Standing in the way of protecting the earth

THANK YOU Laura Bush, for those loving jabs you must have given your husband to get him to establish three new marine national monuments in the Pacific.

In a 2007 letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, the first lady lamented the floating trash that was killing the chicks of Laysan albatrosses in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands after adults fed them objects they thought were food. She wrote of seeing "carcasses of albatross chicks which upon examination had fragments of plastic, including toys, cigarette lighters, toothbrushes and bottle caps in their stomachs."

President Bush stunned environmentalists the year before by designating the islands a national marine monument. With such concern so close at hand, he turned his attention to preserving the waters over the Mariana Trench, so deep at nearly 7 miles down that Mount Everest could sink into it, as well as atolls off American Samoa and in the central Pacific. It was hard to imagine who would stand in the way of a chance for this White House to stand up for conservation.

It turned out that Vice President Dick Cheney did.

According to the Washington Post, Cheney, fishing industry interests, and local government officials complained last year that a marine preserve might damage commerce. The mayor of Saipan, the most populous island of the Marianas, wrote to Bush to say "the loss of extractive privileges of natural resources . . . far outweigh any benefits."

White House environmental adviser James Connaughton downplayed Cheney's concern, saying, "The vice president is flagging something I had already laid out in our policy briefings."

Interestingly, these objections came as evidence floated in to remind us that proclaiming something a marine preserve means little if you do not fund its protection. In August, the Associated Press reported that even as Bush bathed in rare praise for his gesture toward the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the administration slashed the budget for the very kind of debris cleanup that Laura Bush lamented.

The budget had been $2.1 million in 2005, allowing workers to collect about 102 tons of discarded fishing gear and garbage from boaters and beachcombers. The administration budgeted only $400,000 in 2008 and $500,000 for 2009. Garbage collection is now down to 35 tons a year.

All the while, the currents wash in 57 tons of garbage a year. So even when Bush "gets it" on the environment, there is a major catch - the plastic bycatch that menaces birds, turtles, and marine mammals. Christine Woolaway, who has coordinated beach cleanups, in Hawaii, said, "it's very disappointing."

It also was somewhat disappointing to learn that the new protection for the Marianas extends only 50 miles out from the monument, not the maximum possible 200 miles. Also while the trench is "protected," the administration decided it is so deep that it did not need to ban recreational fishing in the waters above it.

Connaughton said, "it just wasn't clear we would be accomplishing much more in the way of fully protecting these coral reef systems." We can chalk that answer up to Cheney's influence and the fact that this administration never wanted science to make anything clear.

That said, it is clear that Laura Bush won the bigger argument, as Connaughton told reporters this week in advance of Bush's official monument declaration: "To me, and the president and the first lady, one of the things that really affected us, from learning from the scientists, is these locations are truly among the last pristine areas in the marine environment on earth."

You do not often hear the first lady's name being invoked over Iraq, the economy, or most other presidential matters. She said of the Laysan albatrosses, "You become so protective of these little chicks. They're so vulnerable, these precious little chicks who really serve to remind all of us how vulnerable life is everywhere."

Though President Bush generally ignored the vulnerability of Earth, Laura Bush at least lifted the albatross of the environment slightly higher off her husband's neck.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.