“Ancient islanders believed it contained the boundary between this life and the next”, Obama said.
Advertisement
According to the White House, the expansion of the reserve would help protect more than 7,000 marine species and improve the recovery of an ecosystem that is facing ocean acidification and global warming.
“I created the world’s largest marine preserve, quadrupling the size of our monument at Papahanaumokuakea”, he bragged, adding, “We’ve designated national monuments from Maine to OH to California”. “And from now on, it will be preserved for future generations”.
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama arrived in Hawaii to deliver remarks at the 2016 Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders.
The battle transformed the Second World War in the Pacific, but today Midway is on the front lines of a different conflict – the fight to save the world’s oceans. He said President Teddy Roosevelt gets the credit for starting the National Park system, but his administration has done more.
President Obama painted a dire picture of the coming climate apocalypse while speaking in Hawaii yesterday at the annual World Conservation Congress, proving once again that hypothetical disasters and the current plight of the puffer fish are far more important than the human toll his hardline environmental regulations have already taken. 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.
Obama and Xi have been strident advocates of the sweeping global emissions-cutting deal struck in Paris previous year.
A USAID disaster risk fund will also receive $15 million, seven local efforts will split $1.7 million in grants to help communities adapt to climate change, and the USA will spend $8 million on a World Bank program to create a disaster and climate risk insurance fund for Pacific Islands. Officials in both countries were hoping enough progress had been made that both the US and China could announce they’re formally joining that agreement during Obama’s visit. Claimed by the U.S.in the middle of the 19th century, Midway became a hub of activity in the early 20th century amid efforts to lay a telegraph cable spanning the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese attack in 1942 was a pivotal moment in World War II, with the US delivering a resounding defeat that degraded the Japanese Navy’s capacity in the Pacific.
Kevin Foerster, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s refuge chief for the region, said the agency would like to be able to open the island to visitors, but budget constraints and the remote island’s fragile economy mean its beauty and history is better shared on the internet for now.
Advertisement
The area is home to millions of tropical sea birds including rare albatrosses, and it teems with sea life such as endangered whales, green sea turtles and deep sea black coral, considered the longest-living marine species.
