Bush Marine Reserve Plan Is Opposed by Cheney and Islanders

One of President Bush’s most ambitious environmental projects — the creation of two vast marine reserves in the Pacific Ocean — is being challenged by Vice President Cheney and by some Pacific Island leaders for restricting fishing and mineral exploration over too wide an area. The president’s wife, Laura Bush, is a strong proponent of the plan, which would restrict or ban fishing and other economic activities across much of an area around the Marianas Islands and in a remote, 2,000-mile stretch of the Pacific known as the Line Islands. The most controversial proposed reserve is in the Marianas, which would protect the deepest ocean canyon in the world — the 6.8-mile-deep Marianas Trench — as part of a marine reserve nearly half the size of Texas. Cheney and Marianas officials argue that the reserve infringes upon the sovereignty of the northern Marianas — a U.S. commonwealth between Japan and Guam — and ignores the longstanding successful stewardship of the area’s fisheries. Though widely criticized for his environmental record, Bush has been praised by conservationists for his marine initiatives, which already have led to the creation of ocean reserves off the U.S.’s Pacific Northwest coast and in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands.