Marine National Monument Pushback: The Fight Over Papahanaumokuakea Just Escalated
Government officials from the United States and three of its territories are working to undermine President Barack Obama’s marine conservation legacy less than four months after he left office. Obama used his executive authority in August to dramatically expand protected areas in the Pacific, the largest being the four-fold expansion last summer of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which now covers 583,000 square miles in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. But with the Trump administration taking over in January, commercial fishermen and others who vehemently opposed the expansion of that monument and other marine preserves have renewed the fight.,, Leaders of the eight councils followed up with a March 1 letter to Trump explaining why they thought it was bad policy to keep American fishing vessels out of the monuments, saying it has “disrupted” the councils’ ability to manage the fisheries and eliminated the vessels’ ability to act as “watchdogs” over U.S. fishing grounds threatened by foreign fleets. click to continue reading the story here 08:17
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