Islands Apart

New York Times ^ | June 16, 2006 | NYT Editorial Board

[Oshkalaboomboom]

An unfamiliar but highly appealing side of President Bush showed itself at the White House yesterday. It was Mr. Bush the compassionate conservationist, friend of green sea turtles, seabirds and Hawaiian monk seals, savior of coral reefs and spiny lobsters, creator of the largest ocean sanctuary on the planet.

Mr. Bush has made the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument, putting them under some of the strictest environmental protections the law provides. It was an act of wilderness preservation that, acre for acre, instantly put him into the same league as the conservation-minded presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

If the state of Hawaii is a garland of flowers, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are a spray of petals, an arc of tiny reefs and atolls extending 1,200 miles beyond the last bits of Hawaii any tourists see. They are strewn across an area bigger than 100 Yosemites. They are among the remotest islands in the world, and in many ways pristine. Some in Hawaii call them the "kupuna islands," using the Hawaiian word for elders, since they teach people what the Pacific was like before plundering and pollution. Sharks, not fishing boats, are still at the top of the food chain. Ancient colonies of living coral reach heights of 80 feet. A quarter of the 7,000 marine species there exist nowhere else.

These islands are distant, but not undisturbed. The monk seals are endangered. Black-lipped pearl oysters were wiped out 75 years ago. The lobster fishery crashed in the 1990's. The islands' bottom-dwelling fish, snappers known on Hawaiian menus as opakapaka and onaga, are in serious decline.

Mr. Bush created the sanctuary by fiat, but his decision reflects a long-held consensus that the islands need protecting.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

And GWB didn't even do this to pay off a big campaign contributor like the Riady family, a refreshing change from the last President

[LeoWindhorse]

pretty good , for those condescending pukes at the 'Old Gray Lady' .
(or is it the old gray horse's put-tuddie? )

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

How much of these islands were privately owned?

[RunningWolf]

Without knowing all the details I think this is good.

Seals in Hawaii? I never would have guessed. But then dive 20' and the water gets plenty cold out there off the coast of Maui.

W.

[GreenLanternCorps]

These islands are north of Kauai and not part of the State of Hawaii. They are federal lands, not privately held. Essentially they are an uninhabited US Territory.