California Coastal National Monument, Calif.  Located off the 1,100 miles of California coastline, the California Coastal National Monument comprises more than 20,000 small islands, rocks, exposed reefs, and pinnacles between Mexico and Oregon. Its scenic qualities and critical habitat of this public resource are protected as part of the BLM’s  National Landscape Conservation System. Establishing and supporting a series of 12 “CCNM Gateways”— sections of the California coast that serve as focal points and visitor contact locations for the national monument— has proven to be a very effective way of involving California’s coastal communities in the management and protection of their local coastal resources and helping with the enhancement of the local economy and geotourism. The small gateway community of Trinidad, shown here, has always been dependent on its coastal resources and the rocks and islands of the California Coastal National Monument. Before Euro-american settlement, the inhabitants of the Yurok village of Tsurai fished and collected from the rocks, small islands and seastacks — each offshore rock has a Yurok name. Today, Trinidad is a tourist community. Visitors come to view the spectacular coastal scenery, walk its windswept beaches, and view some of California’s largest seabird colonies on the offshore rocks and islands of the CA Coastal National Monument.

Photo by Robert M. Wick, BLM.