obama added.

Current Monument Splits Sacred Land

However, sacred land that makes up the Molok Luyuk — Condor Ridge — is split, with only part of the ridge located inside the national monument. When the monument was created in 2015, most of Molok Luyuk was left out of the designation. Since then, the Expand Berryessa coalition— a group of tribes, environmental and conservation organizations—has been pushing to protect the entirety of Molok Luyuk by expanding the monument to include the remaining 13,753 acres of the ridge.

In September, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation joined U.S Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Tribal and community leaders, and Thompson and fellow U.S. Rep. John Garamendi for a tour of the Berryessa Snow Mountain Monument Expansion Act area known as Molok Luyuk —“Condor Ridge” in the Patwin language.

"Tribes have stewarded this area for millennia and welcome deeper collaboration with the Department of Interior and local stakeholders to protect Patwin culture and heritage," Yocha Dehe Tribal Chairman Anthony Roberts said following the visit.

Secretary Haaland expressed her support during the visit for elevating the voice of tribes and local communities in discussions surrounding the protection of public lands.

Molok Luyuk is a mountainous ridge located at the eastern edge of Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in Lake and Colusa counties. The area is the site of religious ceremonies and trade routes, and a place where Native American ancestors hunted game and gathered plants for food and medicine.

The ridge also provides vital habitat for many plant and animal species threatened by development and climate change.

"Many of the plant and animal species within Molok Luyuk are traditionally important to the lifeways of the Patwin people, and we consider their protection and stewardship to be part of our sacred responsibility to the land," Roberts said.

The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation in Yolo County have an online petition urging Biden to use the Antiquities Act to expand the monument that is just north of Sacramento and stretches from Napa County in the south to Mendocino County in the north.

Thompson and Garamendi led legislation to allow for tribal co-management of the enlarged Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. The measure passed the House in 2022, when Democrats controlled the chamber, but has since stalled.

Biden set a goal of conserving 30 percent of America’s lands and waters by 2030. He has already designated five new national monuments, mostly on lands such as Molok Luyuk that are considered sacred by Native American tribes. In August, the president designated the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni—Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in northern Arizona, which the U.S. Forest Service said represented "a vital step toward healing the painful past of exploitation and exclusion for our tribal neighbors."

"The Yurok Tribe’s recent reintroduction of the California condor to the north of Molok Luyuk gives hope that condors will once again soar over the ridge," Roberts said.

Here is a brochure with maps of popular trails and recreation areas at Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument.