After designating nearly 90,000 acres in ME as a National Monument this week, today President Obama is creating the world’s largest marine preserve off the coast of Hawaii.
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The White House also announced this week that it has established the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Northern Maine, protecting approximately 87,500 acres, sealing Obama’s legacy of conserving more land and water than any president in US history.
The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument created by President Bush a decade ago has since been renamed the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, in honour of the Hawaiian gods Papahānaumoku and Wakea.
The president is slated to travel to the monument next week to mark the new designation and cite the need to protect public lands and waters from climate change.
Like the old monument, the expanded monument bans new mining and commercial fishing, to the concern of some local fishing groups.
Obama has now created or expanded 26 national monuments.
The Obama administration announced the move Friday.
Shipwrecks and crashed aircraft from the Battle of Midway in World War II are in the expansion area. In 2010, UNESCO designated the area a world heritage site to recognise its significance in native Hawaiian culture.
Sean Martin is the president of the Hawaii Longline Association. This step also builds on a rich tradition of marine protection in Hawaiian waters and world-class, well managed fisheries, including a longline fishing fleet that is a global leader in sustainable practices. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, calling it “one of the most important actions an American president has ever taken for the health of the oceans”. “Quite a legacy indeed”, he added.
Additionally, as ocean acidification, warming, and other impacts of climate change threaten marine ecosystems, expanding the monument will improve ocean resilience, help the region’s distinct physical and biological resources adapt, and create a natural laboratory that will allow scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change on these fragile ecosystems.
The federal government will give Hawaii’s Department of Natural Resources and its Office of Hawaiian Affairs a greater role in supervising the monument. In the end, he decided the “proposal strikes the right balance at this time for the waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands, and it can be a model for sustainability in the other oceans of planet Earth”. He said the monument’s expansion would be based on political and not scientific reasons.
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