Trump allows commercial fishing in marine conservation area
Source: Associated Press
Patrick Whittle and Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press
Updated 3:22 pm CDT, Friday, June 5, 2020
BANGOR, Maine (AP) — President Donald Trump rolled back protections Friday at a marine conservation area off the New England coast, signing an order to allow commercial fishing in a stretch of water environmentalists say is critical for endangered right whales and other fragile marine life.
“We are reopening the Northeast Canyons to commercial fishing,” Trump told a roundtable meeting with fishing industry representatives and Maine officials. “We’re opening it today.”
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the New England coast, created by former President Barack Obama, was the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean, and one of just five marine monuments nationwide.
The conservation area comprises 5,000 square miles (8,000 square kilometers) east of Cape Cod, which contains vulnerable species of marine, such as fragile deep sea corals and endangered right whales, which number only about 400. The whales are susceptible to ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear.
Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/article/Trump-moves-to-allow-commercial-fishing-in-15320176.php
Big Oil Could Benefit Most from Review of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Monument
By Michael Conathan and Avery Siciliano July 25, 2017, 9:01 am
AP/Robert F. Bukaty
An Atlantic puffin comes in for a landing on Eastern Egg Rock, a small island off the coast of Maine, August 2014.
In September 2016, former President Barack Obama established the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which became the first such protected area in federal waters of the continental United States.1 Although not nearly as large in scope as the other marine national monuments, which are all in the remote Pacific Ocean, the newly designated area protects a marine biodiversity hotspot that encompasses a habitat teeming with sea life, including endangered whales, seabirds, and at least 73 species of rare deep-sea corals.2
Yet this bold action is now under threat. In April, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders—the first calls for a “review” of 27 large-scale monuments on land and in the ocean, and the second takes direct aim at marine monuments and National Marine Sanctuaries.3 The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is a target of both orders. Moreover, Trump’s effort to weaken or undo these critical protections, which came after more than a year of public input solicited by the U.S. Department of Commerce and other federal agencies, now threatens some of our most unique and fragile marine resources in a New England region that relies on ocean and coastal resources to support 230,000 ocean-related jobs.4
While commercial fishing interests have spouted inflated numbers about what the economic impact of the monument designation would be, they have yet to provide any data to back up their assertions. In fact, the publicly available data show that very little fishing has ever occurred in these areas at all. Undoing the monument would cause irreparable harm to these habitats without providing meaningful short-term economic benefits for the commercial fishing industry.
President Trump’s second order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” provides some additional clues suggesting that his motivation for issuing these directives is to aid Big Oil. After asserting that “it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage energy exploration and production, including on the Outer Continental Shelf,” the order initiates a review of all monuments and National Marine Sanctuaries designated or expanded in the past decade to determine the “opportunity cost” associated with protecting these areas.5 Considering ongoing Canadian oil development just across the international boundary, the fossil fuel industry stands to profit from a rollback of these critical protections in U.S. waters.6
More:
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2017/07/25/436441/big-oil-benefit-review-northeast-canyons-seamounts-monument/
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of the environment and because of this mantra of greed, the planet is getting more viruses, that is a scientific fact................and the species called humans wants to bring this model to other planets.................we really are a stupid species...............
Of all our natural resources. Trump seems bent on destroying this planet.: 