NEW VIDEO: To Conserve the Ocean, Start With the People Who Live There

The Center for American Progress published a new video today calling attention to one of the America the Beautiful For All Coalition’s policy recommendations: Ensure marine protected area management and implementation.

Protected areas that lack staffing, funding, and management plans have been shown to do a poor job of protecting nature. The Biden Administration must adequately fund and implement national marine sanctuaries and marine monuments so that they can accomplish the goals laid out in their respective decrees, legislation, and management plans. Where management plans are incomplete, they must be completed.

We call attention the need for better management of protected areas through the stories of the US Pacific Territories and Hawaii – home to 96% of the marine protected area coverage in the United States.  The video lays out the history of the how and the why the U.S. colonized their first islands in the Western-Central Pacific and tells how the Pacific territories aren't treated with the same federal support as the states, in terms of funding, staffing, and other resources. It finishes with 3 steps the federal government should take to make the designation and implementation of MPAs in the territories more just and equitable for peoples living there. It stars former Representative Tina Sablan from the Mariana Islands, former Representative “Uncle Sol” Kaho’ohalahala from Hawaii, and um, me, Angelo Villagomez.  It includes some footage from our recent America the Beautiful fly-in.