President Biden and his administration have gone back on their word to Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata, that Biden would not expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument (PRIMNM)—prime fishing grounds for American Samoa’s tuna industry. KHJ News Washington DC correspondent Matt Kaye reports…
Congresswoman Amata wrote President Biden, last June, urging the president not to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine monument, that increasing it by over half would “destroy our fishing economy.”
Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams, in a response to Amata’s letter, said that the agency was “not considering additional or potential expansion of the PRIMNM.”
But at a White House conservation summit this week, President Biden directed his commerce secretary to start, within the next 30-days, a public process for a 55-percent expansion of PRIMNM.
The White House says, “All areas of US jurisdiction around the islands, atolls and reefs of the Pacific Remote Islands will be protected,” and the monument and islands will be renamed after input from indigenous leaders.
Congresswoman Amata was distressed by the news—
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President Obama first enlarged PRIMNM, created by President George W. Bush. President Biden would make PRIMNM more than half as large, covering 777-thousand square miles.
Amata warns such an expansion could severely damage American Samoa’s fishing industry…
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And continued expansion puts American Samoa’s fleet at a further disadvantage against Chinese boats, often illegally fishing in PRIMNM.
Amata pointed out last year, American Samoa’s fleet has to pay up to 2 (M) million dollars per vessel a year, to fish in other island nations’ waters.
The Congresswoman is not waiting around to see more erosion of the fishing-dependent local economy…
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Amata said, “Just as soon as we heard about, we went to work right away. I’m getting in touch, I am in touch with the US Secretary of Commerce. Also, I’m a member of the Congressional Western Caucus, which is a very powerful organization.”
Amata just wrote to the Secretaries of Commerce and Interior, reminding them of Fish and Wildlife’s written assurance, last September, that a further PRIMNM expansion was not on the table.
The Congressman even scolded the administration for keeping the territories in the dark at last month’s IGIA forum, that it was considering, as Amata put it, “such a drastic change in our way of life.”
“What changed?” She wrote. “Why were we not given the courtesy of a discussion or even advance notice of this policy?”
Amata likened the raid on Pacific fishing grounds to a “midnight monument spree,” and asked why destroy American Samoa’s economy at a time of “strategic competition with China.”
Was this a bid by President Biden to placate Greenpeace and other environmental groups?
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But the Congresswoman writes in her letter, “this action seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to placate environmental activists.” She asks the administration to “reconsider this brash policy action.”
Amata concludes she’s spent her life in the region, grown up in these waters and cannot sit idly by, while the country that American Samoans love, mortgages their future for “absolutely nothing in return.”
