But President Barack Obama will further his conservation legacy – after already protecting more public land than any USA president – Friday when he will announce more than quadrupling the size of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off Hawaii.
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The monument was originally created in 2006 by President George W. Bush and designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010.
President Barack Obama will quadruple the size of federally-controlled ocean and land northwest of the state of Hawaii, banning all commercial fishing and mineral extraction from the region that’s nearly the size of Alaska.
Even before Friday’s announcement, Obama cemented his legacy as the US president who has designated the most land as government protected areas. In the decade since, there have been many similar large-scale marine protected areas enacted worldwide, including nine which are larger than the original Hawaiian monument. In an interview, Kaho’ohalahala explained that Papahānaumokuākea, considered a sacred place, figures large in the creation myths of his people.
However, Sean Martin, president of the Hawaii Longline Association, said the industry’s fleet of 145 boats could not match the lobbying power of well-financed environmental groups such as Pew.
President Obama will mark the historic event by traveling to Hawai’i next week to speak at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. That is more than twice the size of the American state of Texas.
Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who proposed the expansion, praised the designation as a win for the state and the environment. Sustainable recreational and traditional fishing will still be allowed. The archipelago which lies 270 miles northwest of Oahu is home to more than 14 million birds from 22 species, almost all of the remaining endangered Hawaiian monk seals, Hawaiian green sea turtles and Laysan albatrosses. He plans to use the occasion to draw attention to the way climate change is hurting the oceans and the importance of safeguarding public lands and water for future generations.
The President, who was born in Hawaii and spent most of his childhood there, pledged at the beginning of his presidency to make curbing climate change a central part of his time in the White House, which ends on 20 January. Hawaii’s longline fishing fleet supplies a large portion of the fresh tuna and other fish consumed in Hawaii. The federal government will also give Hawaii’s Department of Natural Resources and Office of Hawaiian Affairs a greater role in managing the monument, an arrangement requested by Schatz and Gov. David Ige.
VOA News staff wrote this story with adds from the Associated Press.
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Today’s announcement is made by the President under the authority of the Antiquities Act, an authority exercised by 16 presidents starting with President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and used to protect treasures such as the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty, and Colorado’s Canyons of the Ancients.
