Hanford National Monument

I've oft observed that New Mexico's military reservations – White Sands, Kirtland Air Force Base, even Los Alamos National Laboratory – serve as an interesting sort of defacto wildlife refuge. True, there are places pretty fouled up by the military's habit of blowing stuff up, dropping bombs, burying waste, etc. But vast areas are simply fenced and left alone.

Up in Washington state, the defacto is turning real with this plan to turn a large area of the Hanford nuclear reservation into a national monument:

As a buffer for the Hanford Site, the lands within the monument have remained undeveloped – a remnant of the vast shrub-steppe that once covered the interior Columbia Basin. President Bill Clinton's proclamation June 9, 2000, established the 195,000 acre national monument superimposed over the outskirts of the Hanford Site, managed by the FWS and DOE.

Migrating salmon, birds and hundreds of other native plant and animal species, some found nowhere else in the world, are on monument lands. The monument includes 46.5 miles of the last free flowing, non-tidal stretch of the Columbia River, the 51 mile Hanford Reach.