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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Saturday, February 17, 2007

First lady coming to see marine preserve

Associated Press

Laura Bush

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First lady Laura Bush will be in the Islands to bring attention to the new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument.

Bush is making a trip Feb. 28 through March 2 to visit California, Honolulu and Midway Atoll.

In Southern California, she will participate in a roundtable discussion on heart health for the Heart Truth's Red Dress Campaign at the Ronald Reagan Library and will take part in a National Park Service junior ranger event.

She will be traveling with James Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, to tour Honolulu and Midway Atoll, and visit the sprawling marine monument created in June by President Bush.

The California-sized monument area incorporates the biologically rich waters surrounding the 1,400-mile-long string of remote northwestern islands.

It is the largest marine protected area in the world and home to 7,000 species — a quarter of which exist nowhere else on the planet.