“Ancient islanders believed it contained the boundary between this life and the next”, Obama said of Midway on Wednesday, speaking at a conservation summit in Honolulu.
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On Thursday Barack Obama made a trip to Midway Atoll, an unincorporated territory of the U.S. and the site of the second world war’s Battle of Midway against the Japanese navy.
The journey, timed as Obama leaves for his last visit to Asia to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other world leaders, will also serve as a reminder of the American victory against Japanese forces on the island during World War Two.
That’s where he recently expanded a marine monument.
President Barack Obama tours on Midway Atoll in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, with from Marine National Monuments Superintendent Matt Brown, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2016. Driving on a golf cart past dilapidated buildings left over from World War II, Obama said protecting the atoll and its surroundings was critical to ensuring delicate ecosystems survive the throes of global warming.
Obama isn’t the first president to visit Midway; Richard Nixon held secret talks there with the South Vietnamese president in 1969. Since then, however, the president has designated many more, including a nearly 90,000-acre national monument in Maine’s Katahdin woods, which was unveiled last week, three new national monuments in the desert of Southern California: so huge that they almost doubled the total amount of land he had conserved at the time, in mid-February 2016.
Obama said the U.S. has been “very firm” in response to Chinese assertiveness, including in the disputed South China Sea, where the USA has opposed territorial moves by China in contested areas. More than 7,000 marine species, including whales and sea turtles listed under the Endangered Species Act will be protected.
But ahead of the November 8 election for his successor, less than 5 percent of voters say the “environment” is the most important issue facing the United States today, according to a Reuters/IPSOS poll conducted between July 24 and August 21.
“No nation, not even one as powerful as the United States, is immune from a changing climate”, Obama said after landing in Hawaii this week. Enlarging the monument reflects Obama’s strategy of using his executive powers to put lands and waters off-limits to development, despite concerns from critics who oppose what they call his heavy-handed approach. More albatrosses live on Midway than anywhere else in the world, and wildlife authorities have worked to prevent a number of endangered species from disappearing from the atoll.
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“And because the president has a spotlight, him actually going and visiting these places raises the profile in a way that might not happen otherwise”, Deese said.
