Bush to announce three new marine monuments; Papahānaumokuākea gets siblings

President Bush, in a widely anticipated event, today was scheduled to announce the establishment of three new Pacific marine national monuments, to join the two-year-old Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.Papahānaumokuākea has been a lonely creature within the federal bureaucracy—the only marine national monument in existence.

and one that conducts a constant balancing act with the three major agencies that have interests in the area: the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They operate as co-trustees.No regulatory framework has been set up yet for the three new monuments, and while the partnerships will certainly be different, there will also be similarities.

“We will be asking the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior over the course of the next two years, in conjunction and cooperation with the governments of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, the government of American Samoa, and the government of Guam to develop these management plans, and come up with shared strategies for implementing them,” said Jim Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

For Rose Atoll, Connaughton said the Administration proposes the monument management be folded into the existing American Samoa national marine sanctuary bureaucracy, “so they'll all be under the same management regime.”But that is something the outgoing Bush Administration will have to leave to its successor, the Obama Administration. The shape of those regulations will be driven by a Hawai'i born president who is far more familiar with oceans than Texan Bush.