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Obama extends vast marine reserve in central Pacific Ocean (+video)

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Building on a legacy left by President George W. Bush, President Obama has extended the reach of the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument sixfold to nearly half a million square miles, turning it into the world's largest marine sanctuary, one fully protected from commercial fishing and deep-sea mining.

The move came via a presidential proclamation Thursday, issued under the 1906 Antiquities Act. The act allows a president to set aside for preservation structures or objects of historic or scientific interest on federal lands.

In 2009, former President Bush established the monument, centered on seven islands and atolls the US administers in the central Pacific Ocean. Each island or atoll was protected out to a distance of 50 nautical miles, giving the monument an area of 83,000 square miles.

In his proclamation, Mr. Obama extended the monument's reach out to the full 200-mile limit waters falling within US's exclusive economic zone around three of the islands and atolls. This raises the monument's collective area to 490,000 square miles.

Had the president included the other four islands in the expansion, the monument would have covered about 780,000 square miles. But after taking into account public comments, as well as the administration's own scientific assessment, the White House concluded that the expansion that became official today represents appropriately tailored and meaningful protections, according to administration officials.

Marine-conservation specialists are elated by the move.

"We're really thrilled. It's a huge step forward for the ocean. It's going to help spur other countries to take action," says Sarah Chasis, who heads the oceans program at the National Resources Defense Council in New York.

The White House signaled its intention to expand the marine monument in June during an international conference in Washington that focused on marine conservation. Secretary of State John Kerry convened the two-day meeting to build support for more-ambitious efforts to safeguard the environmental health of the world's oceans.

The key threats include over-fishing, pollution, and rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels and from land-use changes. Rising CO2 levels have triggered global warming, and the oceans have become increasingly acidic as they take up much of the CO2 humans have pumped into the atmosphere.

The impact of warming on the oceans on marine life already is appearing as warm-water species migrate northward out of their historic ecological regions. Meanwhile, acidification threatens corals and many types of shell-building marine life, and by extension, the animals higher up the food chain that rely on them, researchers say.

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Obama extends vast marine reserve in central Pacific Ocean (+video)

Obama adds to Pacific islands monument, world's biggest marine reserve

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President Obama on Thursday created the largest marine reserve in the world by expanding Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in the south-central Pacific Ocean. It expands the monument to cover 490,000 square miles, six times its current size.

"Remote" in the reserve's name refers to the string of uninhabited tropical islands -- including Howland, where Amelia Earhart was scheduled to refuel on her round-the-world flight before her plane disappeared, Wake and Baker -- as well as atolls and reefs west of Hawaii that make up this monument.

Obama took the action to "more fully protect the deep coral reefs, sea mounts and marine ecosystems unique to this part of the world," a White House announcement says. Commercial fishing will be banned in the waters but recreational fishing will be allowed.

The president invoked the Antiquities Act in expanding the national monument that protected 83,000 square miles when it was created by President George W. Bush in 2009.

The monument protects:

--birds like boobies, frigatebirds and sooty terns that nest on Baker Island;

--many types of coral -- staghorn, brain and others -- that exist on terraces around Baker Island and Kingman Reef;

--sharks, jacks, grouper and parrotfish at Jarvis Island; and

--Green and Hawskbill turtles, humpback whales and species of dolphins that forage in its waters.

The monument is managed by the Interior and Commerce departments through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, respectively.

The rest is here:

Obama adds to Pacific islands monument, world's biggest marine reserve

Presidential Proclamation — Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument Expansion

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The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

September 25, 2014

PACIFIC REMOTE ISLANDS MARINE NATIONAL MONUMENT EXPANSION

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Through Proclamation 8336 of January 6, 2009, the President established the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument ("Monument") to protect and preserve the marine environment around Wake, Baker, Howland, and Jarvis Islands, Johnston and Palmyra Atolls, and Kingman Reef for the care and management of the historic and scientific objects therein. The Monument is an important part of the most widespread collection of marine- and terrestrial-life protected areas on the planet, sustaining many endemic species including corals, fish, shellfish, marine mammals, seabirds, water birds, land birds, insects, and vegetation not found elsewhere. The Monument includes the lands, waters, and submerged and emergent lands of the seven Pacific Remote Islands to lines of latitude and longitude that lie approximately 50 nautical miles from the mean low water lines of those seven Pacific Remote Islands. The islands of Jarvis, Howland, and Baker were also the location of notable bravery and sacrifice by a small number of voluntary Hawaiian colonists, known as Hui Panalau, who occupied the islands from 1935 to 1942 to help secure the U.S. territorial claim over the islands.

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Presidential Proclamation --- Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument Expansion

Q&A: Why It's Important to Protect a Vast Marine Monument

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On Wednesday night, the White House announced that it is expanding an existing marine monument around seven U.S.-controlled islands and atolls in the central Pacific, making it the largest protected area of any kind on the planet.

The historic announcement extends protection to endangered wildlife and serves as a powerful symbol of commitment to marine conservation, says one leading ocean scientist and advocate.

Elliott Norse, the founder and chief scientist of the Seattle-based Marine Conservation Institute, has spent the past decade working on marine protected areas in the Pacific. In addition to his scientific and advocacy work on the newly expanded Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, Norse also worked to establish the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument.

National Geographic discussed the importance of these protected areas with Norse.

Why is it important to expand the Pacific Remote Islands National Marine Monument from its current state?

There are two answers to that question. One of them is a conservation/science answer and one of them is politics. An answer to the former is that existing protections are not enough to maintain the abundance of marine life we are concerned about.

We originally made the case that the Bush administration should create the monument out to the exclusive economic zone around the islands, 200 miles. They weren't able to do it because of politics. But it is important because there are organisms that drive processes in these ecosystems that are being killed in large numbers.

Take tunas, which are being fished in the area. It turns out that tunas are really important to seabirds that nest and feed their chicks on the islands. Many of those birds feed well past the boundaries that Bush originally established, and we have to protect the places where they feed.

That's because many of these seabirds can't go very deep in the ocean, so they pick up things from the surface. The problem is many of the fish and squid they eat can go deep. But tunas drive those prey species up to the surface as they feed, where some of them can be caught by birds. So tunas are an essential part of the biology of these island-nesting seabirds.

And what's the political reason for the monument's expansion?

Read more from the original source:

Q&A: Why It's Important to Protect a Vast Marine Monument


  1. Islands