Saving the Islands

Great environmental news from an unlikely source

ENVIRONMENTAL protection is not an area in which the Bush administration has cloaked itself in glory. But yesterday the president took a major step in ecosystem protection, designating as a national monument 140,000 square miles of some of the nation's most precious but vulnerable waters and islands.

The territory -- about the size of Montana -- is a remote, unpopulated string of islands extending 1,400 miles northwest from Hawaii's populated regions. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, despite human impact, remain one of the most pristine natural regions left in the country. The waters there contain America's largest coral reef system. The islands are the nesting grounds of millions of seabirds, sea turtles and the endangered Hawaiian monk seal. The chain is home to at least 7,000 species, a quarter of which live nowhere else in the world -- along with relatively healthy stocks of large predatory fish whose populations elsewhere have been decimated by commercial fishing. The designation turns the waters around the island chain into the largest protected marine area in the world and sets an important marker for aggressive conservation of sensitive ocean regions under threat from human activity.

What's impressive is not just the designation itself but the fine print of President Bush's order. Despite tenacious pressure from regional fisheries managers, Mr. Bush decided not to permit any commercial fishing in the area. The small amount that goes on now will be phased out; a coalition of private donors will buy out the fishing permits of the eight fishermen who currently work those waters. What's more, in a happy surprise, Mr. Bush used his power under the National Antiquities Act to designate national monuments, not the more cumbersome federal marine sanctuaries law. As a result the plan goes into effect immediately, bypassing months of additional bureaucratic wrangling.

This administration and future ones should follow up with similar actions to protect other ecologically sensitive marine systems. America began protecting its land-based national parks and monuments a century ago, but the country has lagged in shielding its underwater treasures. Mr. Bush's action offers an exciting example of assertive action to put essential areas beyond further human destruction.