US: President Bush has designated a remote group of Hawaiian islands as a national monument, writes Juliet Eilperin in Washington
US president George W Bush yesterday designated an island chain spanning almost 2,253km (1,400 miles) of the Pacific northwest of Hawaii as a national monument, creating the largest protected marine reserve in the world.
Establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a strictly protected marine reserve could prove to be the administration's most enduring environmental legacy. The roughly 160km (100- mile) wide area encompasses a string of uninhabited islands that support more than 7,000 marine species, at least a quarter of which are found nowhere else on Earth.
At the White House ceremony, Mr Bush invoked the 1906 Antiquities Act for the second time in his presidency. (The other time was to declare a burial ground in lower Manhattan as one of the nation's ancient cultural sites. The site, where about 20,000 slaves and free blacks were buried in the 18th century, is only half an acre.)
The islands include almost 70 per cent of the US's tropical, shallow-water coral reefs, a rookery for 14 million seabirds, and the last refuge for the endangered Hawaiian monk seal and the threatened green sea turtle. The area also has an abundance of large predatory fish at a time when 90 per cent of such species have disappeared from the world's oceans.
Encompassing 362,600sq km (140,000sq miles), an area nearly the size of Montana and larger than all the national parks combined, the proposed reserve would just surpass Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park as the largest marine protected area in the world. However, it would also be one of the least accessible.
"This is a landmark conservation event," said Joshua Reichert, who heads the Pew Charitable Trusts' environment programmes and who had pushed to have the area designated a marine sanctuary.
"The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands represent an incredible opportunity to preserve nature much as it was, or has been, for millions of years, because the hand of man has not wreaked the same kind of havoc as we have elsewhere in the world," says Ed Case, a Democratic member of the House for Hawaii who has lobbied for the designation since he was elected in 2002.
The plan had been resisted by local Hawaiian fishing interests that feared losing access to traditional fishing grounds.
The US has 13 marine sanctuaries scattered from the Florida Keys to the Channel Islands off the California coast, which provide varying levels of protection and have had mixed success in preserving sensitive ecosystems. In areas where fishing was banned outright, scientists have charted a resurgence of larger fish and coral reefs, but in areas that allow commercial and recreational fishing, damaged ecosystems have struggled to rebound.
One senior official said the plan would end fishing in the area within five years. It would allow Hawaiians to have access to the area for other traditional activities and would include the Midway second World War memorial, a facility that is open for research, education and ecotourism. (All of these islands are part of the state of Hawaii, except for Midway Atoll, the site of the historic second World War battle, which is a US territory.) Visitors wishing to snorkel, dive or take photographs in the area would have to obtain a permit, and no one could take fish, wildlife, corals or minerals from the region.
By declaring the islands a national monument, Mr Bush circumvents a year-long approval process required to designate the area as a marine sanctuary and is affording it the highest regulatory protection possible under law.
The island archipelago is remote - it takes fishermen two days to reach the area from the main islands - but debris from vessels that trawl the Pacific have ensnared marine animals and damaged the delicate ecosystem. Film-maker Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of legendary marine explorer Jacques Cousteau, spent six weeks there in 2003 and found debris from 52 countries, ranging from toy soldiers to cigarette lighters.
"That was really shocking," said Cousteau, who produced two one-hour TV documentaries. "There's a lot of really nasty stuff happening over there."
A turning point came in April, when Mr Bush sat through a 65-minute private screening of the documentary. The film seemed to catch Mr Bush's imagination, according to senior officials and others in attendance. The president popped up from his front-row seat after the screening, congratulated the film-maker and urged White House staff to get moving on protecting the waters. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)