Bush will create 3 conservation zones in Pacific Ocean
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WASHINGTON - President Bush will create three more marine national monuments in the Pacific Ocean today, designating areas that will span 195,280 square miles and protect some of the most ecologically rich areas of the world's oceans, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
The decision to make the designations under the Antiquities Act, two weeks before Bush leaves office, means that he will have protected more square miles of ocean than any person in history. In 2006 Bush created the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, an area of 138,000 square miles.
Two of the additional areas encompass a region known as the Line Islands, a relatively isolated and uninhabited string of islands in the central Pacific. The third area, in the western Pacific, includes the waters around a few islands in the northern Marianas chain and the Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean canyon in the world.
Both regions boast enormous biodiversity: Kingman Reef and other islands in the central Pacific area teem with sharks and other top predators as well as vibrant corals; the Mariana Trench and its nearby islands are home to several species of rare beaked whales and the Micronesian megapode - an endangered bird that uses the heat from volcanic vents to incubate its eggs - and also have mud volcanoes and the greatest microbial diversity on Earth.
Although not all areas within the designated monuments will be fully protected - slightly less than 60 percent of the total will be subject to prohibitions on fishing and other extractive activities - environmentalists praised Bush.
"George Bush has ushered in a new era of ocean conservation in the United States and the world at large," said Josh Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group.
