June 27, 2016 — President Obama is considering a request to more than quadruple the size of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands to 580,000 square miles – an area as large as the states of Texas, California and Montana.
If Obama takes this step, the federal government essentially would assert control over hundreds of thousands of miles of ocean around Hawaii with no public discussion.
According to the Antiquities Act of 1906, the trigger to designate an area as a national monument is simply the president’s signature. No discussion required — not by Congress, not by state government and not by citizens who rely on the targeted geo-cultural area.
The Big Picture
The push to expand the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument is part of a larger global strategy to bring millions of square miles of the world’s oceans under a common umbrella of environmental protective governance that would designate vast expanses as marine sanctuaries, monuments or conservation areas.
The intent of such a sweeping global objective seems noble, given global warming and the degradation of the ocean environment. No doubt we need to manage our ocean resources better. But the zealousness with which a loose global coalition of ultra-conservative scientists and marine environmentalists are pushing to create new marine conservation areas is imposing draconian restrictions on human access to vast expanses of the ocean.
These restrictions work by installing a gatekeeper permit application process subject to a blanket of government regulations, some of which don’t make sense.
For instance, in Hawaii’s Papahanaumokuakea National Marine Monument, Native Hawaiians can practice subsistence fishing. So Hawaiians, with a conditional permit, can access the area and fish – but they have to eat the fish before leaving the zone to go home.
To this writer, clearly the analysis of the ultra-conservative wing of marine conservation scientists and environmentalists is: The less human access, the better.
The Long Shadow of Uncle Sam
The federal government already controls access to 850 square miles of Hawaii’s lands and is the second largest land owner in Hawaii. The inventory of lands under federal control, either by lease or title, includes some of the most important historic, cultural and strategically positioned lands, inland waterways and coastal waters in the state.
The list includes Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field, Bellows Air Force Station, Kaneohe Marine base, Pohakuloa Training Area, upper reaches of Waimea Valley, Pililaau Army Recreation Center, Lualualei Naval ammunition depot, Fort Shafter, Tripler Army Medical Center, Camp H.M. Smith, Wheeler Army Airfield, Makua Valley, Volcanoes National Park, Haleakala National Park and a number of other less high-profile locations.
To this writer, as onerous as the degree of federal control over Hawaii lands might be, it pales compared to the tightening of the federal grip on hundreds of thousands of square miles of Hawaii’s Northwestern seas being put on the table by the request to expand the current boundaries of Papahanaumokuakea.