Creating national monuments

Update (1/6/2009) - President Bush announced the creation of three new marine national monuments in the Central Pacific Ocean. An area larger than California will be protected. (See news release for details.)

At Kingman atoll in the Central Pacific, reef sharks, huge jacks and snappers reign among luxuriant coral reefs. It’s a world untouched by humans, a place teeming with big predatory fish largely gone from most reef ecosystems. Here, the food web is intact, the corals more resistant to disease and bleaching.

Last havens for sea life

Kingman is one of the Central Pacific's eight jewels that make up some of the most remote shallow-water coral reef ecosystems in the world.

Millions of seabirds use the islands and surrounding waters to nest and forage, as do rare green and hawksbill sea turtles. Two thousand miles to the west, the Marianas Trench is an ocean canyon so deep it could hold Mt. Everest.

This year, President Bush vowed to declare these two unique habitats as national marine monuments. Together they would make up the largest protected area on Earth, covering an area larger than Alaska and Texas combined, if fully safeguarded 200 miles out.

How we helped win safeguards

Environmental Defense Fund teamed up with Marine Conservation Biology Institute to convince White House staff that the Central Pacific Islands are truly deserving of protection. We assembled the science and built key political and scientific support. Hundreds of prominent scientists signed a letter to the president urging stringent protection.

The fragile ecosystems are threatened by illegal poachers and high-tech fishing vessels homing in on the last places abundant with fish. We are working to ensure full protection as federal agencies vet the plan, which could allow harmful energy development and mining.

With Indo-Pacific corals disappearing twice as fast as tropical rainforests, strong protections would be a truly meaningful legacy.