Green light for huge sea reserve

LOS ANGELES - The Bush Administration has announced it intends to create the world's largest marine conservation area across a broad swath of the Pacific, surprising and delighting its environmentalist critics who have had little but withering criticism to offer over the past five and a half years.

The new marine sanctuary, tentatively named the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument, will cover 362,598 sq km, stretching from Hawaii to Midway atoll, site of a famous World War II battle between the United States and Japan.

The area includes small islands, atolls and many precious coral reefs and is home to about 14 million seabirds, including albatrosses and terns, as well as green turtles, monk seals and spinner dolphins.

Scientists estimate the area contains about 7000 animal and bird species found nowhere else in the world.

The new sanctuary, which may eventually be given a native Hawaiian name, will be slightly larger than Australia's Great Barrier Reef - now the largest marine protected area in the world - and cover an area bigger than all the US' existing marine sanctuaries and land-bound national parks combined.

Commercial activity will be banned, and the eight fishing boats now permitted to enter the area will have their licences phased out over the next five years.

Environmentalists, more used to heaping scorn on a Bush administration that has consistently eroded protections for national parks and forests on dry land, were unambiguous in their praise and said they hoped to see the White House do more of the same.

"We're ecstatic. This is a major step forward for the United States, and we're hopeful this signals a new approach to marine conservation," said Lisa Speer, an oceans specialist with the environmental lobby group, the National Resources Defence Council.

"This is a ground-breaking act."

She said she now hoped the US would take the lead in protecting other coral habitats on the high seas.

This week, the United Nations is conducting talks on ways to mitigate the threat to deep-ocean coral reefs from bottom-trawl fishing, and Speer said she hoped the White House's initiative would give a decisive push to the conservationist cause.

Politically, there were some grounds to be sceptical about the White House initiative. The embattled Bush administration is badly in need of some positive media coverage in the run-up to November's mid-term elections, and this could be seen as a bid for popularity.

Unlike many of the national parks and forests in the continental US, the marine area in the Pacific is not eyed jealously by energy or mining interests with close ties to the White House. The protected area has almost no human population, and even the eight families with fishing permits do not live there.

Most environmentalists, however, preferred to take the president at face value than question his motives.

Pending an official announcement, Bush was expected to invoke the 1906 Antiquities Act, which grants presidents the right to create protection areas single-handedly. The only previous time he has invoked the act was to protect a burial ground in Manhattan where 20,000 slaves and free blacks were laid to rest in the 18th century.

The Bush administration has, in fact, shown less interest in environmental conservation than any presidency in memory.

Not only had the White House not established any new conservation areas before the latest announcement, it had repeatedly eroded protections for existing ones and lobbied to open them up to commercial exploitation.

The biggest battle has been over the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska, which the administration has tried - and so far failed - to open up to oil and gas drilling. But there have been many others.

The Government's record in marine conservation has been slightly better, although nothing prepared experts in the field for the latest announcement.

"We just haven't seen that much from this administration," Speer said. "There have been efforts to protect certain areas from particular types of fishing. But this dwarfs them all."

- INDEPENDENT