Come Again? What's That Now?

When the headline "Bush Plans Vast Protected Sea Area in Hawaii" appeared in my rss feeds this morning I literally had to read it twice to make sure I didn't miss a "doesn't" or "opposes" in there somewhere. Then I had to wonder who this "Bush" is - is it someone whose job it is to plan vast protected areas, who just happens to have the same last name as a certain other "Bush" who has been, let's just say, not a great (or the greatest) environmental president?

No, it turns out that the Bush referred to is actually none other than our very own G.W. (Has anyone else noticed that this also stands for "Global Warming"? Heh.) Apparently Jean-Michel Cousteau made a documentary about the Hawaiian area that, according to the NY Times, had a "powerful effect" on GW and Laura.

The 140,000 square miles, currently known as the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve, was headed for national marine sanctuary status under the National Marine Sanctuaries Act. But this wasn't good enough for that crazy environmentalist George Bush who was chomping at the bit to get some protectin' done. So he used his National Antiquities Act powers to grant the reserve some of the strongest protection available. It's been reported that he's even going to phase out sport and commercial fishing. No, seriously.

The NY Times suggested that the move could be to help Republican governor of Hawaii Linda Lingle's re-election attempt. I guess to show conservative voters that GW is backing her moves to protect her state's waters from commercial activities. I don't care why he did it - the area now has real protection and that is all that really matters! From the reserve website:

The NWHI coral reefs are the foundation of an ecosystem that hosts more than 7,000 species, including marine mammals, fishes, sea turtles, birds, and invertebrates. Many are rare, threatened, or endangered. At least one quarter are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth. Many more remain unidentified or even unknown to science. Unexplored deep-sea habitats, expensive and challenging to survey, may provide new species records to science for decades. Even the shallow coral reef habitats hold new species to science. This is especially true for invertebrates and algae.

Besides supporting these species, the coral reefs and bits of land of the NWHI provide an amazing geological record of the volcanic powers that created the area and the erosion and subsidence that sculpted it.

Update: It's official!

Permits will be required for activities related to research, education, conservation and management, native Hawaiian practices and non-extractive special ocean uses. The commercial and recreational harvest of precious coral, crustaceans and coral reef species will be prohibited in monument waters and commercial fishing in monument waters will be phased out over a five-year period. Oil, gas and mineral exploration and extraction will not be allowed anywhere in the monument.