The Pacific Remote Islands Marine Monument
Mr. Obama’s Pacific Monument
It’s
safe to assume that most presidents have big ambitions and visions of
lasting Rooseveltian achievement. Though, in recent history, the
millstones of Washington’s pettiness and partisanship usually grind such
dreams to dust. There are exceptions, which happen when presidents
discover the Antiquities Act.
This
is the law, used by Theodore Roosevelt and many successors, by which
the executive can permanently set aside public lands from exploitation,
building an environmental legacy with a simple signature and without
Congress’s consent. This is how President Obama last week, in addition
to everything else on his plate, created the largest marine preserve in
the world.
He used his Antiquities Act authority to expand
the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument from 87,000 square
miles to nearly 500,000 square miles, a vast change. The monument is not
one area but the ocean surrounding several coral-and-sand specks of
United States territory that most Americans have never heard of and few
will ever visit, like Wake and Johnston Atolls and Jarvis Island. The
ocean there is relatively pristine and now will stay that way.
Commercial fishing, seabed mining and other intrusions will not be
allowed.
The
monument is not as large as it could have been; Mr. Obama chose not to
extend its boundaries out to the full 200-mile territorial limit for all
the islands within it. Still, environmental groups are uniformly
praising him for going as big as he did and for defying opposition from
Hawaiian fishing interests whose loyalties lie with the producers of
canned tuna. That industry has other places to fish; it will not suffer.
But, at a time when the world’s oceans are threatened by rampant
pollution, overfishing and climate change, the benefits of Mr. Obama’s
decision will be profound, particularly if other countries now follow
the United States’ excellent example.
Few
of us will see these benefits directly. But out there beyond Honolulu,
living in splendid isolation, are sharks, rays and jacks; coconut crabs;
moosehorn, staghorn and brain corals; humpback and melon-headed whales;
green and hawksbill turtles; bottlenose and spinner dolphins; and
untold millions of boobies, curlews and plovers. All these, and
countless other living things, will be better off.
Republicans
will complain, but they should remember that it was President George W.
Bush who created the monument. Mr. Obama only expanded it. Building an
environmental legacy is an idea with bipartisan appeal.
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