December 30, 2019 — A federal appeals court has ruled that President Barack Obama acted within his authority when he created the country’s first Atlantic marine monument off the coast of New England in 2016.
“The fishermen have had the ocean all to themselves for centuries.” says Peter Shelley, senior council for the Conservation Law Foundation in Boston.
Shelley says the lawsuit challenging the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, and the presidential authority that created it, failed to acknowledge other “values” such as conservation and preservation as powers granted in the Antiquities Act of 1906.
Shelley says the appeals decision is good news for a very delicate region of the Atlantic Ocean.
“But it’s also good news for other areas of great scientific interest that need to be protected from the destructive effects of fishing and oil and gas drilling and other sorts of development activities,” he says.