New Ocean Monuments Give President Bush a Blue Legacy
WASHINGTON,/PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ --
Pew Applauds Historic Action
President Bush today designated 3 new marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean totaling more
than 195,000 square miles, an area greater than Oregon and Washington combined. Together with
Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which was established in 2006 in the northwestern
Hawaiian Islands, President Bush will have designated monuments protecting 335,561 square miles of
ocean, a larger area of the world's marine environment than protected by any other person in history.
"This historic action by President Bush protects some of the world's most unique and biologically
significant ocean habitat," said Joshua S. Reichert, Managing Director of the Pew Environment Group.
"Together with the Hawaii marine monument established two years ago, this marks the end of an era in
which humans have increasingly understood the need to conserve vanishing wild places on land but failed to
comprehend the similar plight of our oceans. It comes none too soon."
The largest of the protected areas surrounds the Northern Mariana Islands and includes the Mariana
Trench, the deepest canyon on earth. The Mariana Islands monument alone protects 95,000 square miles,
encompassing areas believed to harbor some of the oldest known life on the DNA tree. By itself, this
monument is the third largest marine reserve in the world. Among its diverse and remarkable underwater
features are the second known boiling pool of liquid sulfur (the first pool was discovered on Io, one of
Jupiter's moons); huge, active mud volcanoes -- one more than 31 miles across; and highly acidic
hydrothermal vents that provide a unique natural laboratory for the study of ocean acidification and its effects
on coral reefs and shallow-water sea life.
A marine mammal survey in the area found 19 species, including several rare species of beaked whales.
The land areas shelter the endangered Micronesian megapode, which is the only bird known to use volcanic
heat to incubate its eggs, threatened fruit bats, more than a dozen species of migratory seabirds with
breeding populations numbering over 200,000 and giant coconut crabs -- the largest land-living arthropod in
the world.
For the past two years, the Pew Environment Group's Global Ocean Legacy Program has worked with the
Bush Administration as well as citizens and elected officials in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas
to promote the concept of a large-scale marine reserve in the waters surrounding the Mariana Islands. More
than 200 local businesses and 6,000 citizens signed petitions supporting world-class marine monument
designation.
In partnership with the islands' business community and Friends of the Monument, a local organization
promoting the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, the Pew Environment Group helped organize
more than 100 public meetings to vet the proposed monument in open forums. It also developed the first
comprehensive scientific profile of the biological and geological resources contained within the proposed
monument site, plus an assessment of the potential economic benefits of monument designation to the
Marianas economy.
"We are proud that President Bush has recognized the importance and richness of the Mariana Island
waters," said Ike Cabrera the Chairman of the Saipan-based Friends of the Monument. "We can now share
with the world this special place our people have long cherished."
These remote and beautiful islands and waters have a rich history. Wake Island and Saipan were the
sites of important battles in WWII, and islands in the Mariana Archipelago harbored some of the last
Japanese holdouts of the war.
"We will gain immeasurably more from having these places kept safe than we would from plundering in
the short term whatever commercial resources they might contain," said Reichert. "In his efforts to balance
competing interests, the president weighed the long term benefits to the marine environment and to the
American people of protecting these places before they are ruined, and decided they are worth more intact
than whatever commercial benefits might be derived from fishing, drilling or mining them. The President's
decision is a tribute to common sense."
For more information about the Mariana Trench, including high quality photos, please visit the Global
Broadcast quality footage is available at the following FTP address: 70.86.53.74
Username: mariana
Password: monument
Global Ocean Legacy is a project initiated by the Pew Environment Group in partnership with the Oak
Foundation, the Robertson Foundation and the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. Its goal is to work
with local citizens and governments to secure the designation of a handful of world-class, no-take marine
reserves that will provide ecosystem scale benefits and help conserve our global marine heritage.
SOURCE: Pew Environment Group
CONTACT: Kymberly Escobar of Pew Environment Group
+1-202-887-8814
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