Straits Times 9 Aug 08;
WASHINGTON: Clean-up efforts have slowed and garbage continues to pile up in a remote chain of Pacific islands that United States President George W. Bush two years ago made the biggest and most environmentally protected area of ocean in the world.
He declared the 362,600 sq km chain of islands in north-western Hawaii the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in June 2006.
His proclamation featured some of the strictest measures ever placed on a marine environment, including a prohibition on any material that might injure its sensitive coral reefs and 7,000 rare species, a fourth of them found nowhere else in the world.
The proclamation hasn't worked.
Ocean currents still bring an estimated 57 tonnes of garbage and discarded fishing gear to the 10 islands and waters surrounding them each year.
The Bush administration slashed the clean-up budget by 80 per cent from the US$2.1 million (S$2.9 million) spent in 2005 and requested only US$400,000 annually up to this year.
Mr Bush now wants an extra US$100,000 for removing the lighters, plastic bottles, refrigerators and fishing nets that litter the area's beaches and get snagged on its reefs. But the total amount he would spend next year is still only 25 per cent of what was spent four years ago.
'Unfortunately, in recent years, the US has not made picking up trash in our most special places in the ocean a priority,' said Dr Elliott Norse, president of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Washington state.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
