Updated at 9:34 a.m., Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Interior secretary to join first lady for Hawai'i visit
News Release
|
Council on Environmental Quality Chairman James Connaughton will also take part in the trip.
They will visit Midway Atoll on Thursday. On Friday, they will attend a naming ceremony for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument. President Bush created the National Monument in June.
The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, encompassing 140,000 square miles of U.S. waters, is the largest single conservation area in our nation's history and the largest protected marine area in the world, eclipsing Australia's Great Barrier Reef.
This area contains 2.7 million acres of coral reef, 14 million nesting seabirds, and 250 fish species; in total it includes about 7000 species, a quarter of which exist no where else on Earth.
The area includes the Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge and Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, both managed by Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The National Monument is jointly managed by three co-trustees: the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the State of Hawai'i.
