Bush designates ocean conservation areas in final weeks as president

Move to protect three regions of pristine marine habitat in the Pacific Ocean are in sharp contrast to Bush administration's record on other green issues
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 January 2009 02.02 GMT

George Bush will designate nearly 200,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean as conservation areas on Tuesday, recasting his record on the environment just two weeks before leaving the White House.
Tuesday's formal announcement will establish Bush as the leader who has protected more of the oceans than anyone else in the world, environmentalists said.
The three regions in the Pacific Ocean encompass some 195,280 square miles of remote and relatively uninhabited island chains.
They include pristine coral reefs, vanishing marine species and the deepest place on Earth.
Their preservation brought rare praise from environmentalists who have spent much of the last eight years fighting Bush on climate change, air pollution, and wildlife management.
"The president has given the world a Texas-sized gift," said Diane Regas, manager of the ocean programme at the Environmental Defence Fund.
But the marine reserves were as much a gift from Laura Bush, who was credited with heading off determined opposition from the vice-president, Dick Cheney, as well as business leaders in the Mariana Islands who had lobbied on behalf of fishing and energy exploration.
White House officials, in a conference call with reporters, described three distinct areas: the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, a chain of remote islands in the central Pacific, and the Rose Atoll off American Samoa.
"These locations are truly among the last pristine areas in the marine environment on Earth," said James Connaughton, who heads the White House Council on Environmental Quality.The Marianas Marine National Monument will protect the Mariana Trench - deeper than Mount Everest is tall and five times the size of the Grand Canyon - and a string of 21 active volcanoes and thermal vents.
The area is home to 300 species of stony corals and some of the most diverse fish populations in the Mariana Islands. It also harbours the Micronesian megapode, a bird which uses the heat from the volcanic vents to incubate its eggs.
The Pacific Remote Islands National Monument will cover coral reefssurrounding Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Howland, Baker and Jarvis islands and Johnston Atoll and Wake Island.
The islands and atolls are home to nesting sea birds and migratory shore birds, and endangered turtles. The waters off Kingman Reef teem with shark and other predators.
The "tiny but spectacular" Rose Atoll Marine National Monument will protect a coral reef area known for rare birds such as petrels as well as reef sharks and parrot fish, Connaughton said.
The conservation plan will ban commercial fishing, mining and energy exploration within the protected areas. Recreational fishing will be allowed only a limited permit basis
"This is very very big. Basically in the last several years, it's on par with what we have been able to accomplish on land in the last 100 years," Josh Reichert, the managing director of the Pew Environment Group, said in a conference call with reporters.
However, Bush fell short of meeting scientists' recommendation for a protection zone extending 200 miles off the islands.
The protected areas will extend for only 50 miles.
In addition, only the waters between the ocean floor and the rim of the Mariana Trench will be protected - not those rising from the rim to the surface of the water.
The US military will also continue to operate in the monuments.
However, environmentalists said the announcement would help protect oceans that are under threat from overfishing and global warming.
The initiative, coming in the final fortnight of the George Bush presidency, also gives the incoming Barack Obama administration a strong take-off point on ocean conservation. The move was at odds with the Bush administration's record on other green issues and even on marine protection. When petrol prices soared last summer, Bush lifted the ban on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and off California.But environmentalists who worked with the White House to develop the conservation plan say that Bush had developed a personal commitment to marine protection.
He took the first step in 2006, using a law originally intended for antiquities to create a protected area in nearly 140,000 square miles in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands called the Papahanaumokuakea marine national monument.It was at the time the world's largest protected marine area. Last August, Bush asked Connaugton and other administration officials to review the prospects of creating new conservation areas in the Pacific.
The effort met determined opposition from Cheney and local business leaders in the Marianas. But Bush had a key ally in his wife, Laura, who became unusually engaged in policy making. The First Lady arranged briefings for White House staff from scientists who supported the measure to try to blunt Cheney's influence.
"We and others in the environmental community have been at odds with this administration on lots of things, but if one looks at this one event it is a significant conservation event," Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group, said.