A Sedona organization is proposing thousands of acres of land near the Red Rock area be considered for a national monument designation.
The nonprofit organization Keep Sedona Beautiful wants to have 160,000 acres of land designated as a national monument. This includes land that surrounds the city of Sedona and Oak Creek Village, as well as the Sycamore Canyon, Secret Mountain and Munds Mountain wilderness regions.
Keep Sedona Beautiful tried twice before to get a National Scenic Area designation through congress, but failed. Now the group is hoping President Obama will see things differently. Tom O’Halleran is president of the organization.
“What the national monument will do will be to marriage the land in keeping with the things that need protected, the antiquities and preserve the land," he said. "Recreation as in most national monuments is part of the process.”
O’Halleran said petition signatures are being collected now through their website.
