Download NY Times Editorial on PRIMNM Expansion

NY Times Editorial on PRIMNM Expansion
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
Mr. Obama’s Ocean Monument
By THE EDITORIAL BOARDJUNE 17, 2014
They are seven sand-and-coral dots in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, far west and south of
Hawaii. They are known best, if they are known at all, for guano mining in the 19th century and
nuclear tests in the 20th.
If you said they were among the most inconsequential bits of United States territory, who would
argue? They are surely the most distant. But the 21st century has brought a greater appreciation
of Howland, Baker and Jarvis Islands; Johnston, Wake and Palmyra Atolls; and Kingman Reef.
It’s because the waters around them are an unparalleled wildlife habitat.
The United States does not have an Amazon basin, but it has the watery equivalent, a paradise of
turtles and sharks, seals and dolphins, coral reefs and giant clams, frigate birds and boobies.
Those are the best reasons to welcome President Obama’s decision, announced on Tuesday, to
greatly expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, one of four vast
protected marine areas in the Pacific Ocean created by President George W. Bush under the
Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that allows the executive branch to protect federal territory from
exploitation with the stroke of a pen.
Mr. Obama, whose plan was unveiled at an oceans conference in Washington, where he also
announced new measures to fight illegal and unregulated fishing, is expanding on one of the very
last things Mr. Bush did before leaving office in 2009. Mr. Bush’s decree protected the waters
around the islands and atolls to a distance of 50 miles, shielding a total of 87,000 square miles
from fishing and energy exploration.
Mr. Obama wants to expand protection to the full 200-mile territorial limit, covering nearly
782,000 square miles. The fine print in the decree will be important — what exceptions for
fishing and other resource extraction will be allowed? That far out in the blue Pacific, there is
hardly any commercial activity, save a small percentage of American tuna fishing — but some
legislators are blustering anyway.
“This is yet another example of how an imperial president is intent on taking unilateral action,
behind closed doors, to impose new regulations and layers of restrictive red-tape,” said
Representative Doc Hastings, a Washington Republican. He should tell that to President Bush,
who also created, entirely on his own, a Marianas Trench monument, a Rose Atoll monument
near American Samoa and the Papahanaumokuakea monument, in the Northwest Hawaiian
Islands.
Environmental conservation has a long bipartisan history in this country. These remote waters
are a part of America most citizens may never see, but they should be thankful that presidents, of
both parties, had the foresight to protect them.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/opinion/mr-obamas-ocean-monument.html?_r=0