A marine scientist at Hawaii University is warning pristine marine conservation areas are under threat from the Trump administration's review of federal protection for national monument parks.
Dr Alan Friedlander says the Bush administration instituted marine sanctuaries in 2009 and they were extended by Barack Obama to protect a group of islands, atolls and reefs that lie south and west of Hawaii.
He told Jenny Meyer that opening up these areas to fishing would be extremely short sighted.
Photo: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
Transcript
ALAN FRIEDLANDER: It seems more it's the US Remote Islands that are under the preview of the Monument Programme that Bush instituted and Obama extended. It seems like the north western Hawaiian Islands, Papahanaumokuakea, that monument, will be spared. It doesn't look like that one is going to be contracted by the Trump administration for various reasons. There's a strong Native Hawaiian push to keep that in place. Our Senators are very much in favour of keeping that in place so there's a large constituency of people who don't want to see that go. The US Pacific Remote Islands, these are places scattered throughout the Pacific they have less of a constituency but almost in some respects are more important because they represent some of the last in tact marine ecosystems in the Pacific Ocean. And so yes those are definitely in danger. They are on the chopping block right now.
JENNY MEYER: So that must be really quite a concern for the diversity of marine life and for study purposes as well and research?
AF: It's very short sighted. There is one research station on Palmyra Atoll at the Nature Conservancy and the US Fish and Wildlife site and it's really the only marine station that exists anywhere in the world on the pristine coral reef. There's nobody at Palmyra to speak of except the researchers. So it's a unique place. And by allowing fishing to take place there it would dramatically alter the ecosystem. And there's only a few fishing boats that are fishing down there, it's a very small proportion of the long line catch that gets taken from there on an annual basis. It's a US based fishery. Most of the people working on the boats are non US citizens, they got an exemption for that. You know you could argue it’s a US based fishery but its not directly, it's a Hawaii based fishery for the most part. But a very few number of people are benefitting from this. And this is just, these are the last remnants of these ecosystems found on earth. And even though the fishing is going to take place slightly off shore, these ecosystems are so interconnected between the seabirds that forage off shore, the sharks that come in to shore and feed, it's all such a tightly connected ecosystem, that any fishing taking place out there will have adverse impacts on the ecosystem.
JM: Where is it at right now? The decision on whether those sanctuaries are going to be safe or not?
I think early December Trump will make a decision about the land based monuments, Bears Ears specifically in Utah, that's more than likely to either be contracted or rescinded in total. There hasn't been a decision yet on the marine monuments and it's still very unclear where they are at on that. The earliest would be December but it may come in phases, they may do the land based stuff first and they may do the marine stuff later. They have been very hush about it.
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