Bush To Create Huge Protected Marine Sanctuary
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON – President Bush plans today to designate a marine sanctuary spanning nearly 1,400 miles of the Pacific Ocean northwest of Hawaii to Midway Atoll, creating the largest protected marine reserve in the world, according to sources familiar with the plan.
Establishing the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as the nation’s 14th marine sanctuary, which Mr. Bush is slated to announce this afternoon, could prove to be the administration’s most enduring environmental legacy. The roughly 100-mile-wide area encompasses a string of uninhabited islands that support more than 7,000 marine species, at least a fourth of which are found nowhere else.
The islands include almost 70% of the nation’s tropical, shallow water coral reefs, and a rookery for 14 million seabirds.
