WASHINGTON (THE WASHINGTON POST) —U. S President Donald Trump has issued a proclamation saying he is easing federal restrictions on commercial fishing in a vast protected area of the central Pacific known as the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument.
Trump said he will allow U.S-flagged vessels to fish within 50 to 200 nautical miles of the landward boundaries of the monument, which covers some 490,000 square miles of open ocean, coral reef and island habitats. Located south and west of Hawaii, the area is home to seven national wildlife refuges. It includes some of the Earth’s last pristine maritime environments, serving as a sanctuary for species such as endangered sea turtles, sharks and migratory birds, according to marine wildlife experts.
In a separate executive order Thursday, Trump also said he would reduce regulations on commercial fishing more broadly and asked his secretary of commerce to “identify the most heavily overregulated fisheries” and take action to “reduce the regulatory burden on them.”
Trump’s directives, which are likely to attract legal challenges, seek to weaken protections initially set up by his predecessors. President George W. Bush in 2009 established the monument and restricted oil exploration and commercial fishing within it. In 2014, his successor Barack Obama, expanded the protected area to more than 490,000 square miles.
Trump, in the proclamation, said existing environmental laws provide sufficient protection for marine wildlife in the area and that many of the fish species in the monument are migratory.
“I find that appropriately managed commercial fishing would not put objects of scientific and historic interest [within the monument] at risk,” he said.
The notion that existing laws provide sufficient protection “makes no sense,” said David Henkin, an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit.
Many of the acts cited in Trump’s proclamation — such as the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act — are “wonderful and important” but irrelevant to regulating overfishing, he said.
Alan Friedlander, formerly chief scientist for National Geographic’s Pristine Seas project, said that while some species living in the monument are migratory, the “vast majority of the species are resident.”
Protecting such wildlife is crucial for “increasing the density of marine life inside the monument, boosting genetic diversity, and increasing local reproductive output, which will in turn benefit adjacent fisheries,” he wrote in an email.
Friedlander pointed to the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, a different marine reserve in northwestern Hawaii, which is closed to commercial fishing. The nearby Hawaii longline fishery “has never been more profitable,” he said, citing a study that suggested a connection between increased protected areas and an increase in tuna catches.
Bob Vanasse, executive director of the commercial fishing trade group Saving Seafood, said in an email that the shift in policy “does not create a commercial fishing free-for-all in the monuments.”
“Commercial fishing in the monuments will be allowed only under fishery management plans that manage the fisheries sustainably under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act,” Vanasse said, referring to the law that governs fishing in federal waters.
Trump’s proposals are likely to be challenged in court, Henkin said.
The Antiquities Act — which Trump says gives him the legal authority to weaken Bush and Obama’s environmental policies — gives Trump the power only to expand the protections, he said.
“Congress did not give the president the ability to un-designate areas once they’ve been protected by a predecessor,” Henkin said, adding that if “he wants to change that, he needs to get Congress to change that.”….PACNEWS