Bush's bid to protect marine areas is met with resistance

WASHINGTON - President Bush's vision for protecting two vast areas of the Pacific Ocean from fishing and mineral exploitation, a move that would constitute a major expansion of his environmental legacy, is running into dogged resistance both inside and outside the White House and has placed his wife and his vice president on opposite sides of the issue.

With less than three months before Bush's term ends, his top deputies are scrambling to try to execute a plan that would shield some of the world's most diverse underwater ecosystems. The original plan, which included four potential "marine monuments" and was well received by environmentalists, has been scaled back.

Vice President Dick Cheney and some officials in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have argued that the plan could hurt the region's economy by barring fishing and energy exploration. Laura Bush, along with a number of scientists and environmental advocates, has countered that preserving the region's natural attributes would attract tourism and burnish the president's record for history.

Laura Bush has asked for two briefings on the issue from White House staff members, and her aides have conferred with scientists who support the two designations.

While environmental groups have pilloried Bush over his approaches to climate change, forest management, and air pollution, many marine specialists give him credit for his ocean policies.

In 2006 he designated the nearly 140,000-square-mile Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, creating what at the time was the world's largest protected marine area.

Scientists have advocated designating more such areas to protect them from the effects of overfishing, pollution, and global warming, which are degrading oceans worldwide.

One of the areas, in the central Pacific, would encompass an area known as the Line Islands and stretch about 2,000 miles from the Johnston Atoll to the Rose Atoll. The other, in the western Pacific, would include the waters around two northern Mariana Islands and the 6.8-mile-deep Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean canyon in the world.