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 Proc. 7374 Title 3--The President ated objects that tell the stories of early settlement. The route taken by the Mormon explorers along the base of the Paria Plateau would later become known as the Old Arizona Road or Honeymoon Trail. After the temple in St. George, Utah was completed in 1877, the Honeymoon Trail was used by Mormon couples who had already been married by civil authorities in the Arizona settlements, but also made the arduous trip to St. George to have their marriages solemnized in the temple. The settlement of the monument area by Mormon pioneers overlapped with another historic ex- ploration by John Wesley Powell, who passed through the monument dur- ing his scientific surveys of 1871. The monument contains outstanding biological objects that have been pre- served by remoteness and limited travel corridors. The monument's vegeta- tion is a unique combination of cold desert flora and warm desert grass- land, and includes one threatened species, Welsh's milkweed. This unusual plant, known only in Utah and Arizona, colonizes and stabilizes shifting sand dunes, but is crowded out once other vegetation encroaches. Despite sporadic rainfall and widely scattered ephemeral water sources, the monument supports a variety of wildlife species. At least twenty species of raptors have been documented in the monument, as well as a variety of reptiles and amphibians. California condors have been reintroduced into the monument in an effort to establish another wild population of this highly endangered species. Desert bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, mountain lion, and other mammals roam the canyons and plateaus. The Paria River supports sensitive native fish, including the flannelmouth suck- er and the speckled dace. 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 Vermilion Cliffs 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 Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, for the pur- pose 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 "Vermilion Cliffs National Monu- ment" attached to and forming a part of this proclamation. The Federal land and interests in land reserved consist of approximately 293,000 acres, which is the smallest area compatible with the proper care and manage- ment 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, 2OO

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