February 12, 2016 — The following is an excerpt from a story by Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post White House bureau chief, who addresses new national monuments to be declared this week, and mentions possibilities for additional designations before the end of the Obama Administration including New England corals, canyons, and seamounts, and an expansion of Papahanaumokuakea in the Pacific.
“We have big, big ambitions this year, so let’s see what happens,” said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, adding that the administration is focused on “local requests for action. It’s really been driven by activities on the ground.
The big question: What next?
Other possible future designations include Bears Ears, a sacred site for several Native American tribes in southeastern Utah; Stonewall, the site of a 1969 inn riot by members of New York City’s gay community; the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts; the historic headquarters of the National Woman’s Party, Sewall-Belmont House in Washington, D.C.; and Nevada’s Gold Butte, an area where rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters have defied federal authorities.
It is less clear what Obama will do in federal waters, where nearly all of the strict protections are in the central Pacific. There are a group of Hawaiians lobbying the president to expand Papahanaumokuakea – a monument George W. Bush created a decade ago, whose islands and atolls are home to 1,750 marine species found nowhere else on Earth – to the full extent under the law. That would make it 520,000 square miles, or nine times its current size.
“Some people here are working here to provide the president with a legacy opportunity,” said William Aila Jr., looking down from a rocky outcropping in Oahu as two endangered Hawaiian monk seals nestled below. “It would be the largest marine protected area for a long, long time. It would be almost impossible to top it.”