Bush Protects Wide Areas of Pacific as Marine National Monument

President Bush will designate 195,280 square miles of U.S.-controlled territory in the Pacific Ocean as a marine national monument, limiting fishing, mining and oil exploration across a unique swath of islands, atolls and underwater mountain ranges. The remote areas, which include part of the Mariana Trench and a stretch of islands near American Samoa and the Equator, provide habitat to hundreds of rare species of fish and birds, including tropicbirds, boobies, terns and albatrosses. The president’s action, which does not require congressional approval, creates the largest area of ocean protected for marine conservation in the world. And when combined with the president’s designation of a 139,000-square-mile area in northwest Hawaiian Islands as a marine monument in 2006, Bush has protected more ocean than any president in U.S. history. The designation received opposition from fishing groups, but environmentalists praised the move.