Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and other conservation advocates are instead urging executive branch agencies leading the “America the Beautiful” program to institute strict parameters and exclude areas with only temporary prohibitions on activities like commercial fishing.
The admonitions come as a public comment period on the official conservation database is set to end next week.
“This was and remains a main worry,” said Rick Steiner, a retired marine conservation professor at the University of Alaska. “There is too much room for the federal agencies to have fun with numbers, count existing conservation measures in the 30 percent goal, even if they can easily be rescinded by a future administration, and hang the ‘mission accomplished’ banner on this for political purposes.”