[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 64 (Monday, May 16, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E988-E989]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   INTRODUCTION OF THE NORTHWESTERN HAWAIIAN ISLANDS NATIONAL MARINE 
                           REFUGE ACT OF 2005

                                 ______
                                 

                              HON. ED CASE

                               of hawaii

                    in the house of representatives

                          Monday, May 16, 2005

  Mr. CASE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a truly novel and 
revolutionary proposal to create the largest marine protected area in 
our world. I offer for this Congress' consideration and prompt action 
the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Marine Refuge Act of 2005, 
which would provide the maximum level of permanent protection for a 
magnificent marine system and international treasure, larger even than 
Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Protected Area. In so doing, my 
proposal would do for our country's, and world's, oceans what another 
then-novel and revolutionary action--our 1872 set-aside of what later 
became the foundation of our National Park System, Yellowstone National 
Park--did for permanent protection of our treasured and endangered 
terrestrial ecosystems.
  This ``Ocean Yellowstone'' lives and breathes in the waters of our 
country surrounding the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), an 
equally magnificent chain of islands starting at Nihoa Island lying 
just northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands and stretching fully 1,200 
miles northwest across the Pacific to Kure Atoll. In these waters and 
among their reefs, banks, and seamounts, and existing as an integrated 
ecosystem with their terrestrial neighbors, lie some 70 percent of our 
nation's coral reefs.
  This remote and incredibly diverse ecosystem is also home to some 
7,000 species, at least one-quarter of which (some scientists say as 
much as half) are endemic to this area and found nowhere else on earth. 
It also serves as a pu`uhonua (place of refuge) to many species of 
coral, fish, birds, and marine mammals, including the highly endangered 
Hawaiian monk seal, threatened green sea turtle, and the endangered 
leatherback, loggerhead, and hawksbill sea turtles. An estimated 14 
million seabirds thrive in these islands and their waters, including 99 
percent of the world's Laysan albatrosses and 98 percent of the black-
footed albatross population. This also may be the last predator-
dominated marine ecosystem left on the planet--some 55 percent of the 
total fish biomass is made up of predator species, the natural way of 
our oceans.
  Yet this incredible remnant of a purer world will not survive absent 
affirmative protective action, for by its isolation it is a fragile 
world, one where the most seemingly insignificant and benign human 
interaction can have the most magnified effect. As a prime example, the 
islands and waters of the NWHI have developed a unique ecosystem whose 
isolation at one time provided protection ttom invasive species. Yet 
today some invasives have become established due not only to marine 
debris from the Northern Pacific but from fishing, transiting, and 
other vessels. And commercial fishing and other human interaction is 
itself inherently invasive, as is evident in the introduction of rats 
(now eliminated) and the consequences of overfishing, leading the near-
extinction of the black-lipped pearl oyster and other species and, more 
recently, the crash of the lobster fishery. Just last February, as 
another example, our Marine Mammal Commission reported that the world's 
dwindling Hawaiian monk seal population of an estimated 1,400, based in 
the NWHI, has ``no tolerance for additional mortality associated with 
fisheries or other human activities.''

  Jurisdiction of the NWHI and waters has been shared by our federal 
and Hawai`i state governments. As an overall template, the islands 
themselves (with the exception of Midway Island, an unassociated 
federal possession) are part of the State of Hawai`i (and my Second 
Congressional District) along with the waters around those islands out 
to the three-mile limit. Beyond three miles and out to the fifty-mile 
boundary is the current Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef 
Ecosystem Reserve (Reserve), established by President Clinton and under 
the jurisdiction of the National Ocean Service (NOS) within the 
Department of Commerce's National Oceanographic and Atmospheric 
Administration. The waters beyond the Reserve out to the extent of our 
country's 200-mile exclusive economic zone are also administered by the 
Department of Commerce in non-reserve status. Midway and its waters out 
twelve miles constitute the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, 
established in 1988 and administered by the Department of the 
Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). With the exception of 
Midway, the islands of the NWHI and certain offshore waters, including 
some Hawai`i waters and some Reserve waters (except for waters off Kure 
Atoll), also constitute the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge, 
originally established as a bird reservation by President Theodore 
Roosevelt in 1909 and now under joint FWS-Hawai`i management.
  On the face of it, if one's end-goal is, as is mine, to provide the 
highest level of permanent protection to the total ecosystem of the 
NWHI and waters, this structure can work and is, in most cases, 
working. The FWS is managing its jurisdiction within the Midway Atoll 
and the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuges toward the goal of 
full protection and preservation under longstanding and well-
established federal mandates and mechanisms.
  And just last Friday, May 13th, the State of Hawai`i's Board of Land 
and Natural Resources, responsible for the administration of all state 
lands and waters, voted to establish throughout Hawai`i's NWHI waters 
the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine Refuge, together with rules 
prohibiting commercial or recreational fishing within refuge waters. 
The Board's action followed a public input process which yielded some 
110,000 comments supporting the most stringent protections. As Peter 
Young, Chair of the Board, said at the time: ``We are dealing with a 
special place, and it's different.'' For this action, Chair Young and 
the Board deserve our lasting gratitude.
  To complete now this penumbra of protection and truly discharge our 
responsibility of stewardship, we must turn our attention primarily to 
the Reserve. Following its establishment, subsequent legislation 
mandated that the Reserve be converted to a National Marine Sanctuary. 
Public scoping meetings began in 2002, and the National Marine 
Sanctuary Program published ``Advice and Recommendations on Development 
of Draft Fishing Regulations'' in September 2004.
  Essentially, in an effort to forge compromise between the interests 
of fishermen who operate in the Reserve, the desire of the Western 
Pacific Fishery Management Council (WESPAC) to retain control over the 
Reserve, the opinion of scientists and conservationists that the area 
remains vulnerable, and the overwhelming sentiment of the people of 
Hawai`i for protection, the Program proposed a management plan that 
would allow current fishing to continue and keep WESPAC involved in 
Reserve fishery management. WESPAC, however, subsequently proposed 
alternative Reserve regulations that would expand current fishing, open 
a fishery for precious corals, and provide only a temporary closing of 
the lobster fishery. Final Program Reserve regulations are pending.
  This is an opportune, in fact optimum, time, before the Program acts 
any further, for us all to first stop, look, and listen, and second 
move to a whole different beat. And in doing so we must first ask this 
basic question: shouldn't there be some special places in our marine 
world which are in fact true reserves--truly off-limits, where our 
marine species can live and thrive in their natural state, without the 
invasive, extractive hand of humankind? I know in my heart that the 
answer is yes, and that the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and their 
waters are where we should just do it.
  The challenge, however, is that we simply do not have an existing 
federal marine statutory and regulatory regime that encompasses this 
goal. We do have a National Marine Sanctuary Program run by good people 
with good intentions, administering a number of national marine 
sanctuaries. But the basic statutory and regulatory authority under 
which the Program operates and the sanctuaries are administered 
requires a balancing of sometimes-competing uses, including extractive 
uses, which is why some form of extractive use, fostered by fisheries 
management councils such as WESPAC, is allowed in all of our nation's 
national marine sanctuaries. There is simply not the regime in place to 
create what truly would be a sanctuary in the literal sense of the 
word, to forge a world such as my State of Hawai`i just proudly did in 
creation in its waters of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine 
Refuge.
  My Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Marine Refuge Act of 2005 
would do just that: establish the public policy of this country that 
there should exist in the waters of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands 
one place that is

[[Page E989]]

truly a refuge for our marine world. This refuge would extend seaward 
from the boundary of the federal national wildlife refuges-with 
concurrent jurisdiction over those portions also within Hawaii's 
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine Refuge--out fifty miles to the 
boundaries of the current federal Reserve, except that the boundary 
would be further out past Kure Atoll to encompass newly-identified 
precious coral beds and monk seal foraging areas. The total area of 
this precious refuge would be approximately 137,000 square miles, 
eclipsing Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Protected Area of 
135,000 square miles.

  Under my bill, the Refuge would continue to be managed by NOS through 
a new Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and Refuges. This is 
consistent with NOAA's longstanding desire to elevate the current 
National Marine Sanctuary Program to full office level, and it provides 
NOS with a management option for marine resources in need of a higher 
level of protection than that currently provided under the Program. And 
that office, in managing the Refuge (in consultation with an advisory 
council including representatives from the State of Hawai`i and the 
Native Hawaiian, scientific, and marine conservation communities), 
would be statutorily charged with implementing Congress's purpose 
``that the preservation of biodiversity and the protection and 
conservation of the natural resources and cultural heritage of [the 
Refuge] shall be the exclusive basis for all associated decisions by 
Federal agencies.''
  Passage through and activities in the Refuge would be by permit only. 
Permitted activities would include scientific research and other uses 
consistent with the purpose of the Refuge. These uses would not include 
commercial fishing or other extractive practices except in very narrow 
circumstances. As there are some existing commercial fishing 
permitholders, my bill provides a mechanism to buy out these permits at 
fair value.
  It is vital to note that this bill is grounded solidly in the 
cultural heritage and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Hawai`i, 
our Native Hawaiians. Their respect for the `aina--our natural world in 
all its manifestations--in their practice of environmental protection 
and sustainability, was not just a profoundly spiritual belief but a 
basic survival strategy. So it is no surprise that one of the principal 
groups working toward just such a Refuge is Kahea: the Hawaiian 
Environmental Alliance, dedicated to bringing to our modern world this 
pu`uhonua for the rare and precious species of the NWHI. And in that 
same spirit my bill provides, as does Hawai`i's newly-proposed 
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine Refuge, for continued traditional 
use of the Refuge by Native Hawaiians for religious, cultural, and 
sustenance purposes.
  Here is a quick overview of my proposed Northwestern Hawaiian Islands 
National Marine Refuge Act of 2005:
  Section 1: Entitles the act.
  Section 2: Outlines Congress's findings, including the finding that 
the ``waters of the NWHI must be set aside as a fully protected 
national marine refuge to preserve in perpetuity their unique and 
fragile ecosystems, habitats, and communities of flora and fauna, as 
well as areas of traditional Hawaiian cultural significance. ``
  Section 3: Sets forth the purposes and policies of the Act, including 
the provision that ``all human activities in the [Refuge] shall be 
limited to those entirely consistent with preservation and protections 
in the true nature of a full protected refuge, and that all commercial 
use of such refuge shall be prohibited.''
  Section 4: Provides Act definitions, including Refuge boundaries and 
cooperative management between federal and Hawai`i agencies.
  Section 5: Designates the Refuge.
  Section 6: Provides for management of the Refuge by NOS through the 
new Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and Refuges in cooperation 
with the State of Hawai`i through memoranda of agreement and in 
consultation with an advisory council.
  Section 7: Provides for vessel presence in the Refuge by permit only; 
outlines prohibited activities; provides compensation for current 
permitholders.
  Section 8: Provides for enforcement and penalties.
  Section 9: Provides for liability and other legal consequences.
  Section 10: Repeals prior inconsistent laws.
  Section 11: Requires issuance of implementing regulations within six 
months of enactment.
  Mr. Speaker, I confess to speaking on this floor today with a mix of 
excitement and awe. Excitement at continuing a journey to a next, 
higher level that is not only novel and revolutionary, but so right. 
And awe at the responsibility and opportunity we all have to truly 
preserve and protect one of the most incredible places on this world. I 
hope and believe that we can all come together to harness the 
collective aloha of so many for this place, and promptly pass the 
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Marine Refuge Act of 2005.
  Mahalo, and aloha!

                          ____________________