In this setting, all of the resources that we’re identifying will be fully protected. With respect to the coral reef ecosystem, this will include prohibitions on commercial fishing.

The second monument the President will be announcing is the Pacific Remote Islands National Monument. This monument will include the pristine coral reef ecosystems that surround the following federal land: Kingman Reef; Palmyra Atoll; Howland, Baker, and Jarvis Islands; and Johnston Atoll; and Wake Island — so seven areas. These areas are home to a very large number of nesting seabirds — millions of seabirds — and migratory shorebirds. They contain pristine corals with hundreds of different fish species and an unusually large abundance of what are called apex predators, things like sharks. They’re also home to endangered turtles, and at Johnston in particular, intersects with the marine community that’s up in the northwest Hawaiian Islands which the President established as a national monument two years ago. So there’s a linkage.

The third marine national monument there is Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. Rose Atoll is a remote area within the EEZ area around American Samoa. It is a tiny but spectacular coral reef area that’s renowned for the pink hue of its fringing reef that’s caused by coralline algae. And it’s also off the charts when it comes to the extent of coral cover. It has some of the broadest extent of live coral cover of any place on earth — again, something we can learn from, given the breadth of it over the system. It also includes rare species of nesting petrils, shearwaters, and terns.

The waters around Rose Atoll also are home to giant clams, reef sharks, and very large parrot fish, and are a frequent location where you can find humpback and pilot whales and porpoises.

As part of the President’s monument designation, he’ll be incorporating specific measures that will fully provide for training readiness and global mobility of the U.S. armed forces and will, as I indicated before, ensure navigation rights and high seas freedoms under the Law of the Sea for all vessels, which are essential to stabilizing peace and prosperity for all civilized nations. So we will be able to afford high levels of protection and at the same time respect international law when it comes to navigational freedoms, which is very important as we undertake these conservation activities in the marine environment.

He will also be issuing a separate statement with respect to ensuring our national security in this region and ensuring that the protection of the ocean environment can be complementary and reinforcing priorities.

And then 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.

I think I’ll stop there. This is a huge day for marine conservation. It’s going to set yet another great mark for America as we inspire marine conservation activities all around the world. And it’s — once you get a hold of the b-roll here and you start looking at some of the photos that we’ll make available to you, if you give Kristen Hellmer of my office a call — you will see what we have been privileged to learn over the last many months as we’ve done our assessment about these unique places on earth.

So I look forward to your questions.

Q: Mr. Connaughton, thanks for taking our questions. Can you tell me more about the — what are the navigation and national security aspects here, and how do they affect the level of protection that these areas will receive?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: We wanted to be sure that as we undertake conservation, it is done in a way that fully assures full freedom of navigation for vessels. This is an issue that comes up from time to time in other parts of the world. The U.S. is a strong supporter of international law on freedom of navigation. And so it would just assure safe passage, and free and innocent passage. We have done this. We did this with respect to the Hawaii monuments, and we do it throughout the U.S., coastal EEZ, near the mainland U.S.

We just want to be sure that as we undertake conservation, that’s not used as a reason to bar navigation, navigational freedoms. So we just want to underscore that. But in terms of the effect it will have, we will be able to achieve the full and highest levels of protection for the marine environment through a well-managed and well-regulated set of management practices.

Q: But there will be limits on, or allowances for, military training — or how would that be affected?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Well, actually we have set up the monuments in a way that’s fully compatible with our future plans for military readiness training in the Pacific region, and fully compatible with the sort of the readiness and mobility you need for the military in that part of the world.

In fact, I want to underline we actually welcome the presence of the military in and around the monument, because they will be some of our best eyes and ears as to what’s going on with the resource. These are very, very remote places. And as we, for example, build up the military in Guam, there will be opportunities for military personnel to actually learn more about the resource and help understand global awareness of the resource. And as well, the military will be flying their missions, and sailing their ships, and running their submarines in and around these areas. But I want to observe the active military activity will be taking place south of the Northern Islands, and so we have set this up in a way where it’s going to be fully compatible with those activities.

Q: Thank you.

Q: Mr. Connaughton, thanks so much for taking our questions. Also, were there any changes made to the protections or the scope of the Marianas monument? There had been some media accounts, I understand, from local reports — we do some reporting out of D.C. for a cable outfit in the — in Saipan, and there had been some reports that the protections and the scope of the monument might be scaled down in response to concerns by local government officials, including the governor, who has been opposed to this monument because of the desire to protect fishing and mining activities that the local government might approve in that area.

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Well, first, let me say that the — we received proposals ranging from do nothing, to do everything, including more than you need to do. So this assessment was a process of working through with the scientists, with government officials, and with a lot of the NGO community and citizens. You know, we talked to some chambers of commerce and business people, and even a lot of people active in the media covering these issues. From that process, which was very deliberate, we then crafted what I think you’ve now seen is a truly massive conservation outcome, and we’ve crafted it in a way that was able to take into account — and in many instances simply explain away most of the concerns.

The government officials, in particular at CNMI, had some very legitimate issues that they wanted to understand further before committing to going forward. I have to say I spent many days in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas with government officials and others; I’ve spent many hours on the phone with people since then, and I’m very pleased to say — and I think you’ll find out — that when we finally put pen to paper and crafted this large conservation outcome, we did so in a way that those government officials will now — are now very pleased to fully support.

Q: So can you give us any specifics in terms of –

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Yes, let me give you a few.

Q: — Whether this was either in the area that’s covered, has been scaled back, or in the activities that are affected was modified to allow for those activities in some areas to continue?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: Let me give you a couple of examples. One area of very high importance, especially in the Northern Marianas Island chain, but also in Samoa, was being able to make provision for traditional indigenous practices.

Now, there’s very, very limited intersection with these remote resources by the indigenous peoples, but they have a strong cultural heritage — these are places of high importance to them culturally. And I think one of the highest priorities for the governments was to be sure that we were, as the federal government, respectful of those practices — as we are routinely across the land part of the United States.

And so we were able to come up with an approach that would allow for that, very similar to what we did in Hawaii, by which the local government will be sure to sort of pay close attention to the desire of people to engage in indigenous practices in these areas and be sure that those are legitimately undertaken. So that’s one example. We just needed to work through that until we spelled it out — you know, folks were going to wait to agree until we spelled it out.

Another example was the issue of minerals. There was a concern that there would be a conflict between the potential for minerals development and the conservation actions we wanted to take. As we learned from the assessment, in close consultation with the scientists who had been working the area, the places where the minerals are likely going to be are not the places that we are looking to conserve. So there’s not a significant potential or identifiable potential for mineral resources up in and around the three Northern Islands. There isn’t significant potential for recoverable resources in the Mariana Trench. And as a practical matter, nobody in their right mind is going to go looking for minerals in the middle of a volcano that’s active or in the middle of a thermal vent with a pH of one. So this is a great example where having done the science we were able to actually take an issue off the table because it wasn’t relevant.

Let me give a third one. We were very interested in protecting the geologic and natural resource features of the seabed in the trench and the volcanoes. As indicated, there’s an amazing amount of marine life in and around these volcanoes and on these vents.

There was a question as to whether there would be a commercial fishing restriction, with respect to those areas. But commercial fishing wasn’t really relevant to the resource we were working to protect. And, in fact, most of these areas are not very productive for commercial fishing in any event. And so there was a fear that we’d be getting into commercial fishing restrictions outside of the Magnuson process, where it was actually completely unnecessary to assure full protection of the resource we were seeking to protect.

So those would be three examples. You know, they all are a bit complicated each in their own rights. We just have to work through it. And again, I want to underline, the Governor of the CNMI, the Speaker of the CNMI, and the Senate President of the CNMI all worked very well together with us and carefully, you know, got up to speed on all the same science we got up to speed with, and have, you know — I think you’ll find them coming out fully supportive of this conservation outcome.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5